coworker is poisoning a new hire with his bad attitude, am I getting an unfair advantage by working on-site, and more

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. Coworker is poisoning a new hire with his bad attitude

A guy who works in our IT department, Steve, is just genuinely a negative human being, and pretty overt about it. He complains constantly about anything and everything, and really appears to hate his job despite remaining at the company for over 20 years. All managers are stupid, all decisions about his job/responsibility area are bad … you get the idea. Examples:
* Telling a visibly pregnant coworker that he “didn’t think bringing a child in the world right now was a great idea considering the state of things.”
* Wearing a truly enormous sombrero after complaining it was too bright in the open seating and informing everyone why he was wearing said sombrero.
* If anyone asks how he’s doing as a polite greeting, he informs them that this place is awful and he’s counting down the days until he can leave.
* He not regarded highly by management, but talks a big game about how he’s smarter than everyone, etc. He is no longer allowed to ask questions in department meetings due to his asking of very specific questions about his responsibility areas and perceived injustices.

He now has a college new hire working along side him to learn the area and is turning this new hire into a tiny version of himself. I am not Steve’s manager but have noticed the attitude shift in the college hire.

Would it be terrible to mention to management the attitude shift? Would a polite word to the newbie be out of line? I just feel like the new hire is learning “professional norms” from someone without any awareness of what those actually are and is a recipe for disaster for their career.

Yes, if you have decent managers, this is something you can discreetly mention to them — although really, whoever assigned Steve to train the new hire should have foreseen this!

It also would be a kindness to have a quiet word with the new hire — something along the lines of, “Steve is pretty unhappy here, as he’s probably told you, but the rest of us often don’t see things the way he does. I know you’re still getting acclimated and it can be really helpful to build relationships with multiple people so you get more than one perspective. Please feel free to come to me if you have questions or I can help with anything.”

But better yet, are you up for taking the new hire to coffee or lunch and just building a relationship with them? That itself, without even needing to say anything about Steve, might help them see the work through a non-Steve lens.

Related:
my new employee is getting bad advice from my older employee

2. If my friend announces I’m working with him, I’m worried my company will let me go

I recently reached out to a friend who’s building a new company, asking if I could invest small potatoes money in him. It’s only to a tune of a few hundred dollars a month, just to cover some basic services to keep the product running smoothly. He asked me instead to be his co-founder and CTO. The company is bootstrapped so I can’t afford to leave my day job (yet). I believe in this project and I’ll get to do good in the world.

Meanwhile my day job is capital T toxic, but I need the insurance (solo wage earner for my family) and a paycheck. I can’t leave and my industry is a trashcan fire for hiring right now due to AI. My company already knows I’m doing something similar, and its okay for me to have a second job as long as its doesn’t impact my first job.

The issue is this: the position with the new company is significantly more senior to my regular job. I’m a senior level individual contributor and I don’t see progressing here, nor would I want to given the toxicity. The new company wants to announce me and use it as a marketing tool to get more users. I worry such a visible marketing campaign might give my day job an excuse to just get rid of me (my boss regularly threatens everyone on her team with job loss, among other things). Even though I’ve successfully been doing the same amount of work as I will be doing for a year with their permission and it’s not impacting my work, I fear the increased title will give them an excuse to just oust me preemptively.

Can I block my work from my LinkedIn profile so I can (1) update it, and (2) contain the reach of the marketing campaign? It’s minimally likely that they would see it otherwise, as this will be the primary direction of the marketing campaign. Or will the blocking cause some kind of backlash on its own? The HR and head of my division are looking at my LinkedIn regularly.

There’s no way to reliably block your company from seeing the announcement. You could block specific people from your profile, but if an announcement is going out that mentions you by name, there’s no way to block them from seeing that (or from hearing about it from someone else who sees it). You’ve got to decide if the potential benefit of allowing the announcement outweighs the danger you think it would put you in — but absent some information to the contrary, I would assume it doesn’t warrant the risk (in any situation, but especially one where your friend needs a few hundred dollars a month to cover basic services — which says the company isn’t in a strong place currently).

3. Am I gaining an unfair advantage over my coworkers by occasionally working at the office in-person?

I work remotely for a company in a town about three hours away. Everyone has the option to work remotely, but only about a quarter of people with my position also have the need to work remotely because of distance.

I have family in the same city as the company office. I miss being in an office sometime and about 2-3 times a year I combine a trip to see my family with spending a day in the office. I think my bosses really like this effort and I like to think them seeing me in person and not just on a Zoom screen is helpful for my career generally speaking, although I don’t think there is any favoritism being shown by my bosses.

I always feel guilty though because the other distant remote workers don’t have this family connection to the city so it feels like I am taking an unfair advantage over them. Am I?

No. They are presumably happy with the benefits they get by working remotely. If they felt seeing their bosses in person a few times a year was important to them, they have the option to do that (hell, some companies would even foot the travel bill if they made a business case for it). Your circumstances are different and your preferences are different; that’s not an unfair advantage (although it may be an advantage).

4. Negotiating for paid parental leave when accepting a job

I recently interviewed for a great job at a great organization (in my neighborhood!). Sadly, they’ve gone with another candidate, but I asked them to keep me in mind for future opportunities. They responded very quickly to say that the role immediately below it may soon be available and asked if I’d be interested in it, giving the salary range.

The job I’d interviewed for would’ve been a $20-$30k pay increase for me, but this lower job would be a bit of a cut. However, I’d still be interested due to the proximity to my home, as long as the health care benefits are better than my current org. My only hesitation is that I want to have a child within the next year and it would be hard to take a pay cut if I don’t have paid parental leave.

I saw your advice about negotiating parental leave by saying you want to plan for the long-term, but my state will implement paid family leave within 6-12 months of when I’m hoping to give birth (and I have reasons for not wanting to delay pregnancy further). Is there a way to negotiate paid parental leave 6-12 months in advance of when the organization will be required to provide it?

The good news here is that it sounds like your willingness to take this job would hinge on their willingness to agree to give you paid parental leave … which makes this pretty simple since  you can just ask about it straightforwardly if you get an offer. Plus, you’re asking for something they’re about to be offering everyone as soon as the law goes into effect, so they don’t need to worry as much about setting a precedent as they would otherwise.

If they offer you the job, you could say, “I’d love to accept but there’s a chance I may need paid parental leave in the next year. I know (state) is implementing that in (month) but would you be willing to offer it to me before then? If we could agree to the same X months the law will offer when it goes into effect, just starting sooner, I would be thrilled to accept.” You could also add, “I should say that I’m not pregnant so don’t have clear timing on when or even whether I’d need to use it; I just want to make sure it’s there if I do need it before the law takes effect.”

5. What is a dotted-line report?

What is the purpose of a dotted-line report? What does it typically entail and what are good use-cases for it to exist? I see them sometimes in my org, but I don’t know what they mean.

If you have a dotted-line relationship to someone above you, it means they oversee parts of your work but not your job as a whole. For example, maybe you’re a fundraising assistant who reports to the fundraising manager but you also have a dotted line reporting relationship with the grants manager because you analyze data for her and report to her on grant-related deliverables. The fundraising manager is your manager for all the general manager stuff (overseeing your daily work, monitoring your progress against goals, doing your performance reviews, giving you most feedback, thinking about your professional development, approving time off, etc.), but the grants manager has the ability to assign you work and give you feedback on the work you do for her (and may contribute input to the performance review that your manager writes).

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