This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. This comment section is open for any non-work-related discussion you’d like to have with other readers, by popular demand. Here are the rules for the weekend posts. Book recommendation of the week: Perfume and Pain, by Anna…
Hello and welcome to Part 2 of the federal government email nonsense, the sequel that none of us wanted and yet received anyway. Elon Musk is nice like that. I know we had a thread about this earlier this week, but I figured I’d give an update. On Monday, your…
It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go… 1. I’m supposed to live with my boss and her husband for months I have been working at my company for two years, and I get along well with my boss, who is a woman in her early thirties. Her husband…
A reader writes: I was working on writing up a job ad today for temporary research assistants for a field biology project, and noticed trends in my ads and in others’. It’s common for early career employees applying to assistant or technician jobs to think that they want to do…
I wrote to you back in 2020 about an incident from 2019 where a coworker had a screaming tantrum. I very much appreciated your input, and that of your commentariat. Nothing much happened regarding HR and my yelling coworker, Dolores. I’ve taken your advice to heart, that almost all workplace…
Pre-pandemic, I worked in San Francisco and lived across the bay. There’s a steep toll to get over the bridge into SF, but it’s reduced by about 2/3 or so if you have 3 or more people in your car. And you get to use the express lanes, so you…
It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. Can I use a wedding photo — with a veil — as my work avatar? My company is fully remote, so they really encourage us to upload a headshot to our company chat service so people can put a face…
more on the federal government’s “deferred resignation” offer (spoiler: it’s definitely a trap) by Alison Green on February 5, 2025 Just sharing this tweet from Washington Post reporter Jeff Stein about Elon Musk’s “deferred resignation” offer for federal government workers. (Don’t take it! It’s still a trap.) Also, if you…
the luxury cabin, the clueless Christmas card, and other stories of wildly out-of-touch company executives — Ask a Manager the luxury cabin, the clueless Christmas card, and other stories of wildly out-of-touch company executives — Ask a Manager
do job titles matter? by Alison Green on February 5, 2025 A reader asks: I work for a small company of 25 employees. We still call ourselves a start-up (with all of the cultural elements that brings), but we’ve been around almost 10 years now. The founder believes “titles don’t…