The email list I wished I'd had in my first job
A love letter to Ask a Manager
One of the things that has given me great great joy the past few months is the Ask a Manager email list. I’ve been thinking that if I'd had this resource when in my first "real" job out of grad school, I would have been much more skilled at navigating the roller coaster sine wave of a growing startup.
Ask a Manager is a website run by Alison Green (one L, not two) where people send in their conundrums or questions about work and she replies back. She has a really down-to-earth, "treat people as adults," and realistic approach to tricky workplace situations.
I like that she answers questions directly and isn't afraid to pass judgment. A lot of people write in asking her to weigh in on a dispute and most of the times, she takes sides. (e.g. "Your dad is giving you bad advice about the job search and you should ignore him." "Your boss is being unreasonable and you are not in the wrong." "Wow, Chad sounds like a real jerk.") It can be so validating to have someone agree that a completely bonkers situation is, in fact, bonkers. That said, she does also say when she needs more context and gives her reasoning when she could see a situation go either way. Also, if the question-asker is in the wrong she isn't afraid to call them out on that. Her site really is a very refreshing corner of the internet!
Reading the questions and answers is also so fun because it scratches the same itch as participating in workplace gossip and drama, but with absolutely zero stakes. You get to hear stories about ridiculous colleagues and screwed-up management without having to deal with any of the fallout yourself. What could be better than that??
More than just being fun to read, I also think Ask a Manager is an incredible career resource. I truly believe that if I'd known about this newsletter when I started my job at a startup that would go on to experience incredible highs and greater lows, I would have handled it so much better. I think I would have rolled with the punches and the stresses more gracefully, been a less annoying colleague when I felt things weren't going well, and just generally been able to manage my own emotional response to the rollercoaster so much better. I don't think I would have fully avoided burnout, but I think my burnout would have been a lot less severe and my mental health would have suffered a lot less.
Here's why:
1. Ask a Manager gives you a great sense of what is normal at work and what is not. People write in with all sorts of wild work situations, and Alison does a great job of calling out when situations are:
Completely bananapants, and the question-asker is right to be writing in baffled, angry, or whatever other emotion they're feeling. What I appreciate about these responses is that Alison shares the outrage or other emotion of the reader, validating their experience and making it feel like she’s right there with them. And when it’s appropriate, she also doesn’t take it too seriously — I’m using the word bananapants because that’s how she describes so many of the absurd situations.
Shitty and total BS, but also an unfortunate reality of many or most workplaces. Sometimes it’s obviously worth leaving over, and other times it’s up to the question-asker to decide whether they feel so strongly about it to look for another job.
A little shitty, or maybe honestly not even that bad, and more importantly a completely normal and acceptable part of working together with other imperfect humans. The sorts of things you’d encounter no matter where you worked.
It's really nice to see such a huge range of experiences from all the people who write in, because it means you are better able to understand where your own experiences fall within the immense range of possibilities.
2. It also helps you understand the limits of your influence at work. By far the most useful theme in Alison's responses is: "sorry bud, you’re right that sucks but there's nothing you can (or should) do here." Seeing that response over and over, for a huge variety of questions and situations, really makes it stick. No matter how ambitious or do-gooder-y you are, at the end of the day you are hired to do one job. You can maybe influence how other people do things here and there, but most of the time you probably won't be able to. Sure, try to be helpful if you can. But better not to stress too much about it, and just to focus on your own work when changing others doesn’t work. It took me three years to internalize this lesson and learn to let other people make their own mistakes, and those three years were exhausting — and I know I wasn't the most fun colleague to work with during that time!
3. And gives concrete advice for how you might make change even if you are not in charge. Sometimes Alison does suggest that the question-asker might be able to do something about their situation. I've learned a lot from these types of responses:
In the vast majority of cases, Alison encourages the question-asker to consider whether trying to change something they have no official power over is really worth it to them or not. Sure, she tells readers, you could bring this up to your grand-boss or make a stink of it, but first consider how much political capital you have and whether it's worth expending it on this. It took me way too long to understand the concept of political capital at my last job, which definitely had detrimental effects on my and my team.
Similarly, she asks the question-asker to think about the timing of their request, especially as it pertains to their own tenure at the company. Sometimes, being new to an organization means you're in a great position to ask for changes. But in other situations, being new means you really have no leverage to change things.
She also has also a nice playbook for trying to make this kind of long-shot change, and it usually involves getting a group together to speak up and ask for what they need. This isn't something I ever figured out how to do effectively at my last job, but now that I see it as an avenue for change I see where it could have been so helpful.
And finally, there are times when the response is to forget about politics and social capital and tactics and whatnot, and just make a big ol' stink about something! You see this sort of response to questions that involve harassment, HR antics that are actually illegal, really bad managers who refuse to step up and do their jobs, and — of course — some completely bananapants situations.
4. And... asks readers to contemplate whether issues are worth leaving their job over. In fact, a large proportion of the responses end up being "that sucks and you shouldn't have to deal with that, but there's unfortunately probably nothing you can do about it. It might be time to polish your resume." In some more clear-cut situations, Alison's response recognizes that a situation is completely untenable and encourages the question-askers to find a new job, but in most others she just encourages the question-asker to ask themselves if the issue is worth leaving over. I also find this a very helpful response: if something isn't worth finding a new job over, then it means you need to find a way to emotionally deal with it and not let it constantly get you down. Again, wisdom I learned the hard way and maybe would have gotten to faster if I'd been main-lining this newsletter like I do now.
Anyway, now that I'm in a completely different job and headspace I'm happy to say I can reflect on a lot of the lessons I learned the hard way and implement them in my new work life. It is very nice! And it would have been even nicer if my learning of those lessons had been accelerated by reading this newsletter while I was in my first job. So I hope that you are convinced to check it out, and if you do please reach out and let me know what favorite posts you find! You know I'm always down to gossip about other people's work problems! :D
h/t to Sydney for encouraging me to write this post and Jessica for introducing me to the wonders of Ask a Manager! No joke a life-changing introduction.