This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. Can you be fired for being fine but not great? Beyond egregious performance violations and the like, can an employer fire you for doing fine or decent work — but it’s not quite at the level they have in mind? (Maybe a rephrase...

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. Meet Grendel and Teddy! 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: Like Happiness, by Ursula Villarreal-Moura. When a reporter...

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. It’s the Friday open thread! The comment section on this post is open for discussion with other readers on any work-related questions that you want to talk about (that includes school). If you want an answer from me, emailing me is still your best bet*, but this is a chance to...

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go… 1. The better I do, the more resentful my boss gets I’m a manager in a technical field and my boss used to be a huge micromanager. He is one of those senior leaders who is good at delegating tasks, but not at delegating decisions...

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: I have a friend, Jane, who I used to be close to, but in the past few years she’s been very hot and cold, going through periods of being almost clingy and then turning on a dime to become unresponsive or even kind of annoyed that I’m talking to her. This has been...

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: My company has a very small number of permanent employees but we employ a large number of entry-level seasonal workers at a couple of points in the year. We don’t have landlines, only company cell phones. The phone number on our website, brochures, etc. is my...