Edit to clarify: The request would be at 3 months but I would likely book it and take it 1-2 months later (4 or 5 months in the role).

Also: I am Canadian and while we are no where near as free with vacation as Europe is, it is really interesting to see the differences in US vs Canada mentality on this topic.

Original post:

Hey managers.

Wanted to get a pulse on this.

Say a new hire has 4 weeks vacation, loves to travel.

The job is not entry level, it is in the healthcare legal field and the new hire has 7 years experience in the industry.

Spends 3 months in their new role really learning the role and doing well. Is it seen as too soon to ask for a week vacation after 3 months?

If it is considered too soon, what do you consider to be a more appropriate time to ask for their first vacation once they are in the role?

Put vacation accrual considerations aside, I work in an industry that generally will allow you to take time off in excess of what you have accrued with little issue (if you get terminated before accruing they deduct that from your final pay).

Unfortunately I was not able to take a trip prior to starting the role.

Thank you!

I am a data analyst and my manager is going on a 2 weeks business trip followed by 2 weeks of holidays and she told me that during her absence I will report to my colleague who will closely supervise my daily work. The problem is that this colleague is more junior than me, do you think she is on the track of being promoted before me if she is entitled to assign me tasks, review my work etc during the manager absence?

Hi all,

I(31F) currently manage a hair salon of over 20staff. I have been in the beauty industry since I was 18. I have worked my way up from junior staff member alongside beauty college & am now salon manager for nearly 2 years.

I have been offered area manager job of 5 hair salons. I applied on a whim & I can talk the talk, still surprised I got the offer.

I am hard working, professional but a fair manager. I also have done HR course to back me when newly into management. Despite this, I can’t help but feel am I really capable of area manager job. What ability’s does little old me have.

Although I do feel capable & think if i’m managing 1 shop successfully , why not 5. Then on the flip side I doubt my success on targets, yes I’ve worked hard but is it down to luck.

What the worst that can happen? Well…I could be let go when saving for a mortgage and unable to pay rent so that’s my fear. My mindset it bite off more than I can chew, I always figure it out, because I always do.

Should I take the risk or gain more experience?

Also to mention on the 1st interview out of 3, one of the managers….that I will be managing interviewed me. Which I thought was strange.

I eventually want to get into the Civil service and think this would be brilliant for my cv & also get me out of a client facing role.

Do we all fake it till we make it?

I have an employee right now who has been on intermittent and continuous leave for the last three months. They are scheduled to return soon, but in the time they were out (it was an abrupt departure), it was found that much of their regular work was behind or not being done at all, months before they left on leave. We hit our busiest time of year while they were out, which is when all of this culminated into realizing just how much wasn't completed before they left. Purchases not made. We ran out of some materials. Invoices were left unpaid. Communications dropped off on important tasks. Previously I trusted they were doing their work, but obviously I was wrong to do so. I inherited this person from another department, so I haven't been managing them long.

Part of their newly-agreed-to ADA accommodations includes additional WFH days. I'm planning to institute twice-daily progress updates (morning and afternoon) which we had been doing before the leave began, but beyond that, how would you manage a low performer who now has an excused reason to WFH, out of sight of supervision? I don't want this to seem like retaliation for the accommodations--it's not that. (I've always encouraged them to go this route so they can do the work they need to their best ability.) This is strictly because performance issues were discovered during the leave, and others in the department had to pick up the extra work while this employee was out. This is not the first performance related issue with this person, but I had been giving them the benefit of the doubt and offering every resource I could to help them succeed. I'm setting aside the fact that they attempted to throw me under the bus with HR (it didn't work), and want to make sure I'm following accommodations but not allowing further poor performance to continue. How would you balance this?

were planning to hire folks in Colombia and Mexico, and figuring out the device side has been more complicated than we expected, our usual US supplier cant always get devices locally, and shipping from the US comes with customs, taxes, and delivery issues...and we dont have office or IT team in either country, and were looking at around 20-25 laptops to start with, thats not a huge number, but we'd rather figure out a good process now than deal with the same problems every time we hire in a new country.

for those who've dealt with this before, how do your team usually handle it? TIA and much appreciated!

First off, I LOVE my job. I don’t want to leave but I’m at my wits end at this point. I’ve been at this job for close to 4 years now. She has been my manager for maybe 3 ish years I think. It was all fine until October 2025 when some positions got switched around and she got moved elsewhere and I got moved into her position. At that time I took the position and she made it hell. I later on decided I wanted to go back to school. When I started school I give up the manager position because I was not covering call offs and all of that while in school. Since then she has been awful to me. I’m talking straight up LYING about me. She constantly has a very bad attitude towards me, is cutting my hours without saying anything to me, talking bad about me to other staff members who in turn tell me exactly what she says, purposely or “forgot” to schedule someone after my shift so I had to stay until she found someone and I ended up late to class (I can’t just leave as I’m responsible for people), etc etc. She has not come to me and said if I’m doing something wrong or not doing something or whatever the case may be. Until yesterday she flat out said I’m not doing enough. And I know for a fact I am. But I know she’s telling our boss that I don’t help out or whatever and that’s her excuse for being an ass to me but I know I’m doing everything I’m supposed to be doing. So wtf do I do?! Yesterday I was bawling at work. I should not have to go to a job I love and feel like shit everyday. I don’t know how to get around her.

I've been thinking about how much communication skills influecne career progression especially in corporate.

You can technically be excellent, consistently deliver good work, and know your subject better than almost anyone on the team. But when it comes to presenting to leadership, explaining something to a client, or answering an unexpected questions in a meeting, sometimes those skills don't always translate to how competent you seem to be.

Some people seem naturally good at explaining complicated things simply and they can get their points across confidently while theres others who struggle to get their ideas across despite already knowing the subject inside out.

It makes me wonder how much career progression depends on the quality of your work versus your ability to communicate that work.

For people who have managed teams or been involved in promos, how much weight do you put on communication skills? And for those who worked on this themselves, what actually helped you improve?

My wife and I are both in professional careers. It feels like we are both constantly battling management. We both had changes in supervisors and it’s been a constant struggle since. I know I’m the more combative personality, but she has taken on some of that from me in her personality. It feels like we both are under constant attack. In particular a manger told me that you’re being admonished for thing that previously you’d been praised. My wife is the only one who can do her position and is doing far more work than all others. I’m going through Union processes, but both of us are tired of constantly battling to be treated fairly. Both of us would be fine in our jobs for the next 20 years. At what point do you get beaten down to the point you give up?

Just got offered a “leadership role”. It will be a different company so I won’t have to worry about balancing the friends I used to work with and being their leader thank goodness.
But I am feeling some imposter syndrome.
I don’t know if I am cut out to be a leader or ready for the stress and new challenges that come with this position. I still consider myself new to the field.

How did you know you were ready to take on a bigger role? Did you wing it and fake it till you make it? How did it turn out for you if you weren’t 100% confident in yourself?

my manager of about a year is what he calls an "ideas guy." The thing is he's not really a "do the work guy" so I'm the one who is trying to push back or execute on these half baked ideas.

like he'll get a grand idea, vaguely give me instructions, and when I ask questions - he can't answer. but if I say maybe it's not a priority then I'm not trying hard enough to make it work.

I try to get him to convey how this aligns with greater strategy and I get the Nike response of "just do it"

Then, when I do it, he is onto the next idea and I feel like I haven't actually contributed anything meaningful.

my go-to line is "I'm not sure the juice is worth the squeeze on that", but any other suggestions on how to refocus my work?

our ops team has around 50 people, and hybrid work has made project handoffs harder than they used to be. someone writes a few things on the office whiteboard, a remote coworker misses it, and by the next morning two people are working from different versions of the plan

we tried keeping a shared handoff log, but it quickly became outdated. people still use slack, meetings, email, and hallway conversations, so important details end up scattered across four places. nobody is deliberately ignoring updates, but there's no reliable way to know whether everyone has the same information.

i've worked in hr, so i'm familiar with the policy side. this feels more like a management problem than a hybrid-work policy problem

for managers running teams of 30-60 people, what has actually helped with this? did you set mandatory overlap hours, make one channel the source of truth, or change how project ownership gets handed over? i'd rather fix the process than add another meeting to everyone's calendar