Tag: work

Green Flag

“Let me know if you are interested.”

That was the subject line. The email came from a recruiter I have been working with. I read the job description and burst out laughing.

We all know the universal red flags by now. The company that calls itself a “family,” the job that promises you’ll “work hard and play hard.” Those have been discussed to death.

The job description in question was for a Controller role. I received the email on Thursday. According to the recruiter’s email, the Controller had given notice the previous Friday, and her last day was going to be the following Tuesday.

Red flag number one.

The two weeks’ notice is standard. This person was just three days shy of that mark. This was the equivalent of holding your middle finger on your way out.

Someone who is happy with their current job but simply moving for better opportunities doesn’t do this.

Also, even though two weeks is considered standard, as you go up the ladder the expectation grows.

A President of an international division would probably be expected to give more than two weeks’ notice. Some transitions may last months. It is understood and an expected courtesy.

A Controller is not an executive, but it is the position in charge of the entire accounting function. In this case, the person was also guiding the company through an audit.

Someone in this position would be expected to give at least two weeks’ notice and maybe even offer to consult to help with the changeover.

Neither of these things happened.

The other, more important, red flag was that someone wrote it didn’t matter that there was not going to be any handover of responsibilities because the work was “easy.”

This one connects to a hard lesson I learned early on. No job is easy. Every job requires know-how and care. Especially if you want to achieve excellence.

What the hiring manager is really saying when calling a job “easy” is that the job is not respected or valued. Even if you outperform and deliver great results, those won’t count in your favor because, as an early employer told me, this is a job that “any monkey off the street can do.”

“Easy” is a toxic way to describe any job. Just run.

The red flags don’t stop at the job description.

A friend of mine was rushing to get a job ahead of a planned layoff. She finally got a verbal offer. As a professional, she did what she was supposed to do: negotiate the initial offer. The HR representative responded with a firm “no.”

The negotiation ended before it even started. The company pretty much told my friend: take it or leave it.

This was especially surprising after several rounds of interviews. The company used hours of my friend’s time.  And the time of dozens of people already working in the organization. Yet they were willing to risk all of that on the bet that my friend needed the job too badly to walk away.

My friend took the job. I understand why, but this doesn’t show great promise.

My advice to her? It is okay to continue to look while you settle into the new role.

The hiring process is the ultimate red flag to never ignore. It provides a window into how working with the company is going to be. I’ve yet to meet a company where a chaotic, disrespectful hiring process opens the door to a disciplined and generous company.

Still, red flags are not an automatic rejection. I once interviewed at a company where a colleague described working until nearly 11 PM on New Year’s Eve the previous year. I still took that job. I made the calculation, and the long hours were outweighed by other aspects of the job and the company.

But always pay attention to red flags. And learn from them. Which ones are a dealbreaker for you?

For me, this role had too many unforgivable flags, and I’m in a position to wait, so I chose to wait for a possible green flag.

Know Your Numbers

Graduation season. Commencement speakers across the country are talking about AI, and how it will change everything. Graduating classes are booing them. They just spent four years and a small fortune preparing for careers they’re now being told might not exist.

I won’t pretend to know what AI will or won’t do to the professional lives of new grads, but I do know what determines whether people make good career decisions or bad ones.

It is not just talent, or timing, or connections. It is whether they are acting from confidence or from fear. And that almost always comes down to money.

At some point, most people will be in a job they hate. And although you can always change jobs, the process can be lengthy and difficult. In the current environment, it might feel downright impossible.

You never want to stay at a job that is affecting your mental or physical health just because rent is due on the first. You don’t want to be pushed into actions that could hurt your professional reputation for years just because you don’t have a single month of savings.

When I talk about a safety net, I don’t mean millions or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. If you understand your numbers and know your burn rate, how much you absolutely need to survive for a period of time, you can act.

Early in my career, I found myself at a job that was toxic. I was not valued and had spent years waiting for a promotion that never came. Worse, the job had started making me question my own worth. A voice in my head started whispering that maybe I wasn’t good enough for that promotion.

I had to leave.

I started looking for another job, but I felt that the toxicity and the long hours were not letting me perform my best at interviews. I needed to leave and cleanse myself of that place. I would not advise this as a first choice, but it was how I felt at the time.

I looked at my numbers and decided that I needed $5,000. This was over 15 years ago. Things were cheaper, and I had a lot fewer bills to pay, but that and some part-time temp work should be enough to get me through six months.

From that point, my focus was on saving that $5,000. Once I had it in the bank, I quit. And things worked out. When I look back, I always see this as the real beginning of my accounting career. A small amount of money and confidence in my numbers made all the difference.

But it is not just about escaping from a bad situation.

A friend recently reached out to me, completely bummed out. A company had contacted him with his dream job. The job he wanted since he was a kid. He loved the company, the mission, the team. The role was a perfect next step and promised a lot of upside. But it came with a 30% pay cut. The company was a startup that couldn’t match his Fortune 10 salary. He was offered equity, but promises of future riches do not pay the bills today.

He looked at his budget and couldn’t figure out how to survive with 30% less. With a heavy heart, he turned it down.

I hope this experience makes my friend take a hard look at his numbers.

Most people don’t think about money as a career tool until the moment they need it to be one. A new job that requires a move. A new opportunity that requires a pay cut. The chance to pursue a dream. All of those require a reserve of money and the clarity to use it.

It all comes down to money. Having cash in the bank gives you freedom. And most importantly, it allows you to act from a place of confidence, not a place of fear.

Ironically, even if you decide to stay at your job, knowing that you could leave changes everything. You speak up more. You walk with more confidence. You hold your convictions more firmly. And that makes you a better leader and a better employee, the kind that good organizations notice and reward.

To new graduates, I still don’t know what AI will do to your careers. But I do know this: learn your numbers. Know what you need. Build a cushion. Everything else gets easier from there.

That’s Why You Hired Me

Another CEO declares middle management dead. Flat organizations are hailed as a corporate utopia full of efficiencies and cost savings.

I understand why this dream appeals to people who have survived bad middle managers. But as someone who has been a middle manager, I can confidently say that middle managers are the heart of most organizations.

They operationalize the vision of leadership.

VPs and other C-suite executives come up with dazzling ideas. It is up to the middle managers to make them a reality. No VP that I know will sit with a team to make the small go/no-go decisions. Whether a variance is worth flagging or just noise, how to code a transaction that spans two entities, which reconciling items to escalate and which to resolve on the spot. These might seem like small decisions, but they are the decisions that can paralyze a team and stop progress.

I remember one occasion when I received a request from corporate. They wanted my team to document some processes. I had a team of four, and each one had a task or two to document. I sent the team the request from corporate and asked them to start working on it as soon as close was over. I sent two separate reminders, yet I grew concerned when no one reached out with questions. In my book, no questions mean no work.

A few days before the deadline, I set up an in-office 20-minute meeting to go over the progress and answer any questions. My boss pushed back. He said: why do you need a meeting? You sent clear instructions. This is a no-brainer. I said: just trust me.

At the meeting we found out that no one had even started working on the project. I was proven right.

One person didn’t even know there was a project to work on. He asked if he was cc’d on the emails. He was. The second one received the emails but didn’t think they applied to him. His thought: if I had to do something, someone would tell me in person. The third one knew about the project but somehow confused the deadline date with the date he was supposed to start. The fourth one understood the assignment but had not done anything about it… yet.

After the meeting my boss asked me to stay behind. His exact words were: what the f* was that? He couldn’t understand how this group of people had not understood the assignment.

I responded: that’s why you hired me.

Someone might respond to this story with: you just had a bad team. Hire better people. To that I say: I hired the best team I could afford.

Good talent is expensive, and most companies are not willing to write a blank check. But even if your company is willing to pay top dollar to hire self-directed talent, where do you think that talent came from? The best professionals I know had great middle managers showing them the ropes for years. Giving them feedback and helping them along the way.

Leaders are built, not born.

A friend of mine started at the bottom and retired from the C-suite. At 65, she still credits her first two bosses for the trajectory.

So you’re a deep-pocketed company that decided to outsource the development of its people to other companies and only hire the best and brightest. I ask you: how long before the best and brightest get tired of self-directing and going above and beyond without any room to grow?

Imagine you have a team member who takes it upon themselves to onboard new hires and resolve ambiguity for the group. This person is already doing the work of a middle manager. They’re just not being paid for it, titled for it, or given anywhere to go because of it. How long before they figure that out? The distance between an individual contributor and the C-suite is too wide to cross without steps in between. Unless you have a top-notch internal leadership program that can bridge that gap, your best people will leave to get the growth they can’t get at your company.

I met someone recently whose company had removed all middle managers. He proudly said that it had been a year without any measurable loss of productivity. And I believe him.

But what will your productivity be in three to five years?

I do believe that if you have a strong team, probably built by a strong middle manager, where everyone knows what they do and there is cohesion, you can remove that middle manager without much change. At first.

Things start to shift once the team changes. People leave. People get hired. The strategy changes. But someone has to handle the next new executive ask.

That’s when the team starts to suffer. That’s when the bottom line suffers. That’s when you feel the absence of the middle manager. Another CEO can declare them dead. But they’re the ones keeping the company alive.