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Posted by Ask a Manager

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/09/no-one-in-my-company-will-give-direct-feedback-boss-wont-hire-men-and-more.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=33020

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. No one in my company will give direct feedback

I joined my current firm almost two years ago. It was an industry switch post-masters degree. The firm is well-regarded, albeit fast-paced and challenging.

After joining, I learned that they have a truly bizarre approach to feedback: you don’t give feedback to people directly, you tell their manager. About six months in, someone went to my manager to say they felt I was not as communicative about a deliverable as they wanted. She never said anything to me when I was working on the deliverable, just took the deliverable when I handed it off (on time), said it looked good, and moved on. At the time, my manager told me that if it kept coming back as feedback it would affect my performance review. Then it happened again this spring. I was, as I understood, supporting content creation for a program (per my manager’s guidance). Then the program leads complained to her that they wanted me to create structure and be more of a PM for them and I wasn’t doing that. But they had never discussed this with me directly so I had no idea that they were looking for that from me. My manager, again, made me feel like I had to make up for weak performance, and didn’t acknowledge that she’d given me conflicting guidance.

In both cases, I was emphatic to my manager that she please tell people I want direct feedback (and I mean it!). In one case, the person did schedule time to speak with me 1:1 and we clarified what she wanted. In another, the person told my manager they did, but they didn’t. (Both are two levels above my seniority in org hierarchy).

It’s really hard to feel secure if people want me to make a change but won’t tell me directly, particularly when they’re in a senior position. I’ve taken to sending emails outlining discussions to cover myself if someone’s feedback doesn’t align with what we’ve discussed and I kick off collaborative work with a “ways of working” discussion for the whole team to indicate how they want to get feedback. But I can’t read minds. And now when I work with these people, I’m afraid that they’re sitting in silent judgement of my performance and I won’t know until later.

I’ve talked with colleagues with different managers who have experienced similar things (totally blindsided by negative performance reviews or just being told so-and-so doesn’t like their work) and it just seems to be a part of how people operate here, particularly senior employees. I am looking to leave because I’m burned out and leadership shared that layoffs weren’t out of the question, but in the meantime how do I stay sane and keep up my confidence?

Yeah, that’s a weird culture. One thing you can do is to ask people explicitly while a project is still ongoing whether they’re getting everything they need from you and whether there’s anything it would help for you to do differently. That’s more likely to elicit direction from them than just telling them at the outset that you want feedback or holding “ways of working” discussions. Just go to people as the work is progressing to check in and ask if there’s something more or different that would help from you. They still may not tell you in this weird culture, but you’re more likely to hear it with that approach … and then if criticism does come up later on, it better positions you to tell your manager that you directly asked the person mid-project whether they wanted you to do anything differently.

2. I have to do a 30/60/90 day plan because I took a screenshot of myself during a meeting

I received a written warning today from my supervisor for taking a screenshot of myself during a recorded zoom. I will admit it was dumb of me but the only reason I believe it rose to the level of a write-up is because a senior VP saw it. I figured it would be a Mortification Week story for next year vs a step on a PIP. Alas, I was wrong.

I have been asked to come up with a 30/60/90 day plan to “prevent behavior like this from happening again.” I just don’t know how to write one that would be quantifiable. I can guarantee I will be extremely careful on recorded zooms from now on, but besides that I’m not sure. Any considerations as I write up this plan?

I asked the supervisor (who hadn’t watched the video at the time of the write-up) about the reasoning, and he said it was because it was disrespectful to the coworker who was talking. I am happy to own my boneheaded move, but the punishment didn’t seem to fit the crime. I suspect this was my team’s leadership being able to say they did something or to continue the paper trail.

I had an annual review last month with this same supervisor that was positive. It’s possible they wouldn’t mind me leaving on my own, based on some other things that have occurred in the last month, but nobody has come out and said that. I am actively applying for jobs since I can tell this is not a long-term fit.

This is a wild overreaction! I can’t see how taking a screenshot of yourself during a zoom is a big deal at all, but even if it was somehow disruptive, the appropriate way to handle it would be to tell you not to take screenshots of yourself during meetings again. If they thought there was a larger issue about you not being engaged or not paying attention, they could talk to you about that too.

But a 30/60/90 day plan for this? That’s absurd. 30/60/90 day plans make sense when you’re working on learning new skills or working toward specific achievements. They make no sense for “don’t take screenshots of myself during meetings.” What could you possibly say for day 60 that would be different from day 30?

Is there any chance there’s more to this, like it’s part of a pattern of you seeming checked out, and so they’re looking for something to address that larger picture? That’s the only way this would make sense.

If not, though, then as for what to say in it, write it around being engaged and focused and ensuring that speakers have your full attention. Include monthly check-ins with your manager for feedback on how things are going.

But your manager is deeply ridiculous.

3. My boss wants more women on our team — and is flat-out rejecting men

My team at work is very male. My boss has seven reports, only one of whom is female, and he wants to fix that balance, which seems reasonable to me. That being said, we’ve struggled to hire more women. We’ve had several women reject offers recently and one man accept an offer, skewing the balance even more. It’s not a great situation, and I agree with my boss that we should try to improve it.

The tricky part comes with referrals. I’ve referred several qualified candidates for roles on our team, nearly all of whom are male — the industry skews male and these are the people who have reached out to me. However, when I flag the applications to my boss, he very explicitly states that he will pass on them because he wants more women on the team. I want a more diverse team too, but rejecting candidates without screening them based on their sex seems ethically wrong and potentially a legal liability. What’s the right approach here?

It’s not just potentially a legal liability; it’s flat-out illegal. Federal law is very clear that employers cannot take sex into consideration in hiring. They can undertake efforts to build a more diverse candidate pool (for example, attending “women in X industry” events, advertising jobs in places women are likely to see them, even including language in ads like “we’re working to support women in X industry and encourage you to apply even if you’re not a traditional candidate for the role”), but they cannot factor sex into any individual hiring decision. Your boss is breaking the law when he says he’s passing on candidates because they’re not women.

Can you point that out to him? Ideally you’d say very matter-of-factly, “I looked into this more, and we cannot legally take sex into consideration when considering candidates. We can do things to try to get more women to apply, like XYZ, but federal law is really clear that we can’t reject people based on sex (or race, or any other protected characteristic), and we could get into trouble if we do that.”

4. My severance payments stop if I get a new job

I was laid off yesterday after 14 years due my company’s largest client discontinuing our services. I’m to get 14 weeks of severance, one for each year, payable over 14 weeks on the normal payroll schedule. My severance agreement states that if I get employment of any kind before my severance is fully paid out, I must notify the company, at which time they will send me a lump sum of 50% of the remaining severance, then nothing else.

This sucks, right? If I take a temp job to get some extra cash, I lose a ton of money. I know severance is not something a company is required to do at all, but the only other time I’ve been laid off there were no employment conditions attached to severance.

Yeah, it sucks. The majority of severance agreements pay you without regard to when you find new employment (in part because it’s in exchange for you signing a general release of any legal claims, and plus on a practical level it’s pretty difficult to monitor and enforce anyway). But when employers do condition continued payouts on you not having a new job, typically it’s triggered by “comparable employment” and not a low-paying or temp job. It’s worth reading the agreement carefully to make sure there aren’t caveats like that in there.

5. Who should initiate a LinkedIn request?

This is a small question but in a chain of command, is there a preferred direction for LinkedIn connection requests to flow? I don’t initiate connection requests for people who are in my reporting structure because I don’t want them to feel obligated to connect with their boss. On the flip side, I get anxious about connecting with people more senior than me so I often don’t initiate those connections either. I don’t feel this dilemma connecting with colleagues from other departments or other organizations. Outside of occasionally messaging a colleague, I am not an active user of LinkedIn anyway so I’m probably really overthinking this.

I do think you’re overthinking it, but I can understand why; whenever you have power dynamics involved in something, it can feel fraught. But this particular thing doesn’t need to be fraught: if you want to connect with someone on LinkedIn, go ahead and send them a connection request. Someone who really doesn’t want to be connected to their boss can ignore the request … but it’s a business networking site so it’s not a faux pas for you to initiate it.

The post no one in my company will give direct feedback, boss won’t hire men, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.

https://www.askamanager.org/2025/09/no-one-in-my-company-will-give-direct-feedback-boss-wont-hire-men-and-more.html

https://www.askamanager.org/?p=33020