Millions of people read 'Ask A Manager' for work advice—here's the Careertok trend she's 'super supportive of'
Alison Green has seen plenty of work trends come and go in her 18 years running "Ask A Manager," an online column that has reached millions of readers where she answers questions on everything from dealing with office jerks to quitting a toxic job.
The explosion of people talking about work on TikTok in recent years has made things even more interesting. Ever since the pandemic upended the work world, people have posted their takes on #CareerTok topics including the Great Resignation, quiet quitting, conscious un-bossing and the never-ending debate about how to dress for the office.
Within all of that, there's one big trend that Green is "super supportive of," she tells CNBC Make It: The "act your wage" mentality.
"Act your wage" videos began floating around in 2022 as people discussed the ways they set boundaries at work, said "no" to additional unpaid tasks and overall challenged the appeal of hustle culture.
As Green sees it, she's in favor of the attitude that encourages people to be "really aware of what you're being paid to do and what you're not being paid to do, and [not feeling] like you have to take on every problem in the organization [or work] overtime if you're not being paid to do it," she says.
That said, she adds, she does see advice that takes the boundary-setting message to an "unrealistic level."
"It's more nuanced," she says. "If you want to move up and get ahead and be considered a competitive candidate for higher level jobs there, it's a little tricky to say, 'I'm just not going to do any of that,'" Green says.
"But I think that the general cultural move toward recognizing 'You're not buying all of my time and all of my energy, you're buying a limited amount of it,' is a really good thing. I would love to see the culture move more in that direction."
Green encourages early-career professionals to take online career advice with a grain of salt. Essentially, what's normal workplace behavior versus what's not will depend a lot on your industry and particular work environment.
It's better to take advice someone who knows what your line of work is like and can advise on specific boundaries, for example by offering, "Yeah that does kind of suck. It's also a norm in this field. And if you're going to work in this field, you need to expect to run into some of that," Green says.
It's not like you'll be able to say "no" to every directive you don't like without some repercussions, Green says.
Overall, "I think some content creators are speaking about the world as it should be, rather than the world as it is," Green says. "And when you're an advice consumer, it's important to be able to recognize when that's happening."
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
25 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Fact Check: Trump is not introducing a 300% landlord tax for excessive rent hikes
Claim: U.S. President Donald Trump is imposing a 300% penalty tax on landlords who raise rents excessively. Rating: In early June 2025, videos shared on (archived) TikTok (archived) alleged that U.S. President Donald Trump was introducing a 300% penalty tax on landlords who raise rents excessively. The TikTok videos were captioned "TRUMP'S 300% PENALTY: THE END OF RENT PROFITEERING?" One of the videos had received more than 86,000 likes and over 38,000 shares at the time of this writing. @. TRUMP'S 300% PENALTY: THE END OF RENT PROFITEERING? #fyp #fypage #fypシ゚viral #foryoupage ♬ original sound - wonderful story666 The voice-over on the videos said: Breaking news: Trump just declared war on America's rent crisis. Landlords are now in full panic. The Trump administration is introducing the most brutal landlord profit tax in U.S. history. If landlords raise rents above government-set limits, the excess will face a 300% penalty tax. Raise rent by $10,000? The IRS will take $30,000. The higher they go, the harder they fall. Profits vanish instantly. For years, rent has skyrocketed 35%. Today, 40% of renters hand over more than half their income to landlords. Even worse, Wall Street funds are buying entire apartment complexes, creating artificial shortages and trapping young people in permanent rent prisons. At a White House press conference, Trump pointed straight at the financial giants and declared, "Housing is not an ATM. Ordinary people are not crops to be harvested forever." For decades, no president dared to hit real estate capital this hard. If this bill passes, will landlords survive? The claim about Trump's alleged landlord tax also circulated on X (archived). However, there was no record of Trump introducing a policy that would impose a 300% penalty tax on landlords who raise rents excessively, and the White House itself disputed the claim. Therefore, we've rated it false. When Snopes asked the White House whether the claims about a landlord tax were legitimate, a spokesperson sent the following response via email: "Fake." Searches of the White House website also returned no results for such a proposal. Furthermore, if Trump had publicly said that "housing is not an ATM" and "ordinary people are not crops to be harvested forever" during a White House news conference, as the viral videos claim, major news outlets likely would have reported on the comments. But searches on Google (archived), Yahoo (archived), Bing (archived) and DuckDuckGo (archived) found no reports from credible media outlets about Trump making these comments. Instead, those searches displayed another fact check debunking the false claims about Trump's alleged landlord tax. For further reading, we also investigated a rumor that claimed Trump was sending $5,000 stimulus checks to Americans. Search engine query results. Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo and Yahoo. Accessed 9 June 2025. "White House Briefings & Statements Archives." The White House, Accessed 9 June 2025. "White House Briefings & Statements Archives." The White House, Accessed 9 June 2025. "Presidential Actions Archives." The White House, Accessed 9 June 2025. "Presidential Actions Archives." The White House, Accessed 9 June 2025.
Business Insider
an hour ago
- Business Insider
A leaked TikTok doc reveals how managers are told to score employee performance — and what not to talk about
A leaked TikTok document reveals the company's guidance to managers on conducting performance reviews — and what they shouldn't tell their teams. The company and its owner, ByteDance, conduct reviews twice a year, and executives set targets for the distribution of team scores based on business priorities. But if you're a TikTok manager, you shouldn't talk about the rating curve with employees or call it a "forced distribution," according to the document. "The messaging to management or to the employee is that we do not have forced distribution," one staffer said, but "every cycle we do get 'guidance" on scoring. The document, shared with managers of TikTok's e-commerce division around the time of its last review cycle, provides a framework for its employee scoring system. It instructs those managers to assign the three highest scores to no more than 5% of team members in total and limit the top four ratings to 10% or fewer employees. TikTok did not respond to requests for comment. TikTok's next performance reviews are expected to kick off next month, and some employees tell Business Insider they're worried that low scores could lead to a new wave of performance-improvement plans (PIPs) or exit offers. The last cycle in March led to a stream of low ratings and cuts to teams like e-commerce. The company's leadership was disappointed with TikTok Shop's US results last year, and staffers previously told BI that they felt the reviews were used to trim head count. Performance reviews have become dreaded by many across the tech industry, as companies like Meta and Microsoft have recently overhauled their processes to weed out low performers. TikTok and ByteDance adjusted their review process last year to call out more low and high performers, blending self-evaluations, coworker feedback, and ultimately manager discretion to assess team members and meet top-down performance distribution goals. How TikTok scores workers TikTok managers score employees based on a mix of their work output, their alignment with core cultural tenets, internally called ByteStyle, and their leadership principles if they are a manager. BI earlier published a version of the company's scoring rubric, which ranges from "F" for failed to "O" for outstanding. A score of "M-," reserved for employees who sometimes fall below expectations, or "I," for staffers who often do, can lead to a PIP or an offer to leave via a mutual separation agreement. Staffers receive an overall score that considers each factor, including peer reviews. Ultimately, there's no standard calculation that decides the overall score, according to the manager guide. How managers should avoid bias The guidelines document said that while managers are expected to weigh different performance factors in reviews, they ultimately should make their own call about each overall score. "There is no specific formula to calculate the Overall Rating, which means leaders need to make comprehensive management discretion," the company said in the document. Because managers have a large degree of discretion in setting individual scores, the company's guidelines focus on what to avoid when making decisions. For example, one slide in the document lists various biases to watch out for. Those included: Recency bias: Overvaluing recent events instead of considering the full performance cycle. Choosing a single positive or negative workplace trait for a worker and scoring based on just that. The "central tendency," or rating everyone near the mid-point to avoid conflict with workers. Showing preference to workers who act similarly to a manager, or share some of their workplace habits (e.g., a team member is high performing because they also look at their email outside work hours). The "contrast effect," where reviewing one candidate who is very strong or weak makes another candidate seem comparatively better or worse. The "assimilation effect," when team members are reviewed back-to-back and appear too similar to differentiate.
Business Insider
an hour ago
- Business Insider
A leaked TikTok doc reveals how managers are told to score employee performance — and what not to talk about
The company and its owner, ByteDance, conduct reviews twice a year, and executives set targets for the distribution of team scores based on business priorities. But if you're a TikTok manager, you shouldn't talk about the rating curve with employees or call it a "forced distribution," according to the document. "The messaging to management or to the employee is that we do not have forced distribution," one staffer said, but "every cycle we do get 'guidance" on scoring. The document, shared with managers of TikTok's e-commerce division around the time of its last review cycle, provides a framework for its employee scoring system. It instructs those managers to assign the three highest scores to no more than 5% of team members in total and limit the top four ratings to 10% or fewer employees. TikTok did not respond to requests for comment. TikTok's next performance reviews are expected to kick off next month, and some employees tell Business Insider they're worried that low scores could lead to a new wave of performance-improvement plans (PIPs) or exit offers. The last cycle in March led to a stream of low ratings and cuts to teams like e-commerce. The company's leadership was disappointed with TikTok Shop's US results last year, and staffers previously told BI that they felt the reviews were used to trim head count. Performance reviews have become dreaded by many across the tech industry, as companies like Meta and Microsoft have recently overhauled their processes to weed out low performers. TikTok and ByteDance adjusted their review process last year to call out more low and high performers, blending self-evaluations, coworker feedback, and ultimately manager discretion to assess team members and meet top-down performance distribution goals. How TikTok scores workers TikTok managers score employees based on a mix of their work output, their alignment with core cultural tenets, internally called ByteStyle, and their leadership principles if they are a manager. BI earlier published a version of the company's scoring rubric, which ranges from "F" for failed to "O" for outstanding. A score of "M-," reserved for employees who sometimes fall below expectations, or "I," for staffers who often do, can lead to a PIP or an offer to leave via a mutual separation agreement. Staffers receive an overall score that considers each factor, including peer reviews. Ultimately, there's no standard calculation that decides the overall score, according to the manager guide. How managers should avoid bias The guidelines document said that while managers are expected to weigh different performance factors in reviews, they ultimately should make their own call about each overall score. "There is no specific formula to calculate the Overall Rating, which means leaders need to make comprehensive management discretion," the company said in the document. Because managers have a large degree of discretion in setting individual scores, the company's guidelines focus on what to avoid when making decisions. For example, one slide in the document lists various biases to watch out for. Those included:
