First Months
Onboarding is bad almost everywhere for a structural reason
The people who could write good onboarding are precisely the people who can no longer remember needing it…
· 3 min read
Tara writes the explanatory pieces on first months, managing up, money at work and reads the small print so you do not have to.
16 articles
Managing Up
Raising a problem so that it reads as information rather than complaint
The same facts land completely differently depending on their framing, and the difference is mostly about…
· 3 min read
Money At Work
A performance review is written for two readers at once
The document is addressed to you and simultaneously to a process, and separating the two makes the wording…
· 4 min read
Moving On
Your notice period is mostly decided before you hand it in
What happens in your final weeks is set by a contract, a handover and a set of incentives you can predict…
· 3 min read
Moving On
A counteroffer solves the employer’s problem first
The economics of replacing someone explain why counteroffers appear, why they appear so quickly, and what…
· 3 min read
Skills
Most work writing fails in the first two lines
A workplace reader is deciding whether to keep reading and what they are being asked to do, and the…
· 3 min read
First Months
The job you were advertised and the job you were hired for are rarely the same
The gap between a job description and the actual work is usually structural rather than dishonest, and the…
· 4 min read
Managing Up
Being handed work that does not fit in the time available
The moment you are given something you cannot finish is a decision point, and the way most people handle it…
· 4 min read
Money At Work
A bonus is a design, and the design tells you what it is for
Variable pay schemes exist to do a job for the employer, and reading which job yours is doing explains most…
· 4 min read
Money At Work
What you learn by comparing salaries with colleagues, and what you do not
Pay comparison is more useful than the taboo suggests and less conclusive than it feels, because two people…
· 3 min read
Skills
Keep your own record of what you did, because nobody else is
Almost every conversation about your career depends on evidence you can only gather while the work is…
· 3 min read
First Months
When two people give you contradictory instructions
Conflicting direction is almost never a mistake that one of them made, and treating it as one is what turns…
· 3 min read
Money At Work
Asking for a pay review, and the evidence that actually moves it
The request itself is the easy part; what decides the outcome is whether your manager can take something…
· 4 min read
Money At Work
Expenses are stricter than they look, and for a reason
Reimbursement rules exist because a tax authority is reading over the employer’s shoulder, which explains…
· 4 min read
Money At Work
The contract clauses that only matter later
Most of an employment contract is dormant while things are going well, and the parts that decide what…
· 4 min read
Moving On
When leaving is not your decision
Dismissal, an agreed exit and a redundancy are different processes with different rights attached, and…
· 4 min read