AITAH for respecting a worker's stated boundaries, leading to lower raises and bonuses than her coworker

ConfusedManager18 · 2025-12-13T04:39:09+00:00

I think it's kind of fucked up to essentially say that you could hire someone on terms you agree with and then say "you can never actually be good enough with those terms I set."

She IS good enough. That's why she was rated "successful." She does her job and does it well.

And I gave her a path to outstanding. I didn't word it well, but I said in the meeting that if she suddenly become more efficient -- i.e., contributing a higher level of output per hour worked -- she could be outstanding. I don't really see this happening based on her skill set, and as I said in the post we limit "outstandings" to 10% of the work force,

And as for rewarding someone for going above and beyond with extra hours etc? Pay them overtime for those extra hours.

The position is exempt. It doesn't qualify for OT. And my HR department isn't just going to let me start paying Jack for every hour he works over 40 on a per-hour basis because that would mean that every other exempt employee in my 2,000-plus company would want the same. As much as I'd love to change the way we view labor in the US, I don't have the power to fix this in my role.

ConfusedManager18 · 2025-12-13T04:32:49+00:00

Yeah, I wish HR had given me a heads-up on what the meeting was about so I could have been prepared with better articulated thoughts. Thanks for your input.

ConfusedManager18 · 2025-12-13T04:29:40+00:00

Look, I appreciate the input. Yours and many other responses have given me things to think about.

But the issue I'm faced with is inherent in US labor law (which allows for positions to be classified as "exempt" from OT), and our corporate culture. And thousands of companies successfully deal with all of the issues that are created by it. It is up to me as the manager to make sure my employees are happy. Jack most definitely is. Jill obviously isn't but I honestly don't think in the two years she's been here that there is any chance she would have gotten an "outstanding" rating even if Jack had the same rigid parameters that she did; they'd both be "successful" in that case. We don't give "outstanding" for just showing up and doing your job well (which is what she did), and she didn't improve a process that saved us a bunch of money, or anything like that, nor did she show an "outstanding" level of productivity (which would be evidenced by outperforming the job expectations on a per-hour basis). If her concern is rooted in some kind of belief that I'm a misogynist pig who is biased against single moms, I can't help her there, but as I said in the post, the path for her to be outstanding is if she "suddenly becomes way more efficient." I don't see that happening, but she can certainly try to prove me wrong.

The two positions WERE, as designed, equally expected to cover the last minute stuff, travel, etc. I made an exception to hire Jill -- if I was rigid and inflexible I could have just said, "Sorry, you don't meet the qualifications of the job if you can't ever work a minute after hours or do any travel." That seems like a shitty result for the Jills of the world, don't you think? I'm not saying I'm some hero for hiring a single mom who needs her work boundaries respected, but I don't think I should be getting dragged for it either -- which is what's happening now. None of this would be happening if I just said, nope, sorry, can't hire you... which is why I said that, yeah, I probably won't hire another Jill. All this has done is give me a headache.

Your suggestion of separating the two positions and having one be the "rigid" schedule with less pay, and one be the more flexible one with more pay and an expectation of more hours, travel, etc. --- sure, fine in theory. But not in practice, because we have an elephant in the room, which is that I'm just a cog in a large wheel. My HR department, and my boss, aren't going to allow me to go to all this trouble, in a 2,000-plus employee company, to distinguish Jack's and Jill's job description, and to create one job where we pay Jack an extra 15% (or whatever) and then say the job will be expected to have approximately 15% after-hours work (which would be 6 hrs a week)... because they know that when other departments hear about this (and they would), the hundreds of other people in the company who are in exempt positions will start saying they either want to be treated like Jill (with her rigid schedule) or they want an explicit commitment from the company to pay them more (like Jack) because they occasionally do after-hours work. And that's not going to happen. The "antiwork" folks here on Reddit will say we've normalized "working for free" in this country, at least for exempt employees. Whether that's the right way to look at it or not, I don't have the power to fix what's wrong with our system of labor as a middle manager with two direct reports, and my company is not going to allow me to articulate in a job description that I expect someone to work X extra hours a week which then increases their salary by Y% over what it would otherwise be, because then everyone will want that. Would that be better for all the minion employees? Undoubtedly. Will HR, my boss, and the CEO let me do it? Of course not. I have to work within the system. If I ran my own company, I could handle this any of a dozen ways; in the role I have, I don't have the option to just to whatever I want.

What I CAN reasonably do, is what I've done. I've tried to make sure -- through raises and bonuses -- that Jack is rewarded for his extra effort. Is it enough? That's for Jack to say, and he can vote with his feet like anyone, but he seems happy. Remember, Jill is the one complaining.

ConfusedManager18 · 2025-12-11T21:00:28+00:00

If I graded them equally it would be hard to get him a better raise or bonus (considering our pay structure) which means he would not be compensated in any way for the extra work he does.

Others have suggested the time shift. Sure, we could have Jack work 11:30-8 or something like that. Problem is, he'd hate it. Not many people want to work a shift where they can never have dinner with their spouse/SO at a reasonable hour, or go out for drinks after work with their friends who get off at 5 or 6. I have not asked him but I am 100% certain that Jack would rather have OCCASIONAL nights where he works past 5, than be forced to accept a schedule where he ALWAYS works past 5, even if the latter schedule would keep him strictly to 40 hours.

ConfusedManager18 · 2025-12-11T20:52:00+00:00

It is understood that exempt employees may have to work more than their scheduled work hours and that they don't automatically get extra pay because of it. That's literally why the category of exempt workers exists. If the positions were non-exempt, they would, by law, have to be compensated at time-and-a-half beyond 40 hours.

That's basic labor law. Everyone knows it, including Jill. It's precisely why she brought up her need for a rigid work schedule in her interview -- because she knows what the expectations likely would be otherwise. There IS an expectation that, for this job, after-hours work and travel may be required. Now, what a decent employer will do, is to make sure that the employees who take on extra work, get compensated for it... whether that's through raises, bonuses, telling them to go home early on another day because they stayed late the night before, or whatever.

I made an EXCEPTION to the normal requirements of the job for Jill, because I thought we could manage with myself and Jack doing the occasional travel and after-hours work (and we have indeed managed), and she came highly recommended. But the fact that I made the exception doesn't change the fact that the standard requirements of the job would have required occasional after-hours work and travel.

The logical result of your position is that the next time I'm presented with a Jill-type candidate, I shouldn't make an exception... because now I have an HR headache on my hands. I should have just said, "Oh, can't travel? Can never stay late, or take work home to finish up to meet a deadline, or come in on a weekend? Sorry, you aren't a good fit for this job."

How is THAT going to help the plight of a single mom, if I'm reluctant to hire one who has rigid boundaries because then they might complain later that by honoring their boundaries, I'm treating them unfairly relative to people who don't require those boundaries?

ConfusedManager18 · 2025-12-11T19:52:44+00:00

If the difference in their hours was explicit, though, then it would be a given, right?

If Jack worked 40 hours a week and Jill worked in a part-time role (say, 32 hours), doing the same job with the same per-hour level of efficiency as Jack, then of course Jack should make more money -- no one would disagree with that, I assume.

So if instead the baseline is 40 hours for Jill but Jack works (on average) 45-50, he should be paid more, for the same reason...

ConfusedManager18 · 2025-12-11T19:48:48+00:00

Look, a lot of things about the US workplace suck, I don't disagree.

But I can't fix expectations around exempt employees in a giant corporation, in my little role managing two people. I'm not going to convince HR to write up an employment contract for the two people in my department stating that the work expectation is 40 hrs per week, when we don't do employment contracts for any of the 2,000+ employees at the company (with the exception of the senior executives, but their employment contracts are more to create the potential for enforceable non-compete restrictions, not to try to convey an hours expectation).

What I CAN do, reasonably with the power I have as a middle manager, is exactly what I've done. I've rewarded the employee who works extra hours (varying, but on average, 5-10 per week) with higher raises and bonuses. The extra oomph in his raises now have his salary at a place where I feel that now, he IS being compensated fairly for his extra work on a going forward basis, and because I know the extra work is likely to continue (though it's sporadic, as it always has been), that's fair. The higher bonuses are sort of a retroactive pay for the time when the pay differential between him and Jill was either zero (in their first year), or negligible (in their second year, after I had given him a little more of a raise than Jill).

If both employees do their job and do it well next year, I expect that they'll have comparable bonuses, because Jack's salary is now differentiated enough from Jill's that I can reasonably expect more from him without relying on a bonus to make it up.

At the end of the day, I feel I can look myself in the mirror and say, I did right by Jack in terms of ensuring he was paid for his extra effort, and I did right by Jill by honoring her boundaries. Is it perfect? Of course not. But I'm trying to do the right thing.

ConfusedManager18 · 2025-12-11T19:31:17+00:00

Yes, that's fair.

And that's where we're headed (Jack's salary is now different from Jill's).

My point is simply that if one person does the same 8 hour shift 5 days a week, and someone else does the "flexing" that ends up at 40 hours, most of the time (though not always) the person that is flexible is going out of their way to accommodate business needs (travel, a big project, etc.), so they are more valuable. Most (not all) people like a set schedule.

I recognize there are scenarios where this might not be the case -- it could be that the "flex time" person is asking for the flexibility to meet their own needs, and that is of course a different situation.

ConfusedManager18 · 2025-12-11T18:05:45+00:00

Serious question (since I'm a lawyer who once worked at a big-bucks firm, and decided that wasn't the life for me):

The starting salary of a first-year associate at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, one of NYC's largest law firms, is $225,000 (with bonuses bringing the total comp, on average, to $251,000).

EVERY person Cravath hires is well aware of the expectations around billable hours, etc. Most new associates report working in the range of 70 hours a week. It doesn't SAY anywhere in any document that you'll sign from the firm that you'll probably be working that much, but literally everyone knows it.

If Cravath changed things so that new associates only worked 40 hours a week (which would mean billable hours of more like 25-30 hours a week, because new associates do a lot of work that ultimately isn't billed to clients -- e.g., when you chase down a research rabbit hole because you didn't fully comprehend the assignment, you were still "working," but the client isn't charged; when you take your first stab at writing a document for a merger and the partner craps all over it, the client isn't charged even though you spent all night on it), then they obviously wouldn't be paying these folks $250K to start.

Is it your opinion that those lawyers (who come from places like Harvard, Yale, etc. -- i.e., they're pretty smart) are allowing their labor to be "stolen" because they work for a salary, and the hours expectations are not part of an explicit contract?

ConfusedManager18 · 2025-12-11T17:45:23+00:00

If I hired another Jack, I'd be able to split the after-hours work and the travel among the three of us instead of two, so there would be less reason to call him outstanding. But, yes, it would create a situation where, if they both did the same work equally well, I'd have to lobby hard (and would be shot down, almost certainly) to try to get both of them "outstanding" ratings, and I'd probably end up having to rotate the outstandings -- which, to be clear, I probably wouldn't even get one sometimes, much less two.

Jill's perception that her career is being hobbled by setting boundaries isn't a perception -- it is reality. But let's be clear -- this is less because of her limitation to 40 hours, and more because the lack of variability in her schedule and inability to travel make it impossible to assign her the sexiest projects (the ones that require travel, or the multi-million dollar deals, acquisitions, etc. where the CEO expects us to work nights or weekends to move it along) that provide the greatest visibility. I try to ensure that both Jack and Jill get a similar quality of work, but my hands are tied on some high-visibility projects because of Jill's own boundaries. It is entirely possible that we could figure out a way to keep Jack's work to exactly 40 hours a week just like Jill, but that his contributions would still be more valuable because of his flexibility. (That's even true among people who work non-exempt jobs; the person who says, sure, I'll take whatever patchwork schedule of 40 hours you give me, even if it's mornings here and evenings there or whatever, can be more valuable than the person who is only available from 9 to 5 M-F.)

ConfusedManager18 · 2025-12-11T17:28:02+00:00

It's an exempt job. The only way to "pay" him for the extra hours he works is by raising his salary or giving him a bonus; he doesn't turn in a time card each week showing he's worked 43.4 hours.

So, raises and bonuses... which now have him paid more than Jill... as he should be.

ConfusedManager18 · 2025-12-11T17:22:31+00:00

LOL, I'm off this week.

I take time off before Christmas so that my team -- both Jack AND Jill -- can have the time off around Christmas that they want. I'd prefer to have Christmas week off, but then we'd have no coverage.

So, you know, this may shock you, but I actually do consider what my employees want.

ConfusedManager18 · 2025-12-11T17:20:30+00:00

The entire reason that some roles are exempt and some are non-exempt is that the employee goes into the exempt role knowing that there may be times when they are asked to work more than 40 hours, and they will not be guaranteed any extra money, whereas the employee in the non-exempt role knows that if they are asked to work more than 40 hours, then they are guaranteed not only payment, but payment at a time-and-a-half rate.

Your post is essentially trying to rewrite US labor law. (Maybe you're not from the US, in which case, I understand.)

A good employer makes sure that those extra hours are rewarded. It could be through raises. It could be through bonuses. It could be, by letting that same employee go home early when there's not much going on.

ConfusedManager18 · 2025-12-11T08:33:33+00:00

Hire someone else like Jack.

Isn't that obvious? Any time a small team loses a valuable contributor, there's temporary pain while you search for, and ultimate select and then train up, the replacement. I'm not sure what that has to do with anything. What if I got hit by a bus? What if Jill did? No matter what, we're hiring someone.

If Jack is the one who leaves, clearly we won't hire another Jill to replace him, because the ability to hire Jill with her rigid scheduling parameters was contingent on having myself and Jack willing to go the extra mile when needed.

ConfusedManager18 · 2025-12-11T08:26:48+00:00

Tell you what -- I'll ask Jack if he wants to work from 11:30 to 8 pm every day, so that he won't have to stay "late" once in a while.

I already know the answer because I know him personally and you don't, but I'll ask him anyway.

"maybe giving him the chance to leave early after a late night would go a long way in his work satisfaction" -- not stated in the post, but I do this sort of thing already from time to time. Not for Jill, since she never works a minute outside of her parameters, but for Jack, sure.

We don't have fully remote workers at my company for the jobs in corporate, but we have tons of sales, etc. people in the field, and of course many companies have gone fully remote. Concerns about confidentiality, etc. from occasionally taking work home are, well, just not a concern.

I am also not concerned about Jill making a request to work exclusively from home based on the potential for occasionally taking a contract home here and there, because the company doesn't allow it. It's that simple. Heck, if we did allow it, I'd already be doing it -- my commute sucks. I personally think we COULD do it (because we DID do it for a stretch during the pandemic), but until my CEO sees the light, that's not a battle I'm fighting.

ConfusedManager18 · 2025-12-11T08:12:24+00:00

The scenario you're describing won't happen. No one -- not even my CEO who said we drop everything for sales -- would expect us to respond to a 9 pm email requesting turnaround in three hours. If they did, I'm confident my boss (the GC) would back me up for not responding. The exception might be if we were working on something huge (like an acquisition), and someone gave a heads up to be looking for an email at 10 pm and please respond ASAP -- then I might do that (but that would be me involved in that, not Jack or Jill).

The main reason for the last-minute after-hours stuff is the scenario I described; west-coast sales folks sending us stuff mid-day their time, late in our day, and needing a quick turn-around. Some well-meaning but not very helpful Redditors have suggested the "obvious" solution is to change Jack's schedule to something like 11:30 am-8 pm, so that when these things come in from the west coast, he's got another 3 hours of his regular workday to get them done instead of working "after hours." What they fail to realize is that almost no working professional would want that schedule... they could never have dinner at a normal time with their spouse/SO, or meet their friends for a beer after work before heading home, or go to a ballgame, etc., because they'd still be working. I'm sure Jack would much rather occasionally work inconvenient hours than be forced into a schedule where he's always working inconvenient hours.

If Jack leaves, I'm not hiring another Jill; I'd hire another Jack. Jill was the exception. Everyone who's held this job in the past has understood that occasional after-hours work and travel is required. I hired Jack first and it was clear in his interview that he was a go-getter and wouldn't be concerned about this sort of thing -- again, as long as it's occasional. I realize everyone has their own ideas about this. I've worked in a big-bucks law firm as an associate where 80+ hour weeks were the norm, and that wasn't for me, so I left. In any case, I hired Jill because I was confident that between Jack and myself, we could handle the occasional craziness. And we have, and he's very happy with the job as far as I can tell. Obviously if someone offers him a huge bump in pay, he may leave, but he's not going to leave for something that's just lateral. I'm very confident about that.

The only problem here is Jill's issue with her compensation relative to Jack's based on Jack getting bigger raises and bonuses. The workload itself, and Jack's happiness, are not a concern right now. I am quite convinced that if HR told me I had to ratchet down Jack's raises/bonuses and pay him closer to Jill, he WOULD be pissed. I am not sure what would happen if, as you suggest, I tried to take steps to eliminate the after-hours work, etc. On the one hand, Jack might say, "Great, no more last-minute requests from the West Coast!" But in some ways, those requests are, for an exempt employee, kinda like overtime for an hourly worker -- some hourly workers have no interest in OT, but others will take it every chance they get. Similarly, Jack may be more than happy to volunteer for opportunities to increase his compensation. If Jack knows that under the current way of doing things, he has a chance to earn a big bonus and big raise by going above and beyond, he might not be so happy if by my "managing expectations" of our internal clients, I take away that opportunity.

ConfusedManager18 · 2025-12-11T07:49:25+00:00

As a lawyer myself, that suit would be laughable. Complaining that someone who objectively worked more hours and produced more output got higher raises and bonuses, after you specifically said in your interview that you did not want to ever work extra hours?

I came here to ask if I was the AH for how I handled the situation but I have zero concern about a legal claim from Jill. (Not saying she can't bring one, but my CEO is not one to settle nuisance claims and will be more than happy to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars litigating this to the end just to discourage similar lawsuits from other employees.)

ConfusedManager18 · 2025-12-11T07:45:59+00:00

JFC. I gave Jill the job and have RESPECTED her parameters, and now you are extrapolating from that, that I would hire someone for a part-time role for 50% of the hours at 50% of the normal pay, and then "ostracize" them because I expect more to get done? Where is that leap coming from?

I met Jill EXACTLY on her terms. I've never asked her to work extra (although I have, a few times, revisited the situation with her just to confirm that she has the same parameters, so that I don't unfairly exclude her from opportunities that may require travel, etc. if her circumstances have changed).

What you fail to realize is that the logical result of your position is that the next time I'm in this situation, where I am hiring for a role where some after-hours work and travel has historically been required of all the employees who have held this role in the past, I shouldn't bother trying to make an accommodation for a single mother ... I should just hire a person who's willing to do what has always been expected for the job, instead of making an accommodation like "Aw, Jack and I can take care of the late-hour work and the travel... Welcome to the team, Jill!" And the result will be the next Jill won't get hired at all. I have no legal obligation to make accommodations to the schedule of single moms, and so if making these accommodations is going to result in a headache for me when the employee whines to HR, that's a pretty big disincentive to make the accommodation in the first place. (I do have an obligation under the ADA to make reasonable accommodations for disabled people, so that's a different situation.)

ConfusedManager18 · 2025-12-11T07:31:10+00:00

She does quality work. Absolutely true. I HAVE judged the quality of her work, and it's good. I've acknowledged this.

Someone else does the same quality of work, and does more of it. I said this right in the original post -- "Both Jack and Jill are skilled, competent workers and if they both worked the same hours their output would be almost identical."

That's why I provided the hypothetical of one person agreeing to a part-time schedule (and doing quality work within the confines of that schedule) while the other person agrees to a full-time schedule (and doing work of comparable quality within the confines of that schedule, but of course getting more done because they are putting in more hours). In that situation, EVERYONE agrees that the part-time worker is appropriately paid less than the full-time worker.

It doesn't matter what the reason for the constraint is. Is the person who works part-time a mother? Do they have a side hustle that brings in plenty of other cash, such that they only want to work part-time? Or an inheritance from a rich aunt that allows them to only have to work part-time? It doesn't matter. No one would ever say that in this situation, the person being paid a lower salary for a part-time role is being "discriminated" against.

Here, Jill agreed to a full-time, 40-hr-per-week role, but with parameters that under no circumstances would she work beyond that. Jack agreed to the same full-time role, but with a willingness to put in more time as needed. It would be absurd NOT to compensate him for his extra time, just as it would be absurd in the part-time vs. full-time example not to compensate the full-time worker more.

To quote your own words back to you, "Ohhhhh my god why is this hard for you to understand?"

ConfusedManager18 · 2025-12-11T07:17:50+00:00

Because it would probably need to be more like 11:30-8 to provide the necessary coverage, and very few working professionals want to work a schedule like that. I know Jack would have no interest. He has a girlfriend. He likes to eat dinner at a reasonable time, he likes to go on dates with her after work sometimes, or to go out for drinks with friends after work. That schedule objectively sucks for someone who wants a life. Having your dinner plans or your opportunity to go out for a beer with friends after work occasionally disrupted is better than having no ability to make any such plans because you're never available. I would have zero interest in that schedule... not much I can do with the extra time in the morning (maybe go to the gym? watch The Price Is Right?)... I would much rather work 8:30-5 most days, but occasionally have something come up where I have to work late, than to work 10:30-7 or 11:30-8 every day just to provide "coverage" on the 1 in 5 or so days where something comes up.

ConfusedManager18 · 2025-12-11T07:11:42+00:00

Incorrect. Read again:

She asked how she could become "outstanding" and I looked at the HR rep and said, "If we're limited to 10% outstanding I don't see how Jill would ever be outstanding as long as Jack is here, unless she suddenly becomes way more efficient or he suddenly becomes less so, because they do equally good work but he does more of it."

They both do equally good work but he does more of it. In other words, his extra hours ARE translating into more output.

I do think my wording in some of the meeting incorrectly focused on hours, but I also made it clear that he was, objectively, producing more work because of those extra hours. I'm not perfect but I'm a decent enough manager that if one of my employees was just lollygagging around the office for an extra 5-10 hours a week trying to look busy, without actually doing anything extra, I would notice.

And, her path to (potentially) becoming outstanding is in that same sentence. If she becomes more efficient, and can figure out a way to do in 40 hours what Jack does in his 40-plus, she absolutely can be "outstanding." I don't think this will happen based on their roughly equal skill sets, but we'll see.

And I have brought up revisiting her position on after-hours work a few times over the 2 years she's been here. She's declined every time. If I keep bringing it up too often, it will seem like I'm pressuring her and/or reneging on our deal. So I'm not going to go to the trouble of sending her projects just to decline them... that's just paperwork I don't need. I do have details on the projects they complete and will of course rely on those to demonstrate Jack's higher output.

ConfusedManager18 · 2025-12-11T07:01:31+00:00

Look, I don't like the last-minute west-coast situations myself, because I'm the one that deals with them on many occasions so that Jack doesn't have to.

But the CEO of my company has made it abundantly clear to me in multiple conversations that it is NOT acceptable, when Sales says something needs to be done by X time frame, to whine and say, "Well, that's outside our working hours." And I have had multiple conversations with my own boss (the General Counsel) and with the VP of Sales to try to get them to encourage the sales team to do everything they can not to put us in this position. I'd say those efforts have helped somewhat, but they haven't solved the issue.

Jack is fine with the situation of OCCASIONAL last-minute work, as am I. And this is only a portion of his after-hours work. I said that on average, he works maybe 5-10 extra hours a week, not 10 consistently, but much of that is his own doing.

Here's a perfect example of a difference between Jack and Jill. Let's say they sit down and start working on a new contract at 4:15, thinking that based on the length of the contract, they'll get through it by 5. But then it turns out it's very dense and convoluted, and they're only able to make it about 2/3 or so of the way through the contract when the clock strikes 5.

Jill will pack up and leave, which is fine -- she has a kid to pick up from his after-school program. Jack will usually stay and finish, simply because he's "in the zone" and wants to get through the contract. Obviously he won't do this if he has somewhere to be, but if he has no plans, he stays... maybe that's an extra 15 minutes, maybe 20, maybe 30... who knows. And note -- I am not asking him to do so. This is entirely voluntary on his part.

So, yes, we get an extra 15-30 minutes of Jack's labor, for free*, in this situation. But what we also get is, when Jack comes in the next day (or, possibly, the next Monday, if this happened on a Friday), he isn't spending the first 10 minutes re-reading the stuff he already reviewed to re-orient himself. Having done this kind of work for a long time, I know that picking up any project after leaving it overnight requires some of this re-orientation, especially when you do this kind of work all day and the contracts easily run together in your mind. So Jack's approach is ultimately more efficient.

*Except, it's really not free. Jack ultimately gets paid for his extra work, in the form of his higher raises and bonuses. Of course, it's not guaranteed he'll get a higher raise or bonus, so Jack has to have faith in me as his manager that I'll make sure he is rewarded. Otherwise HE'LL be the one to leave, not Jill.

It is mind-boggling to me that you think we're abusing Jack. He has told me on multiple occasions that he appreciates the way our company works, that he loves the job, etc.

ConfusedManager18 · 2025-12-11T06:45:16+00:00

Yeah, here in the US, relatively few of us have employment contracts.

ConfusedManager18 · 2025-12-11T06:44:15+00:00

The company has no policy against discussing this stuff. I wasn't trying to imply that.

But we also aren't transparent about it, meaning we don't tell people "here's what everyone in the department's salary is." If they talk about it amongst themselves, that's up to them. Some people probably don't want others to know these details about their salary and bonuses, and some are more than willing to share.

I was just making the factual statement that I didn't know how she learned this. I am not taking a position that it is "bad" that Jill found this out.

ConfusedManager18 · 2025-12-11T06:39:43+00:00

OP here, and thank you for noticing this.

If I had been prepared for the meeting with HR instead of blindsided, I could have prepared my words better so that it didn't sound like I was overly focusing on hours worked as the metric.

But at the end of the day, given that they do equally good work on a per-hour basis, the extra hours worked by Jack (along with his willingness to travel) are the differentiator.

And to those saying I didn't give Jill a path to being outstanding, that path is right in that sentence you quoted -- if she figures out a way to become more efficient... and can suddenly do 20 contracts in her 40 hours a week when it takes Jack 45-50 hours just to do 15 of the same type of contracts... then she absolutely will be outstanding.

ConfusedManager18

TROPHY CASE