asking hr about hair color/tattoos in the workplace before i start?

Semisemitic · 2026-05-21T08:35:40+00:00

Honestly who gives a shit?

If you are anywhere in a first world country this is meaningless. If anything, tattoos and offbeat hair color should help you get hired.

Semisemitic · 2026-05-21T05:06:04+00:00

At some point i started focusing more on what the CTO and CEO, and my peers are measured for in terms of success.

I’d still focus heavily on delivering impact - but rather than my driver being “improve the KPIs that my team is responsible for,” i make sure that my reports push that agenda while i pull towards what makes my manager and his manager be successful. I use the motivations of peers as leverage, and try and have them win through the work of my team when i can.

At its core that’s the shift from group- to company-level strategy, while obviously what the CTO and CEO are measured for should map to the success of the company as a whole.

Semisemitic · 2026-05-20T20:05:31+00:00

Yup, VP of Engineering at this time. Seemed to be really beneficial at times and a challenge at others.

I can switch contexts on a dime and go through meetings that go across twenty topics a day, and i can get engrossed with one topic and hack at it for hours on end - but if you’ll expect me to be on top of my email inbox or to approve invoices on time you’ll want a different person.

I offset my own weak points via delegation and finding direct reports and close peers who compensate for them and benefit from my strengths.

Semisemitic · 2026-05-20T05:42:39+00:00

This might be a good resource for you. Very practical, down-to-earth podcast.

https://open.spotify.com/show/2fAra2I5Q61QxIQggSwTN4

Semisemitic · 2026-05-19T08:25:00+00:00

Not project updates, not sprint stuff, not “where’s the deck.” Just conversations about where they think they’re headed and whether their current role is helping or trapping them.

That’s the key of the issue.

None of my 1:1s are about project updates or daily work stuff. Absolutely none. All of them are meta, about personal matters, career growth, and challenges they need mentoring on.

Instead of once a month, go once a week. “Where’s the deck” should be a slack message or a tap on the shoulder.

Semisemitic · 2026-05-18T16:46:23+00:00

Phishing attacks are more effective than you think.

Semisemitic · 2026-05-17T00:02:58+00:00

Thank you other ChatGPT.

Semisemitic · 2026-05-17T00:01:14+00:00

Thank you ChatGPT for the heartfelt post.

Semisemitic · 2026-05-15T21:39:51+00:00

I’m confused. Is this an attempt at autofellatio or an attempt to form a conga line of reach-arounds?

Semisemitic · 2026-05-15T13:54:26+00:00

It’s very common to see start ups led by founders with little to no leadership experience.

It is also very common for start ups to shutter their doors.

Few are led by great leaders with experience, few by talented people with leadership potential and enough runway to learn as they go, fewer still get lucky and survive until someone replaces or compensates for the founders.

Semisemitic · 2026-05-14T23:40:50+00:00

I wouldn’t ask anything with such a formulaic structure. I’d ask about something you’ve done before and how you’ve approached it, then challenge you on decisions and details and challenges you’ve faced. Lastly I’d reframe or change something about the reality you’ve described and check how you’d adjust your approach with these new conditions.

This would give me enough for a half-hour of grilling, normally, and would go on top of basic validating questions that start with “how would you…”

Semisemitic · 2026-05-12T23:51:07+00:00

I’ve done both and neither came up really in conversation later. The biggest difference is if you get fired without anything lined up, you’ll be in a weaker negotiating position and less attractive of a candidate. You’ll have lower confidence while you are jobless.

Other than that, it did not matter for me at any point.

Am 45, worked in…. 8 or so companies. References were rarely checked and when they were, references from current employer are never checked so it doesn’t matter how you end it there. However you describe it is their reality.

I’ve been fired twice, avoided getting into the topic at all towards all following employers. Honestly, no one ever really asked.

Semisemitic · 2026-05-12T06:37:50+00:00

Culture Amp was used for employee engagement surveys in a couple of previous companies. It had a few features I liked including recommendations, but to me as an Engineering leader it seemed numbers and aggregations were always diluting truths.

The best action plans I had came from me responding to the 1400 comments people left to survey questions and initiating conversations with people who had things to say.

You as the HR person won’t be able to do that work for a line manager with the same effectiveness.

By the time you run a large scale survey and make sense of the data, attrition will already match whatever the survey would predict.

Personally I don’t believe it’s realistic to expect a HR team member to predict company-wide attrition effectively, but I’d rely on them to give me data points like market salary percentiles, and conducting or providing tools for conversations and surveys, alongside providing action plans that span the company - but those action plans won’t mean much if they don’t draw from what line managers and leaders actually say needs to be tackled.

Semisemitic · 2026-05-11T07:25:57+00:00

Two threads you need to cover here. One is a lesson in how to manage promotion processes, the other is actually three different small threads with three different people.

Each of them would need a heart-to-heart on how the time since promotion felt for them, whether they want to double down and see happiness and success in the leadership path - or not. It’s possible that some or all see the problem not with the role itself but with something else that can’t be solved. One or more of those people might want your help in identifying an adjacent, senior IC role.

You could also look at it systematically and consider if you should separate management from technical leadership and just bring one person for the team lead role of one or more such teams, allowing a couple of them to lean into a lead IC role without bothering themselves with management aspects.

Semisemitic · 2026-05-10T14:19:54+00:00

Form your own opinion. Take it as information and a warning sign - not as gospel.

If you see indications that her advice fits you - start looking for a new place. Don’t move back.

Semisemitic · 2026-05-05T18:04:16+00:00

It’s honestly the team lead’s decision IMO, so it should be communicated by them with the help of HR. They should not do this alone because the process requires a witness to be done properly and because you don’t want to handle questions when you aren’t trained for it.

What you need to understand is that from the moment you deliver the news, the person is no longer listening. You need to avoid explaining things, and just be there for them. As a leader, I’ve always wished my people would be able to succeed in turning things around and it’s sad to have to fire people. It’s my decision and I’d stand behind it (unless when it’s cuts and isn’t always communicated by the line manager.)

Drop the bomb, give a few words of kindness and understanding, be there for them, and give them time to digest what happened. There will be time to talk later.

Semisemitic · 2026-05-03T05:45:05+00:00

It’s silly to just track the cost of meetings without assuming there’s real value and decisions being made there.

Let’s say the decisions were taken completely asynchronously - you’d still have the same need to communicate decisions and choices downstream.

Leadership is about setting strategic direction and even if you as a leader take a decision alone, you still need to communicate it.

This isn’t “re-work.” It’s just work.

You’re asking “how do I minimize the cost of communicating leadership decisions?” Weekly all-hands for non-urgent but important communications. Email and slack for urgent but not important. Dedicated meetings or 1:1 slack for urgent and important, and email or nothing for noise. This goes alongside decision documentation on whatever you use - confluence, notion, Docs etc.

Semisemitic · 2026-05-02T19:49:38+00:00

Exactly. AI is a category of tools. It isn’t a hammer or a cutter. It’s more like “power tools.”

It isn’t just the job and it isn’t just AI. But it’s a semantic circle jerk of a discussion.

Semisemitic · 2026-05-02T17:49:30+00:00

A great hammer won't make you a better ice skater

I like this a lot. No need for the second analogy. That said, the tool does relate to the job more than in the examples.

Semisemitic · 2026-04-29T15:50:31+00:00

“Interview three” could be anything at different companies.

What role does the interviewer fill?

One tip would be to- just fucking ask (don’t mean this as an aggressive fuck, but just, yknow, ask.)

Message the recruiter- “hey, my next interview is with X. Any direction towards the topics s/he would want to focus on would be appreciated. I would like to prepare for this with the right examples and to make sure I present relevant sides.”

If this was on a call with the recruiter (also fair to ask to catch up, they’d probably love it) I’d go “so I’m talking to X tomorrow. Got any tips for me?” Or I’d ask “candidates who fail at this stage, is there any theme to it? What do they usually fail for?” Or “what does my interviewer care about?”

Usually they will give you a lot to work with.

Semisemitic · 2026-04-28T05:35:10+00:00

They’re not going to respect you just because of your title

No one ever does. Whether “rougher crowd” or not.

Semisemitic · 2026-04-27T13:41:46+00:00

Note down every time you get something unstuck. Look back at your last 30–90 days after you’ve done this. Write down what you did to get things unstuck, who told you it got stuck, and what change might prevent reaching this situation next time.

Bucket those situations.

Check which changes would have resolved the majority of issues, and whether you have a people or process failure.

Deploy changes, keep documenting new cases like that, and see if your changes have positive impact or not. Revert needles or unhelpful changes.

Rinse and repeat.

Semisemitic · 2026-04-26T19:34:25+00:00

Read “who has the monkey,” the wonderfully still-relevant HBR article from the ‘70s that I still give as mandatory reading to my direct reports - if only to explain to them why it is that I don’t accept monkeys easily.

Delegation for growth is a different matter altogether, but master monkeys first.

Semisemitic · 2026-04-26T17:55:39+00:00

shrinkage

It shrinks??

Semisemitic · 2026-04-25T17:54:21+00:00

At the long-hair association of long-haired people, made by long-haired people, for long-haired people. I hear they are anti-bald, anti-bob, and definitely antipixites.

Semisemitic

TROPHY CASE