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Comment by poisonborz | Hacker News Reader

To any managers here, please avoid and forever forget blank cheque questions like "how are you". Makes the mood instantly superficial.

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Maybe it’s a cultural difference but to me that is just normal friendliness and ice-breaking. I’m quite happy for my manager to ask how am I and to have a 2 minute chat about life outside work before diving into the 1:1.

I dunno, I feel like I can be transparent with my manager when we ask each other that. I think it depends on your relationship with them and the company culture.

I hate it so much. My manager always asks it and presses the issue whenever I try to move past it with some generic response. As if I want to start having a deep "how are you" discussion with a business stranger, especially one with whom I do not share a geographical location, a culture or first language.

My manager does something even worse: we have a team meeting every Monday morning, and each of us is expected to give a brief report of what we did in our private lives over the weekend.

He lets me slide when I say "not much", fortunately, but I think it's an overly intrusive ask, especially in front of the whole team.

I hate to break it to you, but this sounds like pretty normal human social behavior

No, it doesn't. If this were between two friendly co-workers chatting on a Monday morning, sure. But in a team meeting, asking every person what they did over the weekend, when that is actually none of the manager's business? Not normal, not by a long shot.

I've been in this business for multiple decades, and I have never had a manager do that before. It's very unusual in my experience. A status meeting is a business occasion, not a social one. Asking for a status report about my non-work time is just very strange and intrusive in that setting. My time is my time, not subject to company review.

It's a world apart from talking over the water cooler, where it would indeed be normal social interaction.

I have seen this. Presumably it is done for team cohesion and it may work for a while, but as soon as someone sets the personal boundary and refuses to talk or says something generic it starts looking weird.

Bingo, if the meeting is geared for openness but people aren’t open, now you’ve got conflict. Of course if people aren’t open you might run into trouble anyway but there’s a grey area there

I really don't think this is about people being "open" or not. I think it is strictly about inappropriate questions from the manager. They probably think they're "establishing rapport" or "building team cohesion" or something but what they're really doing is sticking their nose where it doesn't belong. It's inappropriate prying and bad management.

Yes, entirely this. It's not a question of whether or not you have open conversations at work about work-related topics. It's a question of having appropriate boundaries between work life and personal life.

My employer has no right to demand that I talk about my personal life at work.

In this case hardly anyone is demanding that you talk about personal life. You are welcome to share anything that will let others know you better, but in all but some pathological cases you are not expected to tell anything you are not comfortable sharing. This format is obviously not great and may not work, but it’s also not awful.

When my manager asks me to present what I did over the weekend to the team, that's a demand from my boss. He may or may not think it is, but there's a power dynamic involved here that can't be ignored, which is why I think it's an awful practice.

I answer "not much" and immediately pivot to giving a work status report before any followup question can happen, and my manager lets me get away with that. That's a little better, but it still starts every week off on the wrong foot.

Did you try to discuss it on 1:1? There may be some power dynamics involved, but this is a good opportunity to practice your pushback skill. Managers should hear “No” more often, otherwise they won’t know that this is not ok for you.

No, I haven't. Good point. Despite the emphasis I've put on it here, it's really just a relatively minor irritation not worth bringing up in a formal way, at least at this time. He's getting enough pushback from me on things that are more important to the team as a whole already.

I'm very far from shy, though, and if/when the general subject comes up in more casual conversation, I will certainly say something.

This may help your particular case and I hope it does if you ever address it. But what would be even better is if any of the managers who might still be reading along (doubtful but you never know) internalized this: if you find yourself about to ask one of the people you manage a question that can be correctly answered "that's really none of your business," then just don't ask it. Couldn't be simpler.

I had a manager that always started with "How are things?" and I thought that was a great jumping off point. "Not good, production is always down and I've been paged 700 times in the last day," is a potential answer to that question, and a 1:1 is a good way to start forming a plan on how to deal with that. Realistically, if you competently addressed all the pages that are coming in, they might not even know it's going on. So it's good to mention it and that it's bugging you!

Bad advice. It is not the problem with question when you feel it that way. It’s the problem with engagement of the manager. It’s perfectly normal to ask „How are you?“

This already reminds me of this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22347296

Sort of. Questions are tools, tools can be used incorrectly. It doesn‘t mean that every manager asking „How is your wife?“ is an idiot or that is inappropriate question in all situations. It may take a lot of time working under idiots before you meet a decent person, but they will ask those questions at some point and you will be happy that they asked. Better to teach the appropriate use.

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