Hacker News Reader

Comment by JohnFen | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com