New answers tagged professionalism
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It's possible that there's gender issues at play here that you might not be aware of.
You mention in the comments that you're a transmale, so it's possible you may not be aware of certain gender dynamics that cismales grow up understanding. In particular, there are many women who are simply afraid of men, especially angry men. When you had your "small tiff",...
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I would say there isn't a hard and fast rule — an ellipsis can be safe enough in some situations but not others. The key question is, are you being clear with your tone and is the omitted information completely irrelevant?
When you end a sentence with "...", imagine you have replaced with the phrase "there is more, but I won't go into it here". In some ...
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It may or may not get her fired but it's almost certain to make it works and it's damn sure not going to help resolve her situaion, which is undeniably extremely unpleasant. I can sympathize, I really can - I've been there where I'd have liked nothing more than to ride in like the wrath of god and lay down some harsh words on someone mistreating loved one ...
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Just to add a different perspective - in some cultural contexts, ellipses can be perceived as less rude than periods as the latter could imply curtness or sternness, while the former implies the speaker is making an open-ended suggestion. I have found this to be the case with some (especially older or less technologically savvy) colleagues in some ...
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Ellipses are perfectly fine if used correctly.
If you intend to indicate that you're skipping a bit of verbiage, especially when quoting a speech or a technical reference, they're perfectly acceptable.
For example, if you wanted to point out that there are six different date formats in ISO 8601, and you want to quote the W3c, their page says this:
...
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I disagree with the conclusion reached in most of the answers provided so far.
Is the use of ellipsis commonly considered to be unprofessional? Should I ban the three dots from my business communication?
In my opinion, this is a matter of context. Yes, ellipsis just stuck at the end of a sentence, can be an implied rude or unprofessional comment. ...
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Stonewalling may not be a good answer because you create a paper trail showing you are not cooperating that your colleague can take to your boss and damage your standing.
Another reason is that both of you were hired to generate value to your boss. It is this value that pays your bills. If your colleague fails, that failure may hurt the profitability of the ...
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It is really pretty simple: Treat others how you want to be treated. Similarly: your response is your responsibility.
You are trying to justify you being a jerk because you perceived his actions as anti-social. That does not work. Help him, help him more then others. Praise his accomplishments in front of others. If your organization harms you ...
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Short answer: YOU ABSOLUTELY can get her fired
Longer answer.
Say nothing, as any action you can take will only hurt your mother.
Putting on evil, bullying manager hat
If I were a bullying manager, and I was calling someone "useless", and her son came up and said something to me, I'd think even less of her. I might fire her outright, by noting ...
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I honestly don't know what to do but I'm immensely worried.
Any issue that your mother is having is between her and her boss. If she feels that he is being demeaning, she can and should be able to speak up for herself. If the boss continues his behavior, she can and should escalate through the appropriate channels within her company.
You can speak with ...
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So if I was to talk to her boss and tell him that he is seriously messing with her mental health (which she has a bad history with and I'm scared this is going to push her over) would I potentially get her fired?
Yes, you could.
Whether she would be fired over this depends on location / culture / how much of an arse the boss is, but it certainly strikes me ...
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Look for another place to work.
From what you wrote your colleague is trying to get you fired and manipulating the workplace's social environment with emotional displays harassing you. The boss won't fire her because she is, for all that matters, a protected minority: if she is fired she will sue for harassment and will win.
I don't care if she has some ...
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It depends on context. In the examples you give the ellipsis certainly could be taken in a rude or dismissive manner. It would be best to avoid using one in those situations.
Those examples don't cover all cases. One might see something like:
Our clients include Megacorp, Very Big Company, Large Charity, ...
or:
The research showed that several ...
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So the solution for me now is to not interact with her, no confronting, and pretty much just.. not exist.
I don't think that's a good idea. This is what I tried when I was in a similar position and in the end I ended up leaving the company because things just got worse. I would suggest to either try to figure things out between you two ASAP (which you have ...
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"..." can mean different things depending on context.
In the context of business email or messaging, they're typically just examples of bad style or lazy writing, an excuse to write sentence fragments and incomplete thoughts. "..." demands the reader to fill in the rest of the info as though it were too trivial to just state explicitly.
"..." can have ...
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I interpret it similarly to you. I see it as a gesture of shown silence, and a more or less subtle demand for a response. Based on context it can have negative connotations, but I can't think of a scenario where it could be interpreted in any positive way. For literature there is certainly good use of it ("To be continued..."), but not for professional ...
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Yes, the ellipsis in this usage should not be used in professional environment.
The only "good" usage of ellipsis in a sentence you're writing1 is to replace etc.
Why one shouldn't use it?
Written communication is subject to interpretation. In a professional environment, you always want your message to be as clear as possible so everyone will get the ...
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"It's not me, it's you" have never been truer than in this case.
We all commit all sorts of faux pas in the workplace, especially when someone comes out of the blue and confronts you as she did. It's part of being human, and until we will all get replaced by automatons, clashes like that will keep happening. And when they do happen, you have to apologize, ...
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To answer:
Is the use of ellipsis commonly considered to be unprofessional? Should I ban the three dots from my business communication?
In case of any official / formal written communication, I'd strongly advise against using those.
For a casual quick chat over IM, this may be acceptable, but think this way, if you are at the receiver end, you'd not ...
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so I'm not sure how I'm supposed to avoid her or not cause her to feel uncomfortable.
Just do what your boss says except "not exist" part
So the solution for me now is to not interact with her, no confronting, and pretty much just.. not exist.
Best I can make from this is you do not talk to her about work or just any casual talk. At least you do not ...
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I realized I had been exceptionally ill behaved [...] she approached me out of the blue and told me that I was doing my job incorrectly. And that I had to do the polishing using the tools she does, although said she wasn't going to teach me at that point either. I got defensive and showed her the casting imperfections that I could remove from polishing and ...
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Would any good come out of helping him ? (Are there positive points to favor the argument of helping him? I don't see any.)
On one hand you want to be a good person. On another hand you don't want to "reward" bad behavior. The good that you would receive from helping someone that is a jerk would be:
Strengthening your own knowledge by teaching someone else,...
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Too much depends on personalities we don’t know to give a definite answer, but even if it’s deserved, being a jerk back rarely improves the situation.
Start with replacing “jerk” with “coworker” in your question. This establishes a baseline for how you should at least normally treat people. How you are viewed by others will be heavily influenced by how ...
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The good that would come is that you can work together, despite personal differences, and achieve a common good for your company. You could be seen as someone who rises to the occasion, and has difficult conversations with difficult people. You could be a better employee for the approach you take here.
On the subject of your plan here, I highly doubt the ...
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Everything that you have explain is normal. and unfortunately, quite common.
There is a hidden point in many programming roles (I would say, 7/10 job offers on linkedin) which is Most of programming jobs are not needed.
It's real.
Even among many senior programmers, most of the time they do nothing. Although, they should pretend that they are focused on a ...
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You can put it to your resume , because HR can see that you have experience even that for only a month / 28 days. The point is , if you put it to your resume , you must can explain what you are doing in that job for a month , and the most important thing : Don't Lie and it should be fine .
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Don't put it on your resume
A resume is a marketing document. You wouldn't put in a sales brochure that the prior owner of a house left after only a month. Something should only go on the resume if it makes you look good.
Just leave it off. It will seem like you were unemployed for two months (assuming your prior job search took a month).
Should I ...
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The job didn't last for a full month and ended at a 28 days
Should I mention it in my CV or not as prior to that job I was made
redundant after 6.5 months.
You can choose to leave anything you like off of your resume.
Just be prepared to explain what you have been doing for the past month without lying about it. Lies can be uncovered, and the hiring ...
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Resisting your leadership, and the company's morphosis into an enterprise? undermining your decisions by poisoning her own crew against your ideas? Thinks she is "right 99% of the time"? "Why should I change?!"? Going into childish stonewalling/silence-treatments after every talk (implying there were at least several such talks)?
I'd say you have gone "...
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Depends on the culture. For example lets compare Germany and USA.
Germans are known for efficiency and getting straight to the point. Your example is quite the normal here. You need update, you ask for it. There is nothing rude in requesting information on something job related. Everything else around the question that doesn't directly contribute to the ...
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Is this good enough to use for professional emails?
I know you said this is a different company - but it still heavily, heavily depends on the context.
I've sent similar emails to this to bump existing support requests that aren't answered or resolved within the contractual time - that's fine, as you're (rightly) requesting an update on something that ...
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I think PeteCon has a good point with "The company is changing, are you coming along" - this is a growing pain that longtime employees have to go through when a company is growing up. However, I don't think that's the whole of the story. You say she's a competent employee and yet she's resisting your changes. You haven't managed to convince her of the need ...
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If a team is regularly delivering late, there are two obvious possible causes: Either they are given more work than they can reasonably deliver. Or they are not very good at their job / not working hard enough.
There is a not so obvious reason: They are not well organised, and while working hard, they are wasting time due to bad organisation. That can ...
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If you're working, you're representing the company. Dress accordingly.
I wouldn't go fully to t-shirts and jeans, personally, because that implies a degree of slobbiness and thus a lack of professionalism - you might think that you'll be the only ones in the office, but that might not necessarily be true. While you certainly won't go wrong wearing your ...
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It sounds like you're trying to get Linda and her team to use some kind of project tracking tools?
If you're a PM, you might find this hard to believe, but many pros think PM tools are a colossal waste of time. They have a point, to be honest. This person and their team is probably working hard with limited resources. They probably need more equipment, time,...
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Chill work environment, small company
Weekend
Only ones in the office
Canada
Yes, you'll be more than fine wearing jeans and t-shirt. Very formally dressed up you'll possibly even look a little bit out of place - as you'll see, there is a different atmosphere on a quiet weekend meeting like this, compared to the usual weekdays.
Casual appears a lot more ...
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I would ask you manager in this situation.
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I feel before moving onto the action in PeteCon's good answer, as you have already decided to have one last talk with her, you should make that talk very direct.
This is how things are now. If you do not adopt then unfortunately we have to look at replacing you. Linda has to be clear that this is not open to negotiation now and things have got serious.
I ...
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I think you're starting to handle it correctly. It's not a question of 'we'd like to change', it's more; 'the company is changing. Are you coming along?'. HR need to be involved at this point, as it sounds like a PIP is in order.
In the end it may be that Linda has to find a new position elsewhere. The only benefit I see here is that she has historical ...
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Your old code may harm your future career only if it contains things code shall never ever contain under any circumstances.
I do not mean "while(true)" loops, "goto" mazes, "\\ let miracle happens" comments and other coding sins. They are more like jokes or pranks. At least it may show that you have grown from such jokes and code responsibly.
I mean racist ...
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"You are not paid to think" is extremely rude and a great way to burn an employee
Keep the channels of communication open
A good QA tester is going to dive deep into the system you're developing and spot things they weren't specifically told to look for. They're experienced at scrutinizing software and may have valuable input. You really don't want to ...
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Now, clearly after years probably both my development skills have increased as well as knowledge of that technology.
I don't think the project has crappy code in it, though I try to clean it from time to time and improve.
These are positive things.
If someone ever brings this code up in an interview (or even if they don't) then you have a great ...
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It may, or may not, rattle you, but most tech leads that are forced, by the company's pipeline, to take part in the recruitment pipeline don't really care about you OSS projects.
I know I didn't when I was tasked with such chore.
Yes, companies like saying OSS contributions are an advantage and "We look forward to what you are about to share with us", and I ...
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Don’t delete it.
It can even work for you if you can demonstrate code improvement over time to indicate that
You keep pace with the technologies that are relevant to you
You improve your code base as you improve your knowledge
Code we wrote in the past always look worse compared to the code we write today... that just comes with the territory as we keep on ...
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On the other hand I don't want a project which could be referred as bad code or something like that (even though I believe it isn't such).
So which is it?
Everyone is insecure about their work. And everyone understands that old work doesn't represent ones' current level of knowledge. Leave it up. If they ask you about it, you can always suggest ways it ...
1
You're on a visible high-stakes project now. Yes, it's unpleasant: it's a lonely slog through a tech-debt swamp. You've asked for help and gotten it, but your helper hasn't yet come on board fully. It's obviously frustrating.
With respect, this kind of ugly project reflects the real world of software engineering. May I suggest you treat it as a career ...
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Is this wrong sneezing etiquette?
No. As per the Sneezing Etiquette Handbook, 2019 Edition, it is okay to bless oneself by saying 'Gesundheit!' after a sneeze.
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This phrase is acceptable only if you are a trying to play a role of tyrant and is usually used by a bad manager. Usually it just indicates that the person using it either cannot handle the argument or cannot listen to other people. The other form of this phrase is "because I said so". In your case it sounds like a simple way to cut off other person. Not ...
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This is not a productive response for several reasons:
It is extremely rude.
It devalues the QA person on a personal and professional level.
It does not appropriately convey why the QA person's behavior was inappropriate, which leads to...
It could make the QA person scared to do their job and perform due diligence.
Because of this outburst, it's possible ...
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Tests are a somewhat special case when it comes to IT work. Especially formal, especially regression tests.
If a test is predocumented (what is done to test), and the results are in the end reduced to a PASS or FAIL, the end result still says "X, Y, Z ... was done, to the result of ...".
X, Y, Z being tested can be defined by a contract specification with ...
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