Authored by: Principal Consultant, Jennifer Tarnowski
Authored: December 2022
Edited: July 2023
Ever get an amazing sounding job, only to discover you signed up for your worst nightmare? The people who were so friendly and welcoming during the hiring process are actually stabbing each other in the back and psychologically torturing coworkers every day. The organization that offered awesome perks expects your life to revolve completely around their work and you are SOL if you have a family or any semblance of a personal life. The job offer you accepted is not a realistic representation of what you are doing day-to-day and they claim all those extra duties (that in a healthy organization should come with a higher salary) are just part of “other duties, as assigned.” The allegedly fast-rising start-up you signed up for is actually a 20-year old company that cannot figure out how to make money and keeps changing names to snow investors. Any of this sounding familiar? Or sounding like something you want to avoid?
Over the last 15 years, I have compiled a list of phrases that are huge red flags. If your gut says something, listen to it. If you read or hear these phrases at any point in the hiring process, take extra caution, or at least be aware that you might be getting into an uncomfortable situation.
From hard-earned experience, here are some phrases that are common denominators in the workplace horror stories I have personally experienced or heard from colleagues, clients, and friends along the way.
- What they say: “We operate like a family.” / “We treat each other like family.”
What they mean: Dysfunctional.
Oftentimes, when supervisors in a non-family business describe their work environment as being, “like a family,” or any variation on that theme, what they really mean is they have very little sense of how to act professionally in a workplace environment. People who were told in the interview process that the work culture is a “like a family” report instances of unwanted touching, screaming arguments, objects being thrown at walls or coworkers, political games, backstabbing, work quality sabotage, focus on emotions over work product, managers noticeably playing favorites, and incessant teasing and/or pranks that detract from work getting done properly or in a timely fashion.
Caution – this can be confused with organizations that say they aim to take care of employees like they are family, in the sense that they put employees first, look out for each other, and genuinely try to make employees feel appreciated. Not every org has the same sense of what “family” means. There are also family-run businesses that have very professional environments and there are others that bring all the personal family drama into the workplace.
Like most things in life, there are no guarantees, but if this phrase gets dropped, keep your eyes and ears alert for anything that looks obviously dysfunctional in the hiring process. If you are seeing signs of dysfunction coming out when people tend to be on their best behavior in front of candidates, it is only going to be worse once you are one of them.
- What they say: “Must be able to flex to different management styles.”
What they mean: We don’t train our managers to understand humans. We don’t promote people with people/leadership skills into management positions. It could also mean, we have no consistent way of doing anything at this organization so you will have 10 different people telling to you do the same thing 10 different ways and you will always be the one in trouble because no one thinks you did it the “right” (their) way.
Seriously. Be super wary of this one. So far, I have not heard a single good thing from anyone who took a job with this little expectation dropped in the job description. It was in the JD of one temporary job I had and yeah…It’s a doozy. Here is the thing – managers should be aware enough to understand that different people operate differently, and by the time they are promoted into a supervisory role, they should have demonstrated some kind of leadership skills or received on-going training on how to have different techniques to deal with different people. A manager who only uses 1 leadership style is a manager who can only successfully manage 1 kind of person and makes everyone else around them miserable.
Part of a good manager’s job is to understand each person on their team, have an arsenal of motivation/communication techniques under their belt, and they should flex to each employee to get the best performance from each member of their team. Not the other way around. A good manager is constantly using a variety of communication and persuasion skills to get roadblocks out of the way for their people to do their jobs well, with limited operational distractions. That is what makes a manager’s job so difficult and worth more from a pay perspective. The individual contributor who is working on an engine design, or stocking shelves, or processing billing claims should not be juggling the day-to-day operational tasks they are completing AND walking on eggshells to absorb the chaos of lots of different (and most likely conflicting) management styles from every supervisor they encounter. Employees should not have to “flex” from a manager who communicates clear instructions to a manager who communicates nothing, even when asked, and then screams when mistakes are made.
Similarly, if the company’s leadership cannot define for themselves how they want the organization to run on a cultural level, 5 different leadership styles at the top suddenly multiplies and trickles down the line to the lowest level of management. This fragmented company identity becomes constant “flexing” on behalf of the individual employee. Suddenly 50% of an employee’s time is spent figuring out how to “flex” when interacting with coworkers outside of their team instead of doing the job. When you get promoted or transferred to a different team, it shouldn’t feel like you’ve started a new job at a completely different company.
- What they say: “Dynamic environment.” / “Dynamic team.”
What they mean: Chaotic, unpredictable, and stressful, probably for no good reason other than that the company’s leaders and/or a significant number of managers do not understand how to create and maintain a stable work environment. In the face of constant external changes, management does not know how to keep things calm inside in the company.
If your workplace is constantly “dynamic,” that means nothing, and I mean nothing stays the same long enough for you to ever feel like you’re doing your job properly or meshing well with your coworkers. Here is what real “dynamic” environments looked like for several people who opened up about this one.
One company liked to constantly “shake things up,” including their org structure and management structure. This meant that a particular department experienced 4 bosses in a 5 month period. Before one boss could grasp the magnitude of the responsibilities in the role, the department already had a new boss to break in. Each team member had to try to forge a new relationship with each new boss and “flex” to a new management style almost every month, on top of trying to keep everything running smoothly. Needless to say, tasks were dropped in the non-stop transitions, priorities changed monthly, and the department from both the inside and outside looked like a chaotic mess.
Others acknowledged that “dynamic” workplaces were like revolving doors. Constant change means constantly changing your mindset, your processes, your interactions with other human beings, your clothes (yes, imagine changing dress codes every few months), and your entire sense of what is correct/important. This is exhausting and breeds a sense of insecurity. Couple this with management who is more than happy to terminate anyone who isn’t on board with the latest fad, and you have turnover rates through the roof. In one situation, a department had 1-2 people giving notice, having their last day of work, or being fired every single week. People left behind in the chaos were constantly being told to pick up the slack for people who left and they were constantly trying to bring new people up to speed while doing a work volume intended for way more than just 1 person. “Dynamic” often isn’t some sleek, energetic corporate environment on the leading edge of something great. “Dynamic” is a management team acting like a room full of squirrelly 5-year olds hopped up on Halloween candy with the attention span of a goldfish who throw a collective tantrum when they don’t get their way instantly.
And since we are in the business of HR considerations, it should be noted that “dynamic” environments are fairly exclusionary, if not discriminatory — anyone with any hint of anxiety, panic, or other similar emotional or cognitive disorders will rarely thrive in such an environment. If you fall into this category and the company is advertising itself in this way, you should be wary that they are probably not sensitive to the need for a calm environment. Several introverts with mild to moderate anxiety admitted to me that “dynamic” workplaces left them exhausted at the end of every day because the constant pivoting ate away at their energy levels. Couple that with a long commute and/or families to take care of and… you get the picture. It’s up to you to know what you can handle.
Even people without formal diagnoses for anxiety-related conditions and who ordinarily thrive under pressure admit that constant change is chaotic, stressful, and anxiety-inducing. People in these environments burn out quickly and either quit or damage their health until they are so ineffective in their jobs that they get fired or swept out of the org in RIFs or layoffs. In one such company, there were even sudden deaths and management hired outside speakers to come tell the employees that stress doesn’t cause heart attacks. Yes. Really.
If you still think “dynamic” might be that energetic vibe you are looking for in a workplace, proceed with caution. Ask them for their definition of dynamic in the interview. Or ask them to describe a typical day, vs. week or month. If you’re really daring, ask them the source of their dynamic environment. What makes your company so dynamic? If there’s a huge pause or anyone at the company looks uncomfortable before the response, that’s a red flag. If they openly admit to lots of changes, well, you’ve been warned.
- What they say: “We operate like a start-up.”
What they mean: Chaotic. We haven’t figured out how to run our business yet. Or, we can’t make it profitable, so we’re running a hot mess that is constantly begging people for more money.
This one is a head-scratcher, and yet, I see it on so many job descriptions when companies describe themselves. First off, are they really a start-up or not? And why do they make that sound like so much of their identity as a company?
Before the Big Tech boom and Digital Revolution, a start-up was a company in its infancy that had not started to make a profit yet after all their expenses and debts (like loan payments) were tallied up. Real businesses took about 3-5 years to reach that point where they were generating a true profit. Businesses that couldn’t hit that point after year 5 were considered failures and often closed up shop because people like bankers and investors realized it wasn’t worth pouring more good money into a bottomless pit that couldn’t return any of the money.
Somewhere in the tech boom, that definition got all muddled up and being a start-up became this dazzling, exciting thing to be. And another, even stranger, thing happened. Start-ups stopped making the transition into fully functioning, profitable businesses. There are companies out there claiming to be start-ups that are 5, 10, 15, 20 years old and have never cleanly hit the breakeven point and transitioned into turning a profit. Instead, they keep making bids out to investors or using government subsidies to keep their operations running, never actually coming out of the negative in their accounting books. These companies have figured out how to game the system into being perceived as successful, while really just being the beggars of the business world.
Peel back the accounting layers, and you will realize a lot of big name companies are currently operating this way. So, if you’re seeing this phrase, you might not be too concerned. But you never know— it could be the next WeWork or Theranos scandal waiting to implode and tank your career. Know your risk tolerance and always have an exit plan.
Start-up environments also tend to be chaotic, so look out for signs that they are using this phrase to put a positive spin on an ugly situation. Here are some suggestions from people who experienced some aged “start-ups” on what to understand before taking the job. Are people routinely expected to do 10 different roles for their 1 job? Are the owners there, actually putting in the time, too? Are the expectations clear and consistent from the job description, to the interview, to the offer letter, or are they changing throughout the hiring process? Are the people making promises about promotions or pay raises actually authorized to make those decisions? How formal vs. informal are the policies and communication structure? Is there an expectation to keep working outside of normal business hours? If so, how often?
Also, if they ask whether deferred payments are okay or whether you can do some work samples for them upfront, be aware that this might not be a stable situation paycheck-wise. You shouldn’t be doing any work for a company before you’re hired or you’ve signed a contract; there is no guarantee they will ever pay you and you may need to take legal action for illegal employment practices. One person reported going straight from the interview into a trial project that went on for almost a month. After 3 weeks of no pay, this person asked HR about what benefits she was eligible for and when she would get her first check, only to find out she had never been hired and the manager was using this “work sample” to maximize his budget by getting free labor before making a hiring decision. Yeah, sometimes people get too creative in start-up environments.
If you’re sitting on a stack of cash and can afford (literally) to take the “we operate like a start-up” risk, sure why not. Maybe if you’re trying to change careers and this is the kind of place that will let you finally get that break into a new career path/skillset, it might be worth it for that aspect alone, but have a backup plan. In any case, be wary. You don’t want to find yourself reliant on a paycheck that won’t come.
- What they say: “Work-life integration.”
What they mean: Your entire life will be devoted to this job and nothing less will be acceptable.
If you don’t want to be a 24/7 work machine, run, don’t walk when you see or hear this phrase. Take it from someone who experienced this nightmare. For this person, employees, bosses, and coworkers were in constant communication from 6:00 AM to 1:00 AM the next day (19 hours straight). Enjoy attending meetings at 3:00 AM and waking up to your boss texting you at every hour of the night? Love sleeping, eating, and working all in the same building with no idea of what life looks like outside of your workplace anymore? (Beware of those companies that offer perks like 24/7 onsite food, gym facilities, and nap rooms. What looks like convenience at face value might really be a lure to trap you into a workplace that doesn’t like it when you go home.) Like being told that participating in a religious holiday is a waste of time? Or that your spouse and children are a distraction to your career? Well, this might be your kind of place.
- What they say: “Fast-paced environment.” / “Multi-tasking required.”
What they mean: Unreasonable.
The following is really part of the expectations for a job that had “fast-paced” and “multi-tasking” in the job description: “[C]andidate must be able to process a large number of contracts simultaneously under deadline pressure.” The reality? This was impossible to do, because… well, the laws of time and physics? If an employee is working on 1 contract, they literally cannot be working on another contract at the same exact time. It might be in process somewhere else, while the employee moves on to another contract, but it was physically impossible for 20 contracts to be worked on “simultaneously.” The supervisor (and HR person/recruiter who okayed the job description) had zero sense of reality.
So many organizations throw “fast-paced environment” into their job descriptions. You should dare to ask, why is the organization so fast-paced? There are good reasons for it, but when the root reason is that management has unreasonable expectations and leaves no room for error (or time to correct an error), discovery, or time to think through a problem, you can expect a lot of pressure that typically results in errors, cutting-corners, and general sloppy work to meet deadlines.
You might also find this in workplaces where they try to keep costs low by having 1 person do the work of multiple people — just another example of a disconnection with reality. Human bodies break down; the harder they work, the more they need rest or they risk injury. Human brains get tired; the harder they work, the more they need to clear their minds to solve problems, create new ideas, or risk mental stress that eventually affects physical health. Doing more with less means more stress.
- What they say: “We expect everyone to do more with less.”
What they mean: We can’t figure out how to budget well. Or, we can’t figure out how to make money. Or, we can make money, but we’re going to squeeze every last cent of profit out by not giving you the resources you need to do your job well.
This one is very similar to “fast-paced” and “multi-tasking,” but no matter how this one breaks down, strategy (or a lack thereof) is always behind this worn-out phrase. This happens a lot in companies that aren’t performing well financially, or have been acquired by another company that tries to strip everything down to artificially pump up their profit margin and resell the company. At the core of these kinds of companies, management originally couldn’t market/sell their service/product well enough to generate enough money to pay for essential things. Or they made a product or offered a service that not enough people want. Sometimes there are so many laws that affect how a business runs that management can’t afford to run their business well any more.
In these cases, you’ve been warned. Be ready to wear many hats, all the time, with little rest in sight until the finances improve. In really bad cases, some corporate management teams get used to the excess profit squeezed out through “efficiency” and keep running you ragged indefinitely after the finances have improved. In these scenarios, exiting en masse or unionizing tend to follow pretty quickly. It’s up to you to know how long you can handle this kind of environment.
The same goes for non-profits and public service employers. Organizations in this situation experience lots of instability when donations or government funding cycles come in boom and bust cycles. Budgeting problems have the same result in any kind of organization: not enough resources, people doing several jobs at the same time, pressure to perform despite the limits of reality, tensions and in-fighting as coworkers fight over whatever resources are available, and/or people giving up and accepting mediocrity. What this looked like for one employee: coworkers backstabbing each other to get department funding by purposefully sabotaging other coworkers’ results and leaving people off of meeting invites so they couldn’t get any face time with bosses. If you are excited and like to excel, that drive might wane when you work with people who are constantly fighting or actively express how much they hate their job and no longer care, day in and day out.
When an organization is doing well financially, but the people involved are still telling prospective employees that they “expect more with less,” there might be an underlying issue with company culture or philosophy. Employees may be viewed as interchangeable (even when specialized knowledge and a high level of non-transferable skill is required to do the job). Horrible accidents and mistakes might happen because management chooses to save money by not maintaining equipment or hiring cheap, incompetent vendors. And while these situations might happen in organizations with financial troubles, they become a lot less tolerable when you as the employee know that your employer is overall doing well. Imagine someone taking over as a new CEO and getting paid both the CEO and COO salary because this person is doing both jobs until a new COO is brought onboard. Now imagine that during this same time the company’s stock value is going up, but all other employees are being told that they need to do more with less and perform the work of six people, with no raise, while their benefits are actively being slashed. Think this sounds impossible? It’s not. This is a true story.
In any case, when you hear “more with less,”in the hiring process, understand that once you are in the job, you may be held to unrealistic expectations to either do more work than you can possibly do by yourself, or perform miracles when everyone around you is cutting corners to save money.
- What they say: “Manage up.” / “Lead up.” / “Lead without authority.”
What they mean: You’re being put into an uncomfortable, unrealistic position of being expected to do things you technically have no formal authority to do. And when you do them, no one, including your boss, will have your back. You are going to be the company scapegoat and/or an easy target for termination.
When you read or hear this phrase, stop instantly. Avoid this job! Entering this situation could lead to career suicide. What’s most concerning is that I have seen a plethora of workshops for early career or young professionals promoting this concept of “leading up” and selling pricey lessons on how to lead up. As a seasoned professional, I have to say, do not fall for this trap. You are being set up for failure. Why? Because you cannot ever 100% successfully predict how people will react when you try to influence them. Short of downright manipulation, instilling fear, and gaslighting, you will not be able to control employees, co-workers, and bosses without good cause or formal support from others in the organization.
There has also recently been a lot of buzz around the concept of “managing your boss.” Again, I say, tread with caution, especially if you are young or inexperienced, or even new to a field after a career transition. This can backfire horribly. Much of what I have heard from those preaching these “managing up” techniques amounts to manipulation, emotional/psychological blackmail, and leveraging the rumor mill. If you do this, YOU will be contributing to the dysfunction of the organization. This is different from managing your relationship with your boss.
If for any reason you go forward and get this job, get everything and I mean EVERYTHING in writing. You might constantly be in a situation where you need to legally cover yourself. An organization that doesn’t want to put you into its formal authority structure or expects you to work miracles without support from management has something questionable going on, somewhere. If you think this is being overdramatic, read on for these real stories.
“I was told that there would be instances where I would need to lead without authority in my new role. My early career was in a very technical field, so this was new to me. I thought it was just the way it worked behind the scenes in a corporate-level role vs. frontline technical role. Then things got weird. I was told to be mindful of financial considerations, but wasn’t allowed to ask questions about concrete numbers for budgets. Then I started finding out that they were losing money on projects, so I thought it was one of those ‘lead up’ situations. So I did my own digging and created mockup recommendations of how to run specific parts of the organization better. I tried to show my boss. He said it wasn’t my job to do such things, but this mini-mafia of guys who were right hands to the executive at the top of our division told me this was exactly what I should be doing during my training sessions with them. They told me to convince my boss that this was part of my job. They set up meetings with other executives and tried to take my recommendations, but like a game of telephone, at every level, my message got distorted. I was not allowed into these meetings because I didn’t ‘have the authority to be present,’ so when the recommendations inevitably failed, they came back and said my recommendations were not useful. But they told me to keep trying. Eventually, I figured out this was their MO. They originally told me this kind of position was new and I would help define it. This was all lies. They had tried this before many times. And each time, the person was used as a scapegoat for failures. I quit before they could implicate me in whatever weird financial things were happening there or before they could fire me for their failures.”
“I was hired at the same time as another person for the same type of role. We were both in our late twenties and we were just hired into junior/pre-midlevel corporate HR positions in a large company with a 150-person HR department. A director level HR person sat us down 4 days into the job and told us we needed to ‘lead up’ with our bosses and the executives across multiple corporate functions. One HR VP told us something similar. We were told we needed to change the leadership from the inside out, from the bottom up. We were told to tell the people who had the power to fire us that they were wrong. It was beyond uncomfortable. We instantly saw there were a lot of laws being broken in the organization, sketchy vendors, paranoid secrecy around the company financials, and more. When we tried to correct management, we were talked down to, threatened with being fired…essentially told we were stupid and too young. I started looking for a new job right away. We both quit within 1-2 years. I will never recommend them to anyone, ever.”
It is a terrible idea to tell people, especially people in a role they have never done before, that they need to manage/lead up and do this without the backing of formal authority. When you are put into this situation, whether the people who arranged this know it or not, they are setting you up for failure and pitting you against your colleagues from the get-go.
When you don’t have formal authority, or the legitimacy of your role’s responsibilities are not recognized by others in the organization, you have to rely on other ways to influence people. You can try to make them do what you need them to do by building relationships with them and trying to make them like you, but that can backfire badly. What if you are informally a team lead and have to reprimand someone without support from your boss? Guess what, the person you reprimanded won’t like you anymore and won’t do anything else you ask them to do after that.
What if you’re working in an HR department that has no authority to terminate an employee who committed an egregious legal violation without management’s consent and the manager you partner with just doesn’t like you and refuses to agree with you on every issue (even serious ones like this), no matter what you do? For all you know, this person just doesn’t like how you do your hair, or that you smile when you get nervous and so this person avoids, ignores, and torpedos you at all costs. A relationship between 2 people is very fragile. As soon as 1 person doesn’t want the relationship to work, it doesn’t. And guess what, people can be incredibly petty. And you’re supposed to lead without authority in this situation? Really?
- What they say: “Alright, let’s set up one more meeting.” [After they made it seem like the last interview was the final interview.]
What they mean: This is an indecisive, immature, and/or disorganized place that likes to waste your time.
If you’ve gotten through to the interview stage and you keep hearing this, after what you thought was the final interview, don’t hold your breath. The same goes for situations where the people communicating with you can’t tell you upfront:
(1) how many interviews to expect before an offer is made,
(2) a timeline for an extended hiring process, and/or
(3) how you will know if you haven’t been selected to move on.
The disparaging stories I have heard associated with this phrase seem pretty endless. Here are a couple odd stories from job seekers about the infamous “one more meeting” phrase.
One jobseeker had a 1st interview directly with her future boss, if hired. That interview went well, and her future boss spoke favorably in follow up emails as if this was a done deal and just as a formality, she would next meet with a few people she would need to interact with on a daily basis in the job. To her surprise, she was contacted individually by 2 people and they each set up a time to meet with her separately over video chat. The interviews were rambling conversations that lasted roughly an hour each. The second person didn’t even seem sure of what her position would be or why he needed to talk with her. She received emails afterwards praising her and indicating that her future boss would be in touch soon. She reached out a week later after not hearing anything back and was told she would need to meet with the CEO as well. So another week later, now 5 weeks after her initial interview, she met with the CEO over video chat during an hour when most people would be eating dinner. He talked a lot about philosophy for almost 2 hours and let her know that her future boss would be in touch within a couple days. A couple days later, her future boss reached out and requested that the job candidate complete a pre-employment assignment and return it within a week. She did so, and heard nothing back for 2 weeks. After following up, she heard nothing back for another week. At this point, it had been 9 weeks (more than 2 months from the 1st interview). Finally she got a cold email back, stating that while her work product had been phenomenal and taught people in the organization new ways of thinking about a particular problem, the leadership team had concerns about the distance of her commute. They allegedly worried that a long drive would impact the quality of her work and “spirit” at work, and therefore would not be extending an offer. She was devastated. She had de-prioritized other job opportunities that had come up because this had seemed like a sure thing after the first interview. And to shoot down their concerns about a long commute, the salary associated with this job would have allowed the job candidate to move closer to the job, so it was really a non-issue.
In another situation, the job seeker passed a phone screening interview and was asked to come in for an interview to meet the team and have a 1:1 sit-down with the hiring manager. This was clearly communicated as the last stage of the interview process. The job candidate came in, interviewed with the team, then was told that the hiring manager was still in a meeting and would not be available at all that day. They praised the job candidate and told her that she would definitely get a call back. They promised they would set up one more meeting with the hiring manager after the job candidate received and completed a written skills assessment via email from their hiring portal. She felt wary that perhaps the team hadn’t liked her and lied about the hiring manager being busy so that the hiring manager didn’t waste time meeting her. Sadly, she was spot on. Despite following up, she never received a written skills assessment to complete. There was no next meeting with the hiring manager. Three weeks later she received a condescending rejection email saying the hiring manager would love to support her in her career, but would not consider her further as a candidate.
The interview panel legitimately lied to her at the end of the interview about the next step. Sometimes, “one more meeting,” which doesn’t come to fruition, is an indicator of immature leadership. This job candidate likely dodged a bullet. If the interview panel was willing to lie to a job candidate about next steps in the hiring process to possibly avoid hurting her feelings on the spot, what are they willing to lie about to employees to avoid uncomfortable conversations?
How an organization does one thing is sadly often a good indicator of how it will do other things. If they keep telling you “one more meeting” for an interview after what was supposed to be the last interview, imagine what it would be like if you’re actually doing work for them! One more revision on that report. (3 months later, you’re still being told to revise it.) One more month before we can tell you about an expected software change. (The software change happens before you get any information about it.) One more meeting to make a decision… You can see where this is going.
These nine phrases are ones that have been popping up a lot in job descriptions and interviews over the last few years. At face-value, a lot of these sound fairly positive or innocuous, but from experience, they might be hiding a more uncomfortable reality. So at this point, I would say these are troublesome phrases to watch out for. Any of these phrases should cause a job seeker to dig deeper or re-evaluate whether the job will truly be a good fit.
The sample size is not large enough yet for me to say these observations are grounded in irrefutable data. But it is hard-earned personal experience talking. There are almost always outliers. There are some workplaces where an HR person or manager threw in buzzwords that do not actually reflect their culture. There are people out there who can survive and thrive even in the most bizarre and uncomfortable work situations, so these types of situations do not affect them. But if you are a reasonable person, who wants limited workplace drama, expects professionalism, and has an honest, “what you see is what you get” mindset, be wary when one of these phrases pops up in a job description or interview.