Having my cake and eating it too?
October 28, 2010 11:03 AM Subscribe
Being offered a promotion at work (yay!) but was planning on asking my boss for a letter of rec to go back to school... and also to telework from home until school starts. How to gracefully and deftly handle this situation and get everything that I want?
Priority number one is getting the rec (and getting a good rec). Number two is working remotely and number three is the promotion.
Now, I feel that the promotion is actually overdo and that it will hurt my chances of getting into grad school if I don't get one, but I don't want to compromise the quality of my rec letter and I want to give myself the best chance of convincing my boss and company to let me work remotely at least a couple days a week.
Really any advice, guidance, tips, experiences, would be greatly appreciated.
Priority number one is getting the rec (and getting a good rec). Number two is working remotely and number three is the promotion.
Now, I feel that the promotion is actually overdo and that it will hurt my chances of getting into grad school if I don't get one, but I don't want to compromise the quality of my rec letter and I want to give myself the best chance of convincing my boss and company to let me work remotely at least a couple days a week.
Really any advice, guidance, tips, experiences, would be greatly appreciated.
I recently just had a very similar situation.
A couple of questions: does your boss know you're going back to school? Will continuing your education benefit your company? That is to say, are you a paralegal going to law school or a paralegal going to medical school? Why do you need to telecommute and for how long?
posted by Siena at 11:51 AM on October 28, 2010
A couple of questions: does your boss know you're going back to school? Will continuing your education benefit your company? That is to say, are you a paralegal going to law school or a paralegal going to medical school? Why do you need to telecommute and for how long?
posted by Siena at 11:51 AM on October 28, 2010
Yes, a key piece of information here is the timing. When do you need the letter? When would you be leaving to go to school? And what are the cycles of your work? E.g., if you are now the Restaurant Manager, it's no big deal to take the promotion and leave because your tasks (creating the weekly schedule, managing other workers) happen on a daily or at most weekly basis, but if you're being promoted to being the project manager of a three-year project and you know you'll be leaving in three months, you may want to begin the conversation now about how your work for these final X months can be most useful and best support the transition.
It's my experience that the best, smartest, most generous-hearted bosses nevertheless feel a slight pang of rejection or resentment when they find out you are planning to leave. All of a sudden, your success is their new problem to deal with. Your success is them being left behind. So coupling the announcement with a request for a letter may not be best. I would leave a few weeks in between the "I'm looking ahead to going back to school and want to find a way to make sure this doesn't leave you guys in the lurch" conversation and the "would you write me a letter of recommendation?" conversation. Within 3-4 weeks, no matter how amazing and essential you are, they should have come up with a plan for handling your departure without any problems and will be back to thinking how wonderful you are without any undercurrent of "but now we're screwed" or "now I have to stay late writing a job announcement" or whatever emotional reaction a good boss may temporarily have despite doing their utmost to set it aside and be happy for you.
I personally am a bit concerned about you asking for all of those things. I almost feel like you can leave on good terms and get a good letter of recommendation, but that if you announce that you're leaving and also desire to suddenly work from home every day you might create some bad feelings. It really depends on your boss and the work, though. I would guess your best bet is a conversation thanking them for the promotion but informing them of your imminent departure, and then assuming all of that goes well, circling back around to them in a month to ask for a letter of recommendation and also asking (seeing as how you need to focus so much to get XYZ done before you go), would telecommuting more be a possibility?
posted by salvia at 12:18 PM on October 28, 2010
It's my experience that the best, smartest, most generous-hearted bosses nevertheless feel a slight pang of rejection or resentment when they find out you are planning to leave. All of a sudden, your success is their new problem to deal with. Your success is them being left behind. So coupling the announcement with a request for a letter may not be best. I would leave a few weeks in between the "I'm looking ahead to going back to school and want to find a way to make sure this doesn't leave you guys in the lurch" conversation and the "would you write me a letter of recommendation?" conversation. Within 3-4 weeks, no matter how amazing and essential you are, they should have come up with a plan for handling your departure without any problems and will be back to thinking how wonderful you are without any undercurrent of "but now we're screwed" or "now I have to stay late writing a job announcement" or whatever emotional reaction a good boss may temporarily have despite doing their utmost to set it aside and be happy for you.
I personally am a bit concerned about you asking for all of those things. I almost feel like you can leave on good terms and get a good letter of recommendation, but that if you announce that you're leaving and also desire to suddenly work from home every day you might create some bad feelings. It really depends on your boss and the work, though. I would guess your best bet is a conversation thanking them for the promotion but informing them of your imminent departure, and then assuming all of that goes well, circling back around to them in a month to ask for a letter of recommendation and also asking (seeing as how you need to focus so much to get XYZ done before you go), would telecommuting more be a possibility?
posted by salvia at 12:18 PM on October 28, 2010
Note from the OP -- If anyone wants additional details (as I did) and would like to contact the OP offline, here is an email address: anonmefi10201010@gmail.com.
posted by salvia at 1:17 PM on October 28, 2010
posted by salvia at 1:17 PM on October 28, 2010
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If you need the letter soon, I'd thank them kindly for the promotion and mention wanting to go back to grad school, but you look forward to doing a great job with the promotion till then. If that conversation goes well and the boss congratulates you, ask for the letter of recommendation at the same time. That could hopefully then transition to a conversation about how things will be different between now and your departure, including working from home time.
posted by ldthomps at 11:49 AM on October 28, 2010