I get that it’s expensive to pay someone not to work for several months, but there are strong business reasons why you should do it anyway. 

If you’ve been trapped in your workplace unable to leave, eating Doritos from the vending machine for dinner and sleeping under your desk, should you be paid for that time?

In most cases, your boss wasn’t evil. You just didn’t get along. Good thing you don’t have to anymore. Even if your boss did do something super illegal, you don’t always get justice. Even if you did get justice, it doesn’t undo the awful thing that happened to you. It’s better to get out of the situation. Keep the awful thing from happening in the first place. 

Maybe you’ve had this experience: You’re in crisis. You can’t work, so you call in. A well-meaning person you hardly know sends you information about the Employee Assistance Program (EAP). You look into what it covers and wonder how this could possibly help. The minimum CYA measure to guard against the wild things that people in crisis do.

A hundred years ago, in the heyday of unions, non-unionized businesses needed a way to make their low wages, long shifts, and poor working conditions look a little more attractive. So they did what lazy corporate wonks have done to increase morale since the beginning of time: They threw a pizza party. 

Your handbook should help people make decisions. Not just disciplinary decisions. The handbook should draw bright lines where possible, and give guidance for situations that are unclear. Your handbook should give guidance on the unspoken habits your organization runs on.

That's what leadership looks like: Putting aside your own experiences and recognizing when it isn't about you. Because, as we explained in that meeting, bias has no place in the workplace.

That’s what it feels like when I get pulled in to clean things up when someone’s been sloppy. The damage has already been done. Nothing I can do about that. But someone’s got to manage the fallout.

But why would someone take a 40+% pay cut by choice? That time must be more valuable than money. There are plenty of reasons besides laziness why this might be true. 

This story still makes me laugh... and haunts me to this day. Is a boundary still a boundary if only one person asserts it? Or is it rebellion?

We’ve all been there. You dust off the old resume and break out in a cold sweat. You write what you think you’re supposed to. Two days or minutes later, the rejection comes. Or your boss tells you you haven’t demonstrated the skills yet. Not because you’re underqualified. Because you’re too specific and you’re expecting people to see the same depth behind the words as you do.

“Everything is broken and I hate it here.” Have you ever worked at one of those places where the work-arounds become the job? Onboarding someone new isn’t about learning your product or roadmap. It’s about learning where the landmines are, how to use The Beast and navigate the playbook.

Let's get one thing straight: It's perfectly fine for your company to reimburse people for having a life. But if there's no business purpose or tax-preferred program for it (like an HRA, commuter benefit, or 401k), it has to be taxed as income. 

Did you know: Payroll doesn’t update tax settings automatically when someone moves. If you live somewhere where it’s common to commute across state lines, having different settings for where someone lives and works seems natural.

Somewhere between two weeks and thirty years, it has to become something else. 

Most teams treat FLSA salary exemptions as a payroll hack. But you need to do more than pay someone a flat rate for them to be exempt from overtime.

Parental leave combines the most complicated parts of HR into one policy: protected classes, disability, paid time off and sick time, obscure payroll esoterica, employees who are "active" but not "working" (and sometimes don't come back when you expect), insurance (policy details, deductions, and a qualifying event), onboarding and offboarding (maybe more than once per person), a bajillionty federal, state, and local laws, many of which conflict

People often confuse their job being 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱 (by FMLA, etc.) with getting 𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗱. It's a common mistake. I'm sorry. I really am. I know you're going through a lot. I hate delivering this message when it's already too late. 

It feels “leaderful” to manage policies, approve exceptions, or update payroll. That’s how power shows up for managers at big companies. But when founders take on those tasks, they lose sight of the strategic decisions that compound long-term.

Just like us, dogs align themselves with power. Oscar intuitively knows who the pack follows. Once he knows who’s the boss, he tries to win them over just like everyone else does.