Work Friend is here to help with careers, money and the sometimes grim, sometimes hilarious Dungeons & Dragons-type maze that is the contemporary office. We want to help you scheme your way to where you want to be.
What should you ask of us? We want the questions that HR would call HR on you about. (Sorry, “Human Capital Resources” or “People and Inclusion” or “Human Limb Processing Center,” whatever they call themselves now.) We specialize in tactical, practical guidance. How do you get ahead with fairly minimal bloodshed? How do you sleep with your boss now? We’re interested in issues arising from guilt, fairness, generational and gender intrigue, the human animal in all its gross fullness.
There will be no “look in the mirror and tell yourself you love yourself” advice. There will be no fake cheerleading. There will be no crowdsourcing from people who have not actually had careers, no offense to Reddit.
We can be reached at workfriend@nytimes.com. Please know that we won’t be answering individual questions there. This isn’t a late-night hotline! We’re not actually your friend!
Here’s a piece of advice we had to offer ourselves, by the way: Like most kinds of columnists, those that give advice tend to run out of helpfulness. So we expect we’ll be rotating this role every three months or so. We can dish it out, and we can take it.
Send questions about the office, money, careers and work-life balance to workfriend@nytimes.com. Include your name, location and contact info, even if you want it withheld. Letters may be edited.
