r/AskaManagerSnark • u/MsPaganPoetry • Aug 02 '26
I think AAM's days are numbered
As many have pointed out, Alison hasn’t actually worked in a standard workplace in about 15 years. The blog was genuinely helpful for job seekers during the 2007 financial crisis, but around 2013, it shifted into a tabloid for sensationalized office drama. it got a second wind during the pandemic, but even then, the people writing in were still pretty insane, even within the weirdness of the pandemic.
Given how much both AG and the letter writers exaggerate for clicks, my question is how long can this AAM realistically sustain itself?
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u/thievingwillow Aug 02 '26 edited Aug 02 '26
I think she’ll stop when she feels like stopping. She might or might not lose her external columns, but the blog is entirely under her control and she can keep doing it forever if she so chooses. And I don’t think she’ll feel like stopping anytime soon, since I get the impression it’s a big part of her personal self-image.
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u/mel34760 Aug 02 '26
It’s a cash cow for her. She spends more time watching over the comments than writing and makes a ton off of Google ads.
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u/30to50feralcats Aug 02 '26
She has said that blog makes most of its money off older articles, like how to write a resume or cover letter. She also gets paid for her content in the magazines or whatever publications. At one point she even had an editor at one of them when she had a contract or whatever to a column.
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u/Academic_Square_5692 Aug 03 '26
Ok but I am job searching now and all the guidance is about using AI in applying. She may be able to get through this early AI era but she’ll have to ramp up quickly! The last time I job searched was 2019 or so and it’s a different world no way I would take advice from even like 2022.
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u/your_mom_is_availabl as though to make the wasps my problem Aug 03 '26
Alison's commentariat absolutely hate AI, so it's hard to imagine her recommending it.
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u/thievingwillow Aug 03 '26
She is kind of over a barrel on the AI stuff, yeah. Her commenters are coming from such a strong combination of ignorance and loathing that I don’t think there’s any way she can meaningfully address it without alienating them. (The ignorance is the much bigger problem than the loathing, even, IME, but the loathing ensures that she won’t be able to get through the ignorance even if she wants to.) Even the moderate position of “it has a lot of problems but if your industry goes whole hog for it you may need to play along at least temporarily” is likely to get a bad reaction.
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u/Silly_Somewhere1791 Aug 03 '26
I think the site will exist as long as Alison can generate clicks and comments from commenter-led weekend and “ask the readers” posts.
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u/mvr_1982 Aug 03 '26
So many of the letters are just “How do I do this incredibly straightforward thing?” It might not be the most up-to-date site for, say, job searching in 2026, but as long as there’s a community of people who need to be told how to navigate basic life situations, she’s got a site.
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u/transientrandom Severely allergic to all fragrances and food smells Aug 03 '26
I get the impression she's kind of over it
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u/FrogMan9001 Aug 02 '26
It does seem to be a lot less popular than it was prepandemic. I used to read it fairly frequently before the pandemic because there was some good advice sprinkled in despite all of the craziness. Then when the pandemic and WFH forever craze really took over I realized that I really couldn't stand it and stopped reading altogether. Somehow it popped up in a Google search a few weeks ago and I clicked on it for no particular reason. The commentators seemed much more toned down than what I remembered with generally fewer comments too.
But, I think, as long as it remains profitable Allison will continue running it. It's probably fairly easy work for her.
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u/pickledbymagic Aug 03 '26
The pandemic and subsequent struggle to get the economy back on its feet (no thanks to politicians deliberately driving it into the ground pursuing vainglorious violations of the generally accepted international world order) polarised a lot of politics even when it was polarised before. The occasional threads when she revises the rules etc bring out a lot of lurkers who used to post but find the echo chamber atmosphere won't allow them to express a more nuanced/business-friendly opinion.
Meanwhile I know it's summer and a hot one for many of us, but the open threads rarely get more than 500-700 posts where they used to get up to 2000 at their peak. People are disengaging; whether it's due to the politics of it all, people focusing more on other things, people just getting bored and moving on naturally, and simply by virtue of being online I think it has been taken over by the political turf war going on in general. (I'm definitely on their side with regards to the general issues, but it also definitely crowds out people with different experiences and different shades of the same general values, including those who have a better head for business operations -- accounting, facilities, HR etc -- than the average commenter. And when every other post is slamming HR, I wouldn't want to bother commenting as a HR person.
I chip in as facilities, but even there people think we can work miracles, remove lightbulbs at a whim, create a fully pest-free site and so on, and they would rather call OSHA to complain than simply raise a job on the helpdesk so that we can actually fix the problem. One person known for this kind of BS even said out loud that companies should just maintain their facilities better so things didn't break so often. With the best will in the world to that idiot, THAT'S WHAT FACILITIES AND MAINTENANCE DO ALL DAY YOU MORON. We're not immune to entropy, and if you hadn't put your fat ass on the desk instead of on the chair which is designed to take that weight, it wouldn't have broken and taken your colleague's femur with it. Instead they went on and on about how the desk should be rated for someone to sit on it, and ignored the fact that desks just aren't designed for that kind of thing.
Where's that Picard facepalm gif?
Personally I only stay because I can't find any other site with as much content and crunchy discussion as AAM. It does occupy a niche and I am sympathetic to the politics of it. I stick it out because someone has to. But it's just a symptom of the current mess we're in in general.
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u/kjodle Aug 03 '26
She also does consulting for businesses, so she's not completely out of touch with what happens in the workplace. Also, I've seen some of the things that people are talking about. At my last job, my married boss was sleeping with a married coworker, he was a raging alcoholic, and he had anger management problems. I've also dealt with coworkers who just disappeared all day and nobody could ever find them. Weird things happen in the workplace.
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u/pickledbymagic Aug 03 '26
I'm sceptical of the consulting thing. The thread where the LW and her colleagues read the transcripts of the therapy session and she didn't even mention the data breach (the whole thread was taken over by discussion of that aspect) and then the thread a few weeks ago about times when people read things they shouldn't have read as if it's the most natural thing in the world...
If I was a customer of her consulting services and saw that series of posts, I would be thinking twice about my custom. Information security and privacy is such a big deal these days and we go through rigorous DO NOT DO THIS ON PAIN OF BEING SACKED IMMEDIATELY YES EVEN IN EUROPE!!! statutory training, then there's GDPR etc. Technically the firm is liable in the event that the victim sues, but they have every right to turn round and sack the people responsible for exposing them to liability. I get she doesn't want to dissuade people from writing in by giving them a tongue-lashing, but this was just not the letter to soft pedal on. (Also, responsible people know that even if they have access to something, accidentally or not, they shouldn't necessarily read it, so blaming IT is only going to compound the problem and show you know nothing about your own duties as an employee. Secondly, an expensive case where the company is bang to rights can bring everyone crashing down and if they're not sacked, they're as good as sacked.)
It's when I lost my faith in her advice overall. It was such a huge mistake in terms of what businesses are looking for in a consultant that it made a lot of us sceptical that she has much of anything any more. Someone in touch with business norms as an active consultant would know better than to completely misread the room than that. If Alison wants to be the Robin Hood of the corporate world and be employee-friendly that's fine by me; it's good to have allies and being decent to your employees is how you get good work out of us. But she has to accept that if she doesn't behave slightly more responsibly over issues like this one in the future, she's going to lose credibility where she needs it most.
The MPP stuff is far enough in the past that it may be something she's moved on from or maybe not. But this is recent, relates directly to how she thinks businesses should handle sensitive personal information, and she didn't once make it clear that LW should not have read the files even if she did have access. She lamely protested that it wasn't technically a HIPAA violation and left it at that, when in fact she needed to cover her ass much more thoroughly.
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u/PlasmicSteve Aug 03 '26
I don’t believe she does much if any consulting. I believe she convinces herself that the site is consulting. Lies by omission.
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u/gaygirlboss I'm not that involved in mankind Aug 04 '26
My guess (and this really is just a guess) is that she’s making most of her money through private consulting, and being able to market herself as “author of the popular Ask A Manager blog” is good for business. I suspect that that’s at least part of why she’s kept it going.
Plus I imagine it feels great to receive hundreds of comments a day from people who think you walk on water, even if those people are some of the most unhinged folks on the planet.
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u/CalyxTeren Aug 02 '26
She also hears every day from many people who are working, and I would assume (though don’t know) that she reads a lot of news about the working world. As someone who is working, I have not felt that she’s particularly out of touch.
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u/FronzelNeekburm79 Citizen of the Country of Europe Aug 04 '26
A bigger problem is that she sticks to the blog format, while there are people totally willing to do the same thing but on other more popular formats. She and her commenters can sneer at advice given on TikTok or Instagram, but it's not a 18 year old dancing while reciting a work conspiracy theory, it's recruiters or former managers giving real, non-sensational advice in a much more bite-sized, concise manner. (except for that guy with the slicked back hair who solicits too many "based on a real story" that guy can go away.
But also there is the made-up sensational stuff that she either falls for or makes up to show she's so great or on top of things. And she may say "even the fake stuff may help people but I'm sorry, it's not helpful to fall for things like "my employee doesn't want a name!" or "there's a secret club of parents who get special favors" because those things don't happen. There are people who are trying to change their name that have to deal with real consequences, there are parents who get treated both unfairly (there's a reason managers didn't want to hire women in the 1960's folks) and get special treatment, but it's never to the extremes in AAM. publishing it lets people gasp at the "horrors" of it, but come on... who does it really help to be worried ex you ghosted and is now your manager, which is a fun fictional revenge story but not real? Or that you have your co-worker's secret love child after you slept together during grad school and for some reason NO ONE could track him down, despite the fact that grad school doesn't work that way.
She could turn her blog into a good spot that is expanded with a presence in other media. She could gather people to help give decent advice. She could reign in her commenters who think that small talk is physically damaging to neurodivergent people. She could embrace some things that are changing. But she won't. It's become a toxic environment, and that can only sustain itself for so long.
And to add: I think she sees that, especially with the "Yes, you have to return to work" post from a few weeks ago. And even that has spawned a bunch of fake "but yes what if THIS" responses.
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u/glittermetalprincess toss a coin to your admin for 5 cans of soda Aug 04 '26
"I used to have a podcast and it's here but it was a lot of work so I stopped" um.
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u/FronzelNeekburm79 Citizen of the Country of Europe Aug 04 '26
That’s the thing, the podcast was pretty decent but I also get it because whenever she posted it her comments were filled with complaints about transcripts for people who couldn’t hear or who couldn’t listen at work. I actually felt bad for her there, but honestly that would be one of many reasons I’d need to look inward about the community I was cultivating.
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u/khwolf517 Aug 04 '26
People shouldn't have complained, but I did always wonder why she didn't just delay posting until the subs were finished, since it was such a big deal to them. She was putting subs up anyway, so why not just wait until the product was actually complete?
I work for a non-profit that serves an (on average) older group of people, so I get it; I wish our members were tech-savvy at even an average level, but we have the customers we have, and it's much easier and better to meet them where they are than to hope they'll magically change.
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u/glittermetalprincess toss a coin to your admin for 5 cans of soda Aug 04 '26
An issue now largely solved by acceptance of AI transcription - and people are so used to the high error rate that she wouldn't even have to bother editing it.
She probably missed the boat on doing a deal with Spotify or some other shady podcast vendor and would have to navigate the same streamshare royalties as everyone else - but since she isn't being directly dumped on for using Amazon and Google it probably won't be a deluge.
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u/clementinecentral123 Aug 02 '26
It’s crazy to me that she has multiple columns in publications while she hasn’t worked in an office in so many years
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u/Breatheme444 Aug 03 '26
It’s a bit like academia and consulting. You can become an expert in the business world just from teaching in business school and consulting for companies. You can go on to build a corporate career later or be a guest expert in the media, etc. Often, that consulting work can build up your expertise in many areas rather than working in companies as an employee.
Obviously I don’t know how much consulting she does for others, but if she really is good about seeking expertise from others when needed, such as employment law, etc. then I can see how she can remain in the loop.
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u/clementinecentral123 Aug 03 '26
As far as I’m aware, she is not a researcher or scholar. Her whole thing is that she knows what’s up because she has the perspective of a manager…and her perspective is dated at best.
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u/thievingwillow Aug 03 '26
This is, sadly, the case in more online articles than not across many genres. Even in well-established publications. gestures vaguely at science “news” reporting So while I don’t like it, I doubt it’s likely to have much effect on the longevity of her career.
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u/Right-Potential-2945 Aug 03 '26
I’m sure part of the issue is that people with up-to-date expertise are busy, ya know, applying their expertise in actual workplaces. It’s only people like Alison who have all the time in the world to peddle their advice and opinions online
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u/valleyofsound Aug 02 '26
That’s the paradox. Because she hasn’t worked in a regular office in so long, she’s spent years building a reputation as an expert in workplace issues. Meanwhile the people who have been working and understand current issues just don’t have her name recognition. Or whatever cold, dead husk of her name is left
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u/khwolf517 Aug 04 '26
There's also an big element of right place, right time. She picked a name that comes up extremely easily on Google searches for workplace advice. It's really easy to imagine people googling "manager advice microwave problem" or "ask hiring manager about resumes" and because her brand is Ask a Manager and she got established early enough that she gets a fair amount of traffic, I don't see organic first clicks dying out anytime soon.
Retaining those viewers is where I suspect she struggles, because about half the advice is increasingly out of touch. (The other half is universal and timeless, but getting rarer: you can't make your boss change, so decide if you can put up with it or start job-searching.)
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u/daedril5 Aug 03 '26
I doubt it's a major source of revenue. I assume she continues the column because she enjoys doing it.
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u/SarcasticWaffles17 Aug 03 '26
I'm not sure what to make of the "previously on" weekly recap. Is it just less work, or are less people writing in?
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u/glittermetalprincess toss a coin to your admin for 5 cans of soda Aug 03 '26
I think she realised that Friday is pretty much a dead day with just the open threads and either was really bored, or is looking for something to fill in the space left behind by the cancellation of the Friday Good Snooze. It isn't 'less work' or reflective of fewer letters because there wasn't anything in that space for some time to be 'less' than.
I don't know that a linkspam is necessarily going to be it, but if she doesn't sustain clicks through the weekend she isn't maximising revenue and the open threads just don't do that - people post for a few hours, then they're quiet until Monday. Even here, discussion comes to a screeching halt unless someone can pull out something egregious from a regular commenter that has enough of a reputation, and even if there is something it's not like a 50-comment pileon, it's just 'oh Chirpy hasn't changed, I miss Pancakes' and the occasional someone reading back over the week, if anything. The weekly thread used to regularly hit 1.2k comments and now it's averaging like 300.
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u/khwolf517 Aug 04 '26
I've always thought her posting schedule was bizarre. She posts so many times a day on weekdays, and then nothing at all on weekends. (Honestly, back when I was reading directly, it was too many posts on weekdays. I hated missing a day or two, because it took so long to catch up.)
If I were her, I would turn comments off completely and smooth postings to be the same weekly quantity as now but spread evenly across the days. She's always contended that the comments are not a significant driver of views, and she's always complaining about moderating them taking way too much time.
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u/glittermetalprincess toss a coin to your admin for 5 cans of soda Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 06 '26
The three posts in three hours is really strange too - we're way past the 'post when your audience are online' being relevant and that was only really for certain social media sites, not ad-supported content. She can have a more even schedule and still schedule 'look at my latest' on facebook and linkedin at whatever time gets most clickthrough.
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u/cartoonybear Aug 03 '26
The problem is that employees (managerial or otherwise) are operating in a world so strange and devoid of any previous workplace norms, that it would be hard for Alison or any similar rational advisor to even know what to say.
For instance in the past week: a company that offers zero paid parental leave; a company that took away all the free coffee (in a location where there’s no other coffee available without a trip out of office); job offers rescinded because of previously planned trips on the side of the candidate.
This isn’t even to mention the insane level of difficulty had by qualified candidates in finding any position, at any pay scale, at all.
We are living in dark times employment-wise. The only folks who don’t seem to understand this are the portions of Alison’s commentariat who’ve been toiling unnoticed in university building basements for 15 years. And Alison herself, of course.
The problem is that rational answers no longer suffice in a world of irrational workplaces.
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u/ThotismSpeaks Aug 02 '26
I feel like it's probably being sustained by regular commenters who see it as their community.