Holiday Gifts on a Budget

Can I celebrate now? On Monday, I received a request for references for a job I had applied to. On Tuesday, like within minutes of submitting references, HR called and made me an offer over the phone and said that it was contingent on background and reference checks. That same afternoon, HR sent over an offer letter, and we negotiated my start date. It's Thursday, and from what I understand, they haven't contacted any of my references yet. Can I go ahead and celebrate now, or should I wait to hear something further from HR?

Is there any link provided for today's event ? Can someone please help with this, thanks!

I do not see any link to join the event. Could someone please help me with this.

Hi everyone! I was recently mistaken for an admin by one of my newer colleagues and it got me thinking about whether that is a problem for me career-wise or not. For context, I am an associate director at a pharma company, and while a PhD was required for me to get my (non-research) program manager position, many of the colleagues on my team come from more communications or event planning backgrounds. I think the confusion comes in because there has been a lot of changeover and medical leaves over the past year or so, so I have ended up pitching in to pick up slack that is decidedly more in the "getting stuff done" category and less in the providing expert insights category. I am highly visible in the organization, including to the leadership team. I love what I do, and I have gotten a lot of positive feedback for my contributions. I'm just wondering if I am doing myself a disservice by doing tasks that provide value but could be done by someone with fewer credentials, or if I should be somehow working more of my educational backstory into my intros. Has anyone out there had a positive or negative experience being a work horse?

System Design questions can be tough for me sometimes. It's something I haven't had the chance to practice on and was wondering if anyone has advice on what topics they study. Or if anyone is willing to schedule a mock interview with me on SD that would be great too.

Since she’s been director (hasn’t even been a year), 6 people have quit and left and now I see why. She can be sweet infront of people that she needs to act professional with but behind closed doors, she can be very condescending and manipulative. Not a lot of people in the department find it easy to get along with her. I will share my 3 experiences with her. 1) when one staff quit the day of his last day, there is an off-boarding procedure to follow. Removing them from all systems after submitting the termination form is one of them. When I removed him from our chat group the day after he quit and left, she pulled me to the side and asked why I did that. She said no one in the department knew he left yet and her boss was questioning her why that person left so abruptly. She said next time she’ll appreciate if I check in with her first. 2) she requested a meeting to be scheduled with all recipients in an email except one person. When I clicked on “reply all” to provide meeting dates and sent to everyone, she quickly messaged me and said “next time, do not include that person in the email. Makes sense?”. 3) I have been so swamped at work so I made a suggestion to take some workload off me and share it with a team of 6 who should be handling their own schedules instead of me. They’ve been trained to work on their own schedule yet not everyone has been doing it and I was still being asked to update their schedule. In a meeting when we were talking about schedules, I brought this up and she said “what does that have to do with what I just asked you?”. I had to turn off my audio so I can lay a heavy sigh. I have another manager that I report to but I’d hate to throw names around if I bring this up. Should I just keep working with a smile on my face or have a really difficult conversation with a director that no one likes?