Monday, October 27, 2008

Alright, Who Put the Ass in Self Assessment???

I have to write my self-evaluation this week. It is one of the most-loathed tasks I am forced to do at work. Partly because I've never been particularly good at tooting my own horn(Self-deprecation doesn't translate well on paper.) but mainly because it seems a useless task that sucks up valuable time. I mean, c'mon! More time spent on fluffing up my achievements is less time I spend blogging for all of you!!

And anyway, at most workplaces it never seems it has any of true bearing on the eventual review given to me, or on the (minimal) raise I get.

Can someone tell me doing these darn things is just some sort of legal liability type of f&ckery that HR has to keep in my file?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

The way these self-reviews are used is critical to how we fill them out. Basically the self-review is a managers way of getting around the fact that they don't manage and have no interest in knowing what their reports are doing. So they use these self-reports to know what you are doing. What generally happens is a bunch of managers get together to make decisions, they are completely unprepared and all they have are these self-reports. So they read them and use the contained information to justify decisions.

It's really quite pathetic.

What I have learned in corporate America is that what really and truly seperates those of us that produce from those of us that reap is one's ability to deflect blame, promote oneself shamelessly, and to truly believe regardless of facts on the ground that your skills are uniquely valuable.

It is a real skill and one that I don't have obviously. I still write code for a living.

You need to write your self-review as if you were your boss or skip-level manager talking about themselves. Imagine the way they would gush on endlessly about their exploits. "I generated 100 TPS memos each month."

So yeah, without the self-review your manager will having nothing to use to get you a raise and you will get diddle-squat. Of course, I gushed on about myself and still got diddle squat(as did everyone else)...so imagine what I would have received had I not!! I would have gotten even more of less than cost of living!