Appraising My Performance

Posting from: Tucson, AZ

I have avoided work blogging like the plague for two reasons:
1. Work blogging is a bad idea. Lots of land mines could go off if your employer finds your blog.
2. Most of my work thoughts have been of a disgruntled nature, and it seems poor form to bitch about something that you're not going to try to change.

However, now that I am making that change and am no longer worried about someone finding it, a few work-related things may begin popping up here and there.

Several days ago when I returned from my latest Montana vacation, I went in to work, printed my letter of resignation and immediately summoned my manager to a conference room for a little chat. I explained to him that I was leaving- more on that conversation later- and then we had a meeting I scheduled before I went on vacation with some other people I work with. Following that meeting, my manager asked me to stay so we could go through my performance appraisal even though I was leaving.

One major topic centered around my "unprofessional" behavior*- which seems to be corporatespeak for "having a sense of humor" and "not caving in to peer pressure to change my professional opinion." Anyway, I don't believe I've ever done anything unprofessional in any sense that matters to me- that is anything unethical or illegal or anything like that- but I was curious to hear what he had to say. There was a bunch of hooha, but it was followed by a very useful piece of advice that I'd like to share with you, gentle readers. He suggested that I look around in the company or wherever else I may go and see who I think is the kind of success I'd like to be. Then before I do or say something, think about whether that person would do or say what it is that I'm considering.

This was a very useful piece of advice, not because I think it's a great idea to mindlessly parrot those one admires, but because it got me to take a look around and notice that there is NOBODY there that I would consider the kind of success that I would like to be. How did I not notice this before? It boggles my mind.

There are, however, some very nice people who are the image of the nightmare that I could see myself becoming twenty or thirty years down the road if I follow in their very "professional" footsteps. They have not yet figured out that the secret to getting ahead at this company is not about what you do or how hard you work but about who you know and whether they like you or not. So they work harder and harder trying to fulfill ever more aggressive demands to make things happen whether they should or not. And with every "success" at this, they are subsidizing and encouraging these demands to continue and grow more aggressive.

Next week, for the first time, I am going to fail at something at work. It will be interesting. There is a major design review coming up. I am responsible for a certain set of analyses. These analyses depend on data inputs from other people which have not been completed yet. Even the data we have so far received is not correct. My original plan was going to be to come in this weekend and work my ass off to get this all done in time.

Well, fuck it.

Fast. Cheap. Good. Pick two because you're not going to get all three.

We should not be having this review right now, and all of us little worker bees know it. The design and supporting analyses are not ready for this milestone review. But program management is worshipping at the Altar of the Almighty Schedule and is pushing forward anyway. I could do the analyses anyway making a lot of assumptions to replace the missing/incorrect data for the sake of keeping on schedule, but I'm not going to do it. I have good reason to believe that if I do that, the data will never be completed and the analyses will not be updated later. That is not scheduled in nor budgeted for. So with just five weeks left to go in my time at this company, I am just not going to do this work until the inputs are completed and corrected. I am not going to bust my ass to try and cobble together an assumption-based analysis which will never be updated to reflect reality for the sake of a company whose idea of rewarding employees is to crank the vice a few turns tighter the next time they want something faster and cheaper.



*Example: We moved from a very Dilbertesque cubicleland to a building with actual offices with doors. Managers' doors have actual locks and catches for the latch. People who are at my level on the totem pole, however, have door knobs with no locks in them and there is a metal plate screwed over the catch in the doorframe. We are obviously not supposed to close our doors so we've been leaving our door open. There was a cultural phenomenon that cropped up the first week we were in the building, though, which I felt the need to nip in the bud. People would walk right into our office and interrupt our work or stand in the doorway blocking our one means of exit. This was, for some reason I cannot figure out, not the cultural norm back in cubicleland. People were more respectful of other people's workspace, at least in my area. Anyway, we found someone with a roll of yellow caution tape and got a piece from him which we taped across our doorway to signal people in a humorous way that they should not intrude on our office space uninvited. After two days, people were well trained. Only one person violated this boundary in those two days, and I requested that he please step back out of my office before I would help him. For some reason, my manager considered it unprofessional for me to assert my workspace, but didn't have a problem with people violating it and interrupting my work. I see things just the opposite.