Employee Review - Good Times

Published by Laurie on Tagged Goals, Work/Career, Anxiety

Next week I’m having my employee review at my company.  Time to once again, justify my salary like a defendant on trial. It feels like an exercise in futility for me, just some more bureaucratic BS.  It’s basically a job interview for a job you already have.
 
I don’t know why they call it an annual review. I have been here for 12 years and I think I have had 4 reviews in that time frame.  We are twice the size we were when I came on board with this company.  Yet bonuses have decreased by 70% while having 3 times the workload I had when I started. 

I basically am the IT department at my company.  I am the system administrator, the network administrator and the database administrator.  Then in my spare time, I am the research coordinator. 

At the review, you’re expected to throw around words like results-oriented, deadline driven and provide metrics of what you have accomplished while they throw words around like synergy and taking it to the next level.  Yuck!  Then they proceed to judge you, not on your actual job performance, (especially since they really have no idea what I actually do) Instead your performance is based on your attitude, how many times you wore jeans to the office, how many times you pop in to the partners offices, asking about their wives, their kids, and stroking their ego as they bore you with the details of their last big deal.  I’m not in sales.  I can’t do the “sales” thing here, I never could.  I’m the “IT guy”.  I’m not supposed to be the chit-chatty type.  

Oh, and did mgmt forget that we monitor unacceptable Internet usage?  Apparently so, since I will be defending my job performance to the married guy who spends half his days on Match.com and 2 others who regularly surf porn.

Personally, I can’t schmooze.  It’s not in my nature.  I wouldn’t give a second thought to my review if I were being evaluated on performance.  My job performance is excellent.  I’m good at what I do.  I know my job inside and out.  I have never failed to deliver on a deadline, I have never failed to deliver even the most outrageous expectations. The fact that all of our systems have never gone down, is a testament to the fact that I’m doing what I’m paid to do. We have had zero network downtime in the last year.  I value competency and resourcefulness, yet I function without awareness of the company’s future objectives.  (I have asked plenty of times, but have never received an answer)  When implementing any type of information system, computers, software, telephone systems, I ask what our future needs might be. They say we will downsize, and then we add more staff. When I ask if we are going to be moving our offices before I sign another contract with an ISP, they say no.  That means yes.  (we have moved 4 times since I have worked here, each time I was assured we would not moving)  Sometimes I wonder if they are just trying to f*** with me, but that would require a sense of humor on some level.  I don’t think so.  I struggle to be proactive, yet I still end up being forced to be reactive 90% of the time.  I have grown accustomed to it over the years. 

I will admit I can be sarcastic at times.  I know it’s hard to believe, but on occasion I am.  Never antagonistic, though, just a wee bit cynical.  Sarcasm doesn’t go over well when you are surrounded by huge egos with no sense of humor whatsoever. 

I will admit, only a few appreciated my suggestion of purchasing a spirograph to make our organizational chart, since the organization of this company resembles a spirograph image (going round and round in circles) 
Well, I thought it was funny.  Then there’s the time when they were ordering business cards, I was asked what title I wanted on my card and I said Rumplstiltsken  (get it, spins gold from straw.  Don’t worry they didn’t get it either)

Oh, and my suggestion for the cover of the policy and procedures manual <——- wasn’t warmly received either. Come on. Lighten up.  No one is following the procedures anyway.  I wrote the entire section on Information Systems Acceptable Use Policy.  No one, including management adheres to it.  No unauthorized programs installed on the company computers!  Programs must be authorized by management and myself.  Yet I spend my days troubleshooting someone’s Itunes installation, or deleting the free games downloads on someone’s machine that won’t work because of our security protocols. My daily desktop tech support calls consist of panic stricken users telling me they “lost everything” only to once again show them that their window is only minimized (about a hundred times) on their task bar.  It wasn’t so bad the first 50 times, but after 12 years and thousands of times, it does tend to wear on one’s nerves.  I explained to my kids, when they first started using a computer, that the (–) in the corner of the window meant minimize, the square meant maximize and the (x) meant close.  I showed them once, for some reason, they seemed to grasp the concept immediately.  They were around 7 years old.  Too much to ask from full-grown adults?  Apparently so.

Burnt to a crisp
Do you think I’m a bit burned out here?  Is it true what they tell me, that all companies are like this?  No consistency, no accountability?  I guess that’s why I’m still here. I assume the grass isn’t going to be greener anywhere else.

Well, I better put my hypocrisy cap on and finish completing my self-evaluation. 
Strengths…Weaknesses …Where do you see yourself a year from now … What can the company do to help you with your job…..  I hate filling these out, I never know what to write, anything I say can and will be used against me…. I can’t be completely honest, it would sound too sarcastic. I wish I had taken a continuing education course on ass-kissing.  I will admit, that is one of my weaknesses.

Stumble it!

October 4th, 2007