It's goal setting time at work....

[Marquette]

We have to submit 5 goals, 1 of which has to be around personal development.

From my personal development section; I hope these get approved:

Write 20 Senryus about work.
Write sonnet regarding bravery of leadership during these difficult times.
Tease Jason 57% less.
Pass one LOMA exam.
Use the word <manager's last name> in a limerick.
Use the word <manager's nickname> in a haiku.
Start MCSD certification.
Max out 401K contribution.
Blog weekly about technical issues.
Get Mark to use the phrase “that just ain’t kosher”.

 

[Arc]

How about ''I'll try to cut down my ER Forum time - at work - down to less than 3 hours per day." On second thought, that's just crazy.

 

[Marquette]

That's just crazy talk... I'll work more at work once they give me something to do.

I'm actually home now... 5 hours today was more than enough.

 

[dessert]

I'm still w**king and also just completed writing my goals for 2008.
My individual development goals were very short term.
This exercise has to be the one thing that I will most enjoy "never having to do again" when RE arrives.
Megacorp uses our goals to determine future raises and add-ons to our bonus so we gotta play if we want to fund our FI so we can RE.

 

[Marquette]

Oh, it's tied to raises here.. I've already started writing my senryus so I can get ahead of the game. Basically, I've interspersed some real goals in there as well. LOMA certification ties to industry experience and MCSD certification ties to professional experience.

Jason is very happy that my goals were approved.

At one megacorp, I made it one of my goals to write two articles for a trade magazine in my field. I ended up writing one article and co-authoring a book. My boss gave me a hard time about it. He said he didn't know if he could accept the book in lieu of an article.

 

[Grizz]

It's no wonder that you are spending time in a RE forum.

What an insulting and idiotic practice. You and your co-workers should intuitively know what you need to do on a day to day basis in order to benefit your employer without having to write down personal and professional goals to be approved once per yr by some pseudo-shrink-manager type. If not, then either you or your managers can not communicate effectively on the job and should be dismissed from your posts.

For the record, I also don't believe that yearly performance reviews are necessary. If one of my employees doesn't understand what our company is about or has a bad habit that he doesn't recognize then we correct it then and there. Why let things go on for 11 more months?

Large corporations lack common sense and.....rants sometimes feel good.

 

[Meadbh]

For the record, I also don't believe that yearly performance reviews are necessary. If one of my employees doesn't understand what our company is about or has a bad habit that he doesn't recognize then we correct it then and there. Why let things go on for 11 more months?

I agree. Good employees need regular feedback and encouragement and a formal performance assessment with goals every 2-3 years. Those who are not doing well need intensive performance management, maybe every few weeks, until it becomes clear that they are improving, or not (in which case they need to be encouraged to take their talents elsewhere).

 

[Marquette]

It's no wonder that you are spending time in a RE forum.

What an insulting and idiotic practice. You and your co-workers should intuitively know what you need to do on a day to day basis in order to benefit your employer without having to write down personal and professional goals to be approved once per yr by some pseudo-shrink-manager type. If not, then either you or your managers can not communicate effectively on the job and should be dismissed from your posts.

Fortunately, my boss is also a great friend of mine (well before the whole boss-employee thing happened) and one of those types that all of us would follow to any company. So, he spends his time fighting the idiocy and the rest of us spend our time working. His viewpoint is the same "if you're surprised by your score when it's review time, then I should have been fired a long time ago".

Of course, that was before the latest round of fun with megacorp. At our sister company, the finance people decided that raises are going to be too high so they're dictating that managers go back and hand out lower scores. Instead of doing the rational "you did fine but we don't have money for raises" approach, they're going with the "you sucked at your job in ways we're doing our best to quantify, no raise for you"

Ah well, as someone who's never exactly been a company man, I always find it amusing to watch. It reminds me every day of why I ran screaming away from the management track.