January 29, 2003

in review

Yesterday I had my first performance review here. I'm beginning to think that it's
better for a company to force everyone to do reviews at the same time, because if
you do it on the employee's service anniversary (the other common method) it's too
easy to postpone. I once went about three years without a review. ANd yes, you
should be getting feedback all along but at that place I wasn't, and it is
probably a good thing to sit down and talk to your boss once in a while. Assuming
your boss isn't evil, or stupid, or like the one I once had who would chew tobacco
and spit (into a can, mercifully) during meetings. I have rarely been physically
nauseated in staff meetings but that did it.

My current boss (the
Bosstrienne) isn't evil at all. In fact, I was impressed at how the review went.
(No, not by myself!) The mst notable thing about her as a boss is that she is
always, always positive. I've never done anything for her without getting a "Good
job!". This is not terribly helpful, because if someone compliments everything,
there's no way to tell if you're really doing a good job or just being overrated,
or to tell what needs improvement. So I was wondering, going in, whether there was
going to be value to this.

There was, though. She was hamstrung by a
silly policy requiring every review to have two of twelve areas listed rated at
excellent, two at Needs Work, and two At Standard. Even with that handicap,
though, she was able to give me a few things to work on (without ever actually
doing anything much resembling criticism, mind you). Impressive.

It
was a bit easier for her since I'd already listed things to improve on the first
draft of the review they told us to fill out in advance, and my list agreed with
hers. I'm weak on business knowledge, because they just don't teach that stuff to
engineers. As you rise through the ranks, you either get a related Master's degree
or pick it on on the job, as I'm trying to do now. Also, I'm supposed to work on
not coming off as what the Bosstrienne refers to as a "know-it-all", what some
other less kind people have called "condescending", and what I should probably try
not to think of as not suffering fools gladly.

I can't believe I
haven't written about this before, because it's sort of important to me. I noticed
years ago that Ben Franklin and Isaac Asimov have a lot in common. Both were
experts in a startling variety of areas. Both apreciated the other sex, sometimes
in more than theoretical ways. And both, according to their respective
autobiographies, underwent a very conscious transition that led to them morphing
from annoyingly bratty young men (think Jason in the comic strip Foxtrot) to
beloved old men. In both cases the transition was based on the epiphany that they
did nt need to carry the responsibility of what Asimov refers to as "the smart
man's burden"; the need to correct everyone's errors. They might have more ideas
than others, but they didn't need to take credit for all of them; Franklin began
speaking as if he were only communicating the ideas of a group.

Clearly I need to make the same sort of change, and work on some
accompanying nonverbal mannerisms, but it's something I've been working on for a
few years now. Both men write as if they made these changes more or less
immediately, but that may just be the liberty of an autobiographer. Or maybe it's
just a prerogative of genius; I do think that not only did their minds work alike,
but that mine works in the same polyglot sort of way. I am most assuredly not,
however, confusing a similarity in kind with one in degree. I'm bright, but not
Asimov-bright or Franklin-bright. Both were semi-famous by my age and it wasn't
luck; it was purely earned from the products of their brains.

But I
can certainly learn from my betters! And one of the first things I probably need
to learn (not necessarily from Drs. F and A) is to stop thinking of people as
betters and worse ones.

Posted by dichroic at January 29, 2003 04:59 PM
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