A Month of Gratitude - Day 4

Saturday, December 11, 2010
Yesterday was my annual performance evaluation. Like most large companies, my employer uses an esoteric blend of measurable goals (did I reach my revenue objective, did I maintain my professional certifications) and subjective opinion (am I bold, do I make fact based decisions) to reach a performance measure.

The entire process usually makes me roll my eyes just a bit - either I'm doing what I'm supposed to do, or I'm not, and if I'm not, I sincerely hope my boss would let me know before my annual performance review. Like porn, people know good employees when they see them, and typically react accordingly.

This year, my boss told me that one of my main strengths was the fact that I "hold myself and others accountable." I found this ironic because back in my school days, this characteristic of mine was often described as being a pushy bitch.

Today, I'm grateful I live and work in a culture that is making progress in seeing value in my contributions to the team without applying gender-specific stereotypes.

Bonus gratitude: I got a small raise, too, which I'll be pushing directly into my 401K.

7 comments:

mom in northern said...

Congrads...

mom in northern said...

I have never thought of performance reviews being likened to porn…Yep..works for me..

vince said...

Hurray for your raise and being a pushy bitch, er, uh... I mean holding yourself and others accountable. :-)

Warner (aka ntsc) said...

I always had employees fill out their own, as did most of my bosses.

Then we would see where we disagreed, if we did.

Janiece said...

Warner, my company uses that strategy, too - for everyone. My work performance is the one area of my life where I have brutal self-honesty, so I've never been surprised by the result.

Anne C. said...

My current office has the policy of collecting comments from other staff and then including them, anonymously in the review document. So, that means that I get stuff like "pushy bitch" (not literally) in my review, even if my bosses don't agree and/or don't mention it during the verbal part of the review. It's a little weird, as my thought is then, "so I'm handling communication with someone not well, but I don't know who. And there are others who say the opposite." Not very helpful sometimes.

Megan said...

Congratulations.