If you don't typically read Rands in Repose (and really, I recommend that you do, especially if you're an engineer and/or an employee of a large corporation), I would encourage you to go read his recent blurb on performance reviews. While it's guided particularly towards year-end reviews, it applies to some extent or another to pretty much any written review of work done by an employee/co-worker/student.
Oddly enough, we're getting on to that year-end review point ourselves any I've been going over my current accomplishments while, at the same time, trying to make a decision regarding my own placement at the company.
You see, right now, my manager is in charge of 30-ish people who are on, at last count, 8 different projects. And while some of them are similar, these are projects of at least 10 and as many as 50 people that encompass a VAST array of functionality, goals, development processes, development philosophies and even locations in the development life-cycle. To make a long story short, my boss is in charge of a team that would be hell to keep track of even if we were all doing the same thing with half of the people, and we're doing nothing of the sort.
And really, who wants a micro-managing boss? I love my hands-off manager... it helps me get things done, there's minimal interference and really, he's like artillery... he's there to provide heavy-duty support, but generally he leaves me alone until someone calls for him. But there's this problem of hands-off, and it generally involves a careful balancing act that, if ignored, leads one's boss having a very low-resolution understanding of all of the good things one is doing. Now, you hope that other people are calling in for support from time to time and he's getting a complete picture... but I really would prefer that my feedback come from time spent directly interacting with the guy who is my face to the people who are giving me raises and cutting my checks.
Setting aside the whole raft of political realities and re-orgs, the real question on something like this is to what extent I've been attempting to solicit verbal feedback in advance of something like a year-end or mid-year review. And in my case, the answer is that I've been too busy working. Which is just a terrible answer, because it means that this lack of communication thing is failing on my end. So without communication, in marketing-speak, my message is getting lost.
And, even worse, written reviews are political, no matter where you are... especially where one's career is involved. And if you don't understand the politics and aren't playing the politics, you're losing. And by not getting involved earlier and more often, I'm shooting myself in the foot. Because even if your manager is benevolent and favorably-inclined (as mine is, fortunately), your political game ties into a bigger political game and again, if you're not playing, you're losing.
Posted by Vengeful Cynic at September 1, 2009 11:06 PM | TrackBack