5 ms·

I had this when I worked at a large enterprise several years ago. If I recall correctly we had to state goals for each of 5 major categories and another set of

by weavie 8y ago

I had this when I worked at a large enterprise several years ago. If I recall correctly we had to state goals for each of 5 major categories and another set of 5 supplementary categories. The categories were things like - deliver customer value, enhance team work, collaborate well across teams and various other enterprise buzz words, I forget exactly.. As a coder, my goal was pretty much to write good code and avoid sitting through pointless meetings as much as possible (a very hard task in that place). I would basically have to spend half a day coming up with various different ways to word this so that it would fit each of the five goals. Every six months (one mid year review, and then the final review) I would have to meet with my manager to provide evidence that I was achieving my goals. That would be another half a day twisting words around to try to fit what I had done to the goals. My manager would have to do the same for me. I was then scored on each of the goals. Then the score was totalled up and was used to determine the salary increase that I would get at the end of the year. We all despised the system. A collective groan would go around the meeting room when it was announced that it was review time again.

sethammons 8y ago
That's unfortunate (and all too common). Goals should be meaningful to you and the company and be few. Achieving them over time should feel good. And reviews should be an opportunity to show off a bit and learn where you can improve a bit.
commandlinefan 8y ago
My first "goal-setting" experience (five jobs and 20 years ago) was like this: upper management would define company-wide goals (that ended up being incredibly vague) and their direct reports would define their own goals that supported the company-wide goals, and their direct reports would define _their own_ goals, ad nauseum, until it finally trickled all the way down to me, the lowly programmer. So I took it seriously, read my managers goals, his manager's goals, his manager's manager's goals, all the way up the chain so I could try to define some goals of my own that a) I thought I could actually achieve and b) supported everybody else's goals. I had a lot of things like "increase unit test coverage" and "speed up build times" sort of things in there. My manager reviewed my proposed goals (remember, we were supposed to be defining our own) and rejected all of them, giving me a set of completely unachievable and meaningless goals - mostly related to the "flavor of the day" project that I was already waist-deep in. Things like "reported bugs are down 30%", "my peers consistently rate me as a solid team player" and "project fleebleflub is in production and is consistently producing $100,000/month in revenue" (I'm not kidding). Back then I was young and naive, so I argued with him that these goals were effectively impossible for me to achieve alone and he said, "well, these are 'stretch goals' and that's good". Of course, two months later project fleebleflub was cancelled, I was redirected to a troubled project with tons of bugs and my peers hated me because I was always turning away their requests for help because I was frantically trying to meet my own goals. Performance review time started to loom large and I was starting to have an existential crisis - I had printed out my goals and pinned them to the wall of my cube so I kept them in mind and I knew that I hadn't come anywhere close to achieveing any of them. I was five years out of college and starting to panic: my degree was in computer science, so programming was the only career option I had, but it was starting to look like I was terrible at this. I updated my resume the night before the performance review because I knew for sure I was going to be fired. So I went into the performance review, my manager looked over my goals, said, "well, let's see if we can get this up in the next six months" and that was it; I got a "meets expectations" and kept working there. Lather, rinse, repeat for every single song-and-dance goal-setting/performance-review exercise I've ever been through.
- steelframe 8y ago
  Sounds like that was a classic case of confusing "lag measures" with "lead measures." I'd suggest to anyone in a situation with a manager who tries to over-focus on lag measures to explicitly bring up the concept with them. https://navelmarketing.com/2013/04/16/lead-measures-vs-lag-measures/ https://navelmarketing.com/2013/04/16/lead-measures-vs-lag-m...

by weavie 8y ago

sethammons 8y ago

That's unfortunate (and all too common). Goals should be meaningful to you and the company and be few. Achieving them over time should feel good. And reviews should be an opportunity to show off a bit and learn where you can improve a bit.

commandlinefan 8y ago

My first "goal-setting" experience (five jobs and 20 years ago) was like this: upper management would define company-wide goals (that ended up being incredibly vague) and their direct reports would define their own goals that supported the company-wide goals, and their direct reports would define _their own_ goals, ad nauseum, until it finally trickled all the way down to me, the lowly programmer. So I took it seriously, read my managers goals, his manager's goals, his manager's manager's goals, all the way up the chain so I could try to define some goals of my own that a) I thought I could actually achieve and b) supported everybody else's goals. I had a lot of things like "increase unit test coverage" and "speed up build times" sort of things in there. My manager reviewed my proposed goals (remember, we were supposed to be defining our own) and rejected all of them, giving me a set of completely unachievable and meaningless goals - mostly related to the "flavor of the day" project that I was already waist-deep in. Things like "reported bugs are down 30%", "my peers consistently rate me as a solid team player" and "project fleebleflub is in production and is consistently producing $100,000/month in revenue" (I'm not kidding). Back then I was young and naive, so I argued with him that these goals were effectively impossible for me to achieve alone and he said, "well, these are 'stretch goals' and that's good". Of course, two months later project fleebleflub was cancelled, I was redirected to a troubled project with tons of bugs and my peers hated me because I was always turning away their requests for help because I was frantically trying to meet my own goals. Performance review time started to loom large and I was starting to have an existential crisis - I had printed out my goals and pinned them to the wall of my cube so I kept them in mind and I knew that I hadn't come anywhere close to achieveing any of them. I was five years out of college and starting to panic: my degree was in computer science, so programming was the only career option I had, but it was starting to look like I was terrible at this. I updated my resume the night before the performance review because I knew for sure I was going to be fired. So I went into the performance review, my manager looked over my goals, said, "well, let's see if we can get this up in the next six months" and that was it; I got a "meets expectations" and kept working there. Lather, rinse, repeat for every single song-and-dance goal-setting/performance-review exercise I've ever been through.

steelframe 8y ago
Sounds like that was a classic case of confusing "lag measures" with "lead measures." I'd suggest to anyone in a situation with a manager who tries to over-focus on lag measures to explicitly bring up the concept with them. https://navelmarketing.com/2013/04/16/lead-measures-vs-lag-measures/ https://navelmarketing.com/2013/04/16/lead-measures-vs-lag-m...