8 ms·

Out of curiosity as I too would like to automate the tedium of things like a perf. review - how exactly do you automate those 'one-off' per year tasks that fall

Out of curiosity as I too would like to automate the tedium of things like a perf. review - how exactly do you automate those 'one-off' per year tasks that fall more in line with spending more time maintaining the code for that task than time saved automating. I have had some success with certain tasks in the very high-frequency category, but almost no successes with anything that has a cadence higher than a month (always relevant.. https://xkcd.com/1205/ https://xkcd.com/1205/)

canada_dry 6y ago
> how exactly do you automate those 'one-off' per year tasks These were quarterly reviews. Basically I had it copy/paste verbatim the BS from the previous review. This worked for everything except accomplishments. These were 'completed' tasks (from my time reporting) for the reporting period copied into that section.
nullc 6y ago
I partially automated performance reviews at one place. I wrote weekly status updates, important accomplishments I marked with asterisks. For the annual reviews I just had a script that loaded a TeX template from the past review then populated it from the flagged entries in my weeky reports. Then I'd just edit it down a bit, tweak the language and sent it out. In theory I could have probably gotten away with sending the autogenerated one at least after I'd refined the usage some. I did it this way because it's always hard to start writing a performance review. But I found it a lot easier to start with a bunch of stuff I did and restrict it down to the relevant stuff. I was tickled when they later updated the job description for my role and used the text from my performance review. I guess since I didn't have to spend much time populating it I managed to completely optimize the level of corporate-speak in my narrative. :)

8 ms·

Out of curiosity as I too would like to automate the tedium of things like a perf. review - how exactly do you automate those 'one-off' per year tasks that fall

by rednalexa 6y ago

canada_dry 6y ago
> how exactly do you automate those 'one-off' per year tasks These were quarterly reviews. Basically I had it copy/paste verbatim the BS from the previous review. This worked for everything except accomplishments. These were 'completed' tasks (from my time reporting) for the reporting period copied into that section.
nullc 6y ago
I partially automated performance reviews at one place. I wrote weekly status updates, important accomplishments I marked with asterisks. For the annual reviews I just had a script that loaded a TeX template from the past review then populated it from the flagged entries in my weeky reports. Then I'd just edit it down a bit, tweak the language and sent it out. In theory I could have probably gotten away with sending the autogenerated one at least after I'd refined the usage some. I did it this way because it's always hard to start writing a performance review. But I found it a lot easier to start with a bunch of stuff I did and restrict it down to the relevant stuff. I was tickled when they later updated the job description for my role and used the text from my performance review. I guess since I didn't have to spend much time populating it I managed to completely optimize the level of corporate-speak in my narrative. :)