As a relatively new manager, you figure out relatively quickly who are the workhorses and who are not as productive. If I were to guess, you were probably in t

As a relatively new manager, you figure out relatively quickly who are the workhorses and who are not as productive. If I were to guess, you were probably in the lower half ranking of people usually in that manager's mind. You might be more skilled than average, but also more lazy so that might average out your performance too. Not the best but you deliver value eventually so the manager feels like its worth more to keep you than to drop you. I think where a performance evaluation issue starts popping up is long focused work where you don't quite know how much effort it really takes to produce. Some things take a lot of investigation time and show little code, some things produce a lot of code and actually wasn't that much work. If your manager has a lot of reports, they have less time to keep track about your individual productivity. It has probably effected your career, you could've gotten promoted faster, but did not. Also people who can communicate, are personable and you can just give a task and they will figure it out with little fuss are also low maintenance employees, which is a value of it's own.