Yearly Review

[liralen]

Yearly reviews always manage to surprise me. Not in a bad way, usually. Normally, there's always something my boss saw in what I did that he really likes and I think, "Wow, did I really do that well?" Mostly because all I remember was all the pressure, felling like I was late and that I didn't do that good at it because it should have been sooner, faster, more accurate... whatever... that stupid perfectionist bit.

Today was like that but even more so. None of the things that I really thought I'd failed at showed up in the review. And there were a lot of surprise compliments that were pretty cool, all in all, as in nearly all of them were based on data that made them believable. We *did* get more done this release than last. We did have fewer communication gaffs, like documentation documenting something we didn't implement and never intended to implement. We did have a whole lot less of marketing going, "Well that's not what we really wanted." And a whole lot less going back and forth on things. All of that is measurable improvement and that was really nice.

Bill did punctuate the fact that this was my first year at this management job and that I'd learned a hell of a lot in that time. He also mentioned that I'd often surprised him by getting things done a whole lot faster than he expected. Not that he ever said that during the year, but it was really cool to hear that from him when I asked.

With the down economy no one is getting any raises this year, but I just upped from 20 to 25 official hours a week, and, as Bill says, that's something like a pay raise. Hee. I was working the hours anyway, and it's now good to get paid for them. But they did give me more options this year than I got last year, and given that I'm part time, it's actually a merit award that would have been doubled if I were full time, that would make it the largest merit grant I've had since I got here. So Bill *really* liked what I did, and that was more important for me to know than a lot of other things.

Comments

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

not only is it great to get that kind of validation, it's also a good pointer to the kind of company and managers you work with. the training for yearly reviews always says 'it's too late to start preparing now, you have to have been doing it right all year as a manager'; they've been doing that, they've been noticing you and you've been impressing them all year. Well done!