TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Yeah, I worked at one of those places too. Our scale went from 1-10, but you were never supposed to rate yourself higher than a 6 or 7 (and even that was pretty questionable). I didn't find out until my first review... one of the categories was, believe it or not, attendance. Since I had not missed a day in the past year, and had worked late or on weekends when necessary, I thought I deserved at least a 9. My immediate superivsor, kind soul that she was, explained that *her* supervisor just wouldn't accept an employee rating herself that high, and had me re-evaluate myself. Years later, a different immediate supervisor (who was *not* a kind soul) told me "my best employees always rate themselves lower than I rate them, and my bad employees always rate themselves too high." This is the same supervisor who insisted we call her "Mrs" because that would "make" us respect her, so it was par for the course.
On the other hand, I was rating Wal-Mart once, for some unremembered reason, and the question was "how well did Wal-Mart meet your expectations?" Did a high rating mean I *loved* Wal-Mart, or did a high rating mean I had low expectations and Wal-Mart met them quite well?
And how is this related to tech writing, Eric might ask... because it shows that when you give someone a rating scale, you need to define the stations along that scale if you want to get some usable information. Is 10 "as good as I expect," "not perfect but the best I have," or "absolutely perfect, can't think of a single improvement"?
====================================================
Tracy Boyington tracy_boyington -at- okcareertech -dot- org
Oklahoma Department of Career & Technology Education
Stillwater, OK http://www.okcareertech.org/cimc
====================================================
>>> "Carnall, Jane" <Jane -dot- Carnall -at- compaq -dot- com> 03/29/01 01:42PM >>>
I worked for a company years ago that used to hand out this type of list for
their biannual "performance self-assessment". The "safe" response was always
3: if you claimed to be high or low, you would be asked to justify this.
*** Deva(tm) Tools for Dreamweaver and Deva(tm) Search ***
Build Contents, Indexes, and Search for Web Sites and Help Systems
Available 4/30/01 at http://www.devahelp.com or info -at- devahelp -dot- com
A landmark hotel, one of America's most beautiful cities, and
three and a half days of immersion in the state of the art:
IPCC 01, Oct. 24-27 in Santa Fe. http://ieeepcs.org/2001/
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
