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To be fair, the order to do it didn't come from my manager. The order
came from on high, and everybody in the company has to do it. My manager
doubtless has to do it as well, for whoever he reports to.
I'd like to just say that my key strength is my ability to write well
and understand our software, but like I said, I can't keep saying that
year after year.
Regarding your last idea -- review by parents and spouses, we actually
had anonymous peer reviews for awhile, The problem was that you could
always be about 99 44/100 % sure who made which comment.
-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Neilson [mailto:neilson -at- windstream -dot- net]
Sent: Tuesday, December 23, 2008 11:34 AM
To: Downing, David
Cc: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Re: Self-reviews
Downing, David wrote:
> Does anybody here have to do a self-review as part of their
performance
> review? I confess I have a hard time with it -- specifically the
> section where you have to list your "key strengths," because you have
to
> think of new ones each year. I was wondering if other folks have to
deal
> with this and how they deal with it.
I hate those things. I often feel it's the manager shirking his
responsibilities, even if HR put him up to doing it that way.
Unfortunately one of my key strengths is the ability to write
facetiously. So I'll write up a writeup in which I mention that very
ability.
For my previously mentioned career change, I think I'll invent new
management systems. Let's see how many I can invent in five minutes.
1. Management by musical chairs. When the horn honks, everyone changes
to doing someone else's task. This causes the training that helps cover
emergencies, but at the expense of a bit of the here-and-now.
2. Management by darts. The agenda for each day for each employee is
discovered by throwing darts at the dartboard. A variation uses one of
the employees, perhaps Wally, as the dartboard.
3. Review by parents, spouses and children. Management, faced with
rebellion against the old-fashioned self review, asks that the review be
completed by those who obviously know the employee best.
Time's up, and it's not even Friday.
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