The Corporate Runs

Performance Reviews

Managers,

It's performance review time again. The executive managers' guidelines have been updated for this review cycle and HR requests that you review these carefully when making your assessments.

Employees are still given the opportunity to perform the majority of the review in "self-evaluation" style. This is chiefly to relieve you of having to guess at the individual employee's expectations since these tend to veer wildly from reality.

Below the new guidelines you will find some examples of acceptable self-evaluations along with some manager's feedback.

Performance Level Guidelines

Level 6 - Far Exceeds Job Requirements

Performance at this level far exceeds the maximum sacrificial requirements of this position. Individual has totally accepted that the corporation's goals are for the betterment of humankind. They have fully rationalized their existance in terms of the company as their higher calling.

Level 5 - Consistently Exceeds Job Requirements

Obsequience at this level is at the maximum and always beyond acceptable requirements for the position. Servitude is not only excellently met, but consistently exceeded. Level 5 scores should also be given to underachievers whom you are trying to get transferred out of your group as they become very attractive to other managers looking to fill headcount.

Level 4 - Meets and Usually Exceeds Job Requirements

Attitude at this level is above average in acceptable requirements for the position. Proper perspective is usually maintained with the occasional lapse into free thinking.

Level 3 - Consistently Meets Job Requirements

Performance at this level is noted for average levels of acceptable prostration. Employee is prone to bouts of abstract thought, sometimes mixed with a dangerous practicality for the position. Assigning this performance level is perfect however, for managers who wish to discourage competing projects from stealing talent; therefore your best talent should never get any higher than this level.

Level 2 - Inconsistent in Meeting Job Requirements

Fear at this level is at the minimum of acceptable requirements for the position. Levels of servitude are only marginally met.

Level 1 - Uppity

Please refer this employee to HR.

Tripper

Software Developer

Goals and Accomplishments

I wrote lots of code, fixed lots of a bugs. What else do you need to know? I am told I have problems relating to my co-workers. Something is hampering my productivity, maybe that's what it is. I feel I have a healthy respect for the IQ of my fellow developers. In fact, I am constantly reminded of the soaring levels of intellegence I encounter as a matter of course in my work place which in turn triggers my ever growing respect for stupid people.

Manager Feedback

Rating: Level 3

Tripper is a unique asset to the company who rationalizes to his own drummer. He has grown comfortable with his bitterness which he wears nobly on his sleeve. Gratefully, thus far he has not infected the teams he has worked on. Never seen in the office without his curious trademark well-worn cricket bat that he uses to great personal effect. The fear instilled in those around him may be misplaced but overall it is a positive side benefit for the company. His days of stabbing marketing representatives in the thigh with a pen in a rage seem to be behind him. Recommendation: Continue anger management training.

Hank Weiner

Vice President of Product Development and Marketing

Goals and Accomplishments

review of personal goals for the last fiscal period:

get super excited about products being developed
tighten belts
promote unbridled consumerism as the "american way"
continue to make life challenging and "rewarding" in the galleys
reign in and closely manage incompetence
defend the honor of the mission
find a mission
find a competitor
make the competitor the mission (!)

despite the current market conditions putting a damper on my opportunities, i still managed to accomplish all these goals. i am very open to any suggestions that will help get done what needs to get done.

Manager Feedback

Rating: Level 3+

Hank can be counted on as our "just do it" guy. He has a good understanding of the fundamentals of the company and a special brand of loyalty amongst those on his team. Recommendation: He needs to continue in his current ways and he is assured a solid future at the company (that is: bonus and re-title but do not promote).

Simon

Program Manager

Goals and Accomplishments

Manager Feedback

Rating: Level 3

Started out a fresh, up-and-comer developer with a lot of promise. Switched to program management where, as all good talent should, he quickly got caught up in the agendas of others. It is rumored that he has taken up smoking again and is currently on the lam having wracked up insurmountable poker debt to his colleagues which could account for his popularity while non est inventus. Recommendation: Find him at all costs.

George Slimmer

Project Manager

Goals and Accomplishments

I have enclosed a small packet detailing my goals and accomplishments during this last review period. Here are some of the highlights:

[HR NOTE: extensive and redundant slide presentations, spreadsheets, project schedules and other document have been purged from this filing.]

Goal	Accomplishment
Designed and proposed new project	Upper management approved with only some reservations about market reception as they didn't fully understand/appreciate the goals of the project. Awaiting final approval.
Did extensive prototype user testing on a wide variety of neophytes based on upper management's hesitation.	Reviewing the video tapes of the test we definitively saw one of the participants shake their heads and say "wow." Cool.
Wrote detailed specifications for features of new project based on the success of the above mentioned usability tests.	Development team is currently reviewing for "sanity check." Expecting approval any time.
Outlined detailed plans to merge project teams and melding code bases as the core implementation strategy for completing on time and reusing company resources.	Currently on track for shipping in 2012. (Assuming everything goes as planned. Keeping our fingers crossed and hopeful since we have so many killer Level 5 performers in our group.)

[HR NOTE: More detailed descriptions here removed for lack of sufficiently recognizable biological animation.]

So in summary: All in all it's been a very productive period with lots of great progress being made and a lot getting accomplished (as evidenced by accompanying documentation). I really like working here (it really is a privilege) and even though I get a tad frustrated sometimes, I understand it's just part of working for such a large pool of resources as we have. Customers would be thrilled if they knew how good we really are. Also it would help to fix the internal email system -- many of my messages that go to other divisions are never replied to making it hard to work across company-wide boundaries and build up the proper inter-dependencies. Since I've already been doing many of the duties of a vice-president it seems like a promotion would be the natural progression. I await your approval.

Manager Feedback

Rating: Level 3

George is a tough case because he is so effective in his current position. If his projects continue to fail technically, get cancelled, implode from their own weight and get rejected by both the marketplace and development community alike then we should seriously consider him for a vice presidency. Until then we should adopt our usual "wait and fail" attitude. Recommendation: He should continue his good work in Building 7.

Jerry

Development Lead

Goals and Accomplishments

I wasn't sure that I would like working here but I definitely appreciate it now. This company has unique things to offer me and I hope I have taken advantage of every one of them. (If not, I'm always open to hearing about more.) I've got a great, hard working staff that I've managed to build up over the years and I'm grateful for the pool of talent available to me, especially Caroline and the test team who I have a lot of respect for. The only issues revolve around the amount of work -- these seems to be a lot on our plates nowadays and I can't seem to shake it. The goal this term is to really focus on the important things and prioritize around those -- otherwise we are in serious risk of not shipping up to quality and on time.

Manager Feedback

Rating: Level 3

Jerry looks like the perfect development team leader. He sets the kind of example upper management loves by working hard and delivering good products in reasonable time frames with limited man-power. He also finds time to organize and lead extracurricular activities such as the company bowling league and the ice hockey charity games. His bi-weekly staff meetings are run with the cunning and precision of a well established poker game. (In fact, considering the green felt on the conference table and sound of chips clanking about you would swear his bi-weekly staff meetings really are poker games.) Recommendation: Assign more projects to him, especially those starved for headcount as this seems to be his special talent.

Caroline

Quality Assurance Manager

Goals and Accomplishments

Working with limited resources and an ever sliding schedule and spec make my job a little harder than it needs to be but despite those obstacles my team has managed to put in extra hours and found 14,918,276 bugs on 36,980 lines of code in the last product cycle. I think Jerry is the perfect supervisor for me since we relate so well to each other and have a lot of mutual respect. We get along great and this has proven very productive since the test team really respects him as well.

Manager Feedback

Rating: Level 3

Caroline is a find. She's a real who looks like she knows how to great. Recommendation: Transfer immediately as she is definitely material management can work with.

Sandeep

Senior Software Developer

Goals and Accomplishments

Goals for this period included finishing the current project while helping the leap-frog team get up and running with the next version. So far, so good. I've managed to clean up the existing code (including deciphering and adding verbose, consistent comments to some very ancient code we still seem to be dependent on.) I've also managed to keep abreast of industry trends, learning the inner workings of several new server based messaging languages. I think there are many things in these technologies we could learn from and thereby avoid many silly pitfalls in some of our coding. I'm hoping to incorporate these in the next version. While I have to admit that I am stumped by some of the managerial decisions, I am nonetheless appreciative of their energy and youthfulness.

Manager Feedback

Rating: Level 2.5

Venerable "old dog" at the software development game. Emigrated from India and brings a lot of "old world" values to his projects. Reliable, trustworthy, a good code producer and a mentor to many of the younger developers. Sandeep is, therefore, a real pain in the ass for the company. Questions everything, impossible to please. A real whiner. Recommendation: keep away from important strategic initiatives.