Does the Top Achiever designation lag by a year? I've received it twice, both times I thought I had a better year the year prior than the year I was awarded TA. I was disappointed when the first year I was merely achiever and then the following year, following a less stellar year, recieved TA. Both times.
Just something that's been needling in the back of my mind.
Management usually doesn't give out top achiever to people in their first year because it's a waste. Your bonus gets prorated to the number of days you worked unless you literally started on Jan 1 of the year.
It’s really tough to decide who to give it to, even when you go strictly by merit, which has been what every team I’ve been on has tried to do. The guidelines used to be 15 percent could receive TAs. You really have to lead a very high profile project or do something remarkable to get it. There’s no shame in being an achiever.
Each department gets only a small number of TA's to hand out so the supervisor's/manager's try to spread it around if possible, which can make it tough to get a TA two years in a row.
There can be a lot of politics when deciding who gets a TA and it can vary based on the team. In one team the discussion started with us being told that the LL4 wanted a specific person to get the TA. The LL4 wanted to be called before it was finalized if there was resistance to giving the golden child the TA. In another team there was a group who would decide before the meeting who they wanted to get the TA. If someone other than their pick was proposed they would throw out all sorts of petty things they didn’t like about the person being proposed making it difficult to get consensus. Another team that was a little less political told me that a contributor needed to perform at TA level for a number of years before they could be considered for TA. Depending on the team TA can be about the work but it is rarely only about the work.
No it does not.
Frankly in most areas the rankings have very little to do with ones accomplishments and skills. For GSRs a bunch of LL6 get together and tell tall tales about the achievements of their team, then they vote on each other’s GSRs. Before the meeting the LL6 make deals with each other to vote for each other’s GSRs, and to speak for each other’s GSRs (more tall tales). The LL5s pull LL6s aside and verbally tell them who they want to get high marks (one year I asked the LL5 if he could email me the ranking list he wanted so I could be sure to vote like he wanted, he never did email that list).
Since the voting is in the open, rat finks tell the LL5s about and LL6 who voted on merit instead of voting for the LL5 pets.
People will get their feelings hurt and claim - oh no the process is obviously merit based, because I always deserved the high marks I got. But in 19 years as an LL6, there were only two years when an LL5 didn’t try to influence the rankings. There were only three years where the “PDC” committee voted on merits.