So tired of feeback that doesn't include a single thing I can control. We have all heard it, right?
"You are in a very competitive rank group."
"There is downward pressure this year."
"The job you are in isn't visible enough."
"You are too technical."
"The company is changing."
You speak the truth. I worked there many years and had to deal with that terrible ranking system every year. I would tell the new engineers that just came out of their ranking session all disappointed to just get two years in then get a better job with a better company.
20 years ago when I was younger, my immediate supervisor told me “When I want to hear things I want to hear, I go to other people in the group (who were mostly hat contractors). When I need to hear things I need to hear, I go to you”.
That feedback as a young engineer shaped who I was, and stayed with me throughout my career.
Unfortunately, the model changed to having a supervisor back in Houston “steward” your career. In the span of 10 years, I had 9 supervisors. I got older, they got younger. The messaging became, “You’re not fit-for-risk”, “We appreciate all the hard work you’re doing, but it doesn’t help us win. You need to pull in the same direction”. The last one was in the era of “minimum kit, justified adds”.
Industry standard is no standard. Industry standard is below what any one company would (should) actually accept, since they had to reach an agreement somehow by removing “nice-to-haves”.
Before it was with equipment. Now they’re doing the same thing with people. We will get to the point where a major incident will occur. The talking heads won’t know what to say anymore. The equipment won’t last as long since it comes from places in the world that make disposable items.
So the extra metal that once allowed us to increase capacity, modify and improve the processes…coupled with the vacuum of knowledge, will result in people getting hurt.
“Nobody gets hurt” is a hopeful statement. But “hope is not a strategy.
My manager's most famous quote to me was, "You are at least five steps ahead of most employees in this organization. You just do not have the patience to allow them to catch up to you."
This statement was made just before they dropped me in the rankings.
While I’ve certainly heard all of OP’s gems in feedback sessions over the years…my actual top three are the following (and yes, my supervisors at the time really said these to me in performance reviews):
The actual feedback messages are
"You didn't sleep with me"
"You slept with those people that I don't like"
"There was not enough downward pressure applied to the right spot"
@ab+1k02qb88x D8mn
I spent 2020 in China during covid going vessel inspections. I was the only engineer qualified to do them and in fact went to multiple fab yards to help. Was told sitting my ranking that my work was easy and repetitive so couldn’t rank me higher.
The way ranking is being done these days they would be better off just calling the whole thing off and admitting that they only spend time developing the careers of HiPos. For everyone else it is just a job and they can quit with the lies that it is anything more.