If you are thinking to move to other group think again as you will definitely be handed a SSL4/5 in next focal by your old manager. Why would your previous manager give his other people SSL4/5 while you are no longer there. My friend who is a excellent employee had this happened to him and he got the ISP. His exist interview is today.
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Got the VSP "too long in grade with SSL3 for multiple years in a row". So, I pulled the dept manager aside. Told her I'm stuck on nights (CS OPS) in a dying factory. There are NO opportunities for growth. It's purely sustaining/break fix now. So, since my engineering peer is taking ERB, we'll visit a move to that job. Pay cut? Yes. Crappy day shift hrs? Yes. Opportunity to build on what I like to do? Yes. Still not sure it's worth staying though. No matter of shuffling around will right the ship. We're just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
This happened to someone I know. They challenged the SSL4 with HR and got it changed. Thank goodness. That happened right before the first "SSL4 cut"...
How good can we be as a company if everyone is playing not to make a mistake? What a disaster.
BEST POST YET!!! F YES!!
"Intel has a management problem they refuse to address. They are great about cutting potential performance issue employees, but they never address the 35% bad management staff they have. And there's the wound at Intel that won't heal anytime soon."
Advice for all remaining employees, apply to new roles after you receive your focal result!
Whoever is listed as your mgr on Dec. 31st is responsible for doing your focal evaluation and assigning rating/money/stock.
I've moved the last two years and neither time did my precious manager take part in my focal. Both times I moved I served a 6 month stint in the new group and did just fine. I busted my assof course but getting a low stock level from my previous manager wasn't a problem because I didn't ask them to weigh in on my focal.
My old manager go re-organized and lost 3 of his direct reports to the new manager. I had successful SL2 but did the right thing for the new manager. Put in plenty of notice, they hired 3 people to replace me (from the new manager's site). I trained them, put all procedural manuals in place and then went on sabbatical, knowing I would be up to move to a different job when I came back. Guess which new manager gave SSL4 to the employee who is leaving and had sabbatical in favor of his same site cronies? I was told "we just didn't have enough budget and you're still successful, it's only a few less stock, nothing to worry about". To this day I can't believe I was naïve enough to not challenge his BS. HR at ODI told me later it is rare for a person to go from almost exceeds SSL2 to successful SSL4 in the same role in the same group within 1 year, however they would not change anything.
SSL4 is poison, even in the new role you're seen as the expendable candidate being the newest person on the team. It makes it hard for you to go to another group as all managers immediately perceive that you're a bad performer, no matter how much you produce and ramp. All the current employees are going to be rated higher than the new guy unless you have a good manager. Most will take the easy way out and the previous ISP means you have an "Expendable" target painted on your back. That led to me getting ISP last year. So yes, there are terrible managers out there who will shaft good employees.
Now I'm in a much better job, pays the same, less hours, more respect and most importantly I have a good manager that isn't going to ding me for taking sabbatical. I feel sorry for the current and future ex-Intel employees being put through this and worrying about their current and future job security. Hang in there. Network. Do not give in to fear or pessimism. There is a big world of opportunity out there waiting for you to come take it with your own hands.
@H7wGyVh-der: If you move to a different team because you need something new to do, then you will have a ramp time. When you are ramping, you are not performing. I don't know why you want to switch teams if you can perform on par with the experts in the new team unless you are in a toxic environment or your project is being canned or you want to move to a different site. Punishing people with low stock level for changing teams will take away the opportunity to develop new skills from the workers. Staying in the same job for security for years will make you bored and you will not develop as an employee which is bad for a employee's career. So the only option left for people if they want to do something different is to move to a group where they know the manager before hand and completely trust him not to screw them (it is very rare for everything to line up like this) or move to a different company.
I switched my groups few years back (middle of year) and since then I was always offered SSL2/1 ny my current manager. I loved my current job and my manager knows it too. However my old manager was a ....... . and would have not working by now unless I switched the group by then. As you mentioned, one of my new group hire (from another group) who joined the group few months back got ISP recently. So what I have to tell is that, if you can not maintain the same speed as the rest of the experts in the group right from the beginning, it is very risky to switch groups in this environment. I did lot of research before switching the group.
This is definitely the case. Bad managers have all the power. All they have to do is give you low stock and you're out the door. Lots of people walked out this year (and last) were high performers with a poor manager.
OP is correct, there is a cut-off for Focal budget each year, any ee who transitions to a new position in Q4 of prior year will appear in their previous manager's Focal budget data. It is common practice (unfortunately) that the previous manager (referred to in HR speak as the "losing manager") will assign low SSL because that ee has moved on and they try to spread their stock budget across their team for current team that they need to keep motivated. So unfortunately, they will assign low SSL without thought, and pass that information on to the "gaining" manager for delivery to the ee.
This process is completely inappropriate because, the philosophy of SSL is that it represents the assessment of the FUTURE value add of the ee, while the rating is for the PAST performance of the ee over the prior year (dec - jan). Therefore, it stands to reason that the losing manager should not have the authority to assign SSL for an ee that has since moved on, it should be the gaining manager who assigns SSL and the losing manager simply assign the rating. This was brought up several times in the past however, Intel didn't want to spend the money to update the Focal tool to address this....
Ee's who have switched groups, beware...
@H7wGyVh-jmo, wonder how many manager like yours exists @Intel
I think your focal will be done by your new manager and not old one. Either case, you getting low stock during that transition is very posible depending on how long you were in the new role.
If you have a good manager this would never happen. I was promoted by my old manager when I switched teams.
Damn if you do and damn if you don't. Time to leave this company