Wandering Road

Today I’m having my yearly review at work. It is policy that you are given your review before the meeting so you have time to read it before the discussion. I just went through mine. My favorite quote is

Ian exudes a quiet confidence with the business team and his peers.

Is that good or bad? Is it one of those underhanded compliments where you get slapped in the face while praised? I’m really not sure. I wouldn’t wonder if this other comment weren’t a couple of pages before it:

Sometimes Ian kept his opinions to himself……Going forward, the team would benefit if Ian were to speak up more with his opinions.

So I guess I have a confidence that is apparent without me always blabbing my mouth, but I need to blab more to make people happy. Well, I’ve tried stating my opinion and it doesn’t usually go over well. Management doesn’t like it when you tell them that the way something is being done is wrong and will bite us in the ass. And they really don’t like to hear you come back 2 months later and say you have been bitten in the ass because of the stupid decision they made (that you pointed out was wrong).

Monday I tried this whole “speak up with [my] opinions” thing. I was asked by my lead to do something which I did not think was a good idea. In fact, I thought it was a horrible idea. And I knew that if/when it blew up, I would be the would to blame since I had performed the task. So I tried a new tactic with my lead. I politely told him that I didn’t think we should do it for x reasons, but if he told me to do it I would since he is the lead. This then put the responsibility on him. He was fully aware of what I was doing. If/when things blew up, he was now the one to blame. Well, he didn’t care for someone disagreeing with him and he really didn’t care for being called on his shitty idea. An argument ensued, many of my opinions were stated, and it all ended with me not doing the task (thankfully), being given multiple other tasks instead, and the lead no longer speaking to me for the day. So that is where speaking your opinion gets you on this team.

But back to the review. Overall it is good. Not the best I’ve gotten but I didn’t expect that. The role I’ve been in is not what I want to do in life and thus I wasn’t really excelling in it. Another quote from the review:

Ian would benefit if he were to embrace the Tech Arch role with the same enthusiasm.

Meaning the same enthusiasm I embrace a true technical role. Not a paper pusher/business liaison role. But I am hopeful that this year will be better. In my “Development Priorities for 2006″ section, it mentions a “Migration to a more classical analyst/developer role”. Oh, I sure as hell hope so. I’m tired of offshoring all our development and getting crap code back.

Oh, and the review does come with a good raise so I’m happy there. Extra money never hurts

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