… and a raise, to boot!
I was working in the IT dev lab all day today, with customer reps in town to learn how to maintain the system we’re delivering to them. I returned to my (scarcely used) desk at the end of the day, to find a mysterious envelope marked: COMPANY CONFIDENTIAL, with my name on it.
Inside, I found the results of my performance review, and I didn’t even know one was being done! And I got a raise to go with it! It was a cost of living adjustment, but see the backplot:
The last time I had a review was in 1998. In 1999, I changed jobs within the company about a month before it was time for my review, so the review got mucked up in the shuffle. In 2000, the parent corporation decided to put all its subsidiaries onto a single performance measurement system, so everybody’s review got mucked up. Before I could have a review under the new system, my program’s budget got cut, and I got laid off. Raises were given out in mid-2000, based on managment’s best informal estimate and available money.
After the budget cut, I found a job with another company in late 2000. And never had a review or a pay change with them, for five years, after which I left. And somewhere in the middle of that, I went to my supervisor and asked for a review. I was told the following week that my request had been sent up to the manager who would do it; then I was told that it was being worked on; then I was told it was being worked on – and then nobody said anything further.
So I’m glad to have outside feedback for the first time in too many years; when I took this job full-time I had specifically made sure that they did reviews on a regular basis. And the CoLA is more than I got at the last company.
I might, if I’m so inclined, spring for a round of drinks at the upcoming MADopefest.