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http://dilbert.com/strip/2018-11-01
and btw I love Dilbert but am so angry about Scott’s pro a trump stance that I am sad
I had an argument with a manager who insisted that adequate wasn't good enough.
and btw I love Dilbert but am so angry about Scott’s pro a trump stance that I am sad
Yep. I tried for a while to read it on the basis that you should try to listen outside your bubble a bit but it got too much. I'm sure in the end he will claim the Edinburgh defence though
Proper lol @timidwheeler ‘s manager. People really need to learn logic in school. It’s the basis for understanding maths.
Thats a wonderful cartoon, I'm saving it for an appropriate occasion.
I was once put on a PIP, with a written warning, for not hitting SLAs.
'Which ones have I missed?'
'These ones'
*looks at evidence* 'But I've done all these within the SLA?'
'Yes, but you haven't beaten it by enough'
Proper lol @timidwheeler ‘s manager. People really need to learn logic in school. It’s the basis for understanding maths.
To my mind adequate is like a GCSE pass grade. It's not the best it can be. It's just adequate. Not great is it?
yep no issues with that. But what’s the definition of adequate? good enough?
adequate is good enough
Yep. I can see the semantics is a bit confused but the meaning is clear. Reminds me of this quote from The Caine Mutiny: "Aboard my ship, excellent performance is standard, standard performance is sub-standard, and sub-standard performance is not permitted to exist - that, I warn you."
Just asked on the abendessen what’s app group and apparently 6 inches is good enough. But then they are a bit continental.
Bonus eh.
Flash git.
😉
If the scope is agreed then adaquate would be meeting the scope.
Over and above is costing you/your company extra money.
Our lot go at great pains to make this clear to us .....so I apply it to my effort to the company also.
My very first annual appraisal, one year into my first job. I got an "acceptable" score because, although I'd exceeded my targets to a "good" level, my boss thought I should have been capable of "excellent". Our working relationship didn't really recover from that (especially as he'd given me no clue during the year that my performance was insufficiently excellent to be treated as good).
Our company used to give you a rating in appraisal, but you were graded 'on a curve' as they say in the US within your team. So you could only have one top score, so many middle and one bottom. This means that if all your team were great most of them would still get middle scores, likewise if all your team were shit. You were put in competition with your team mates. So people would keep leads and ideas to themselves instead of sharing. I am good mates with a few of my team so we didn't do this out of solidarity but it was happening elsewhere.
Now though they've realised what a stupid idea that was and changed it. After consulting with the workforce 🙂
That sort of approach is required when you have weak managers who just say everyone is good. In a team of 10 you can always differentiate the best 2 or 3 with the worst 2 or 3 and fitting a curse ensures this is done and people are rewarded for their effort.
<div class="bbp-reply-author">"tomhoward
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I was once put on a PIP, with a written warning, for not hitting SLAs.
‘Which ones have I missed?’
‘These ones’
*looks at evidence* ‘But I’ve done all these within the SLA?’
‘Yes, but you haven’t beaten it by enough’"
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I got that when I was in the bank. I was like "go on then, put it in writing, quick as you can"
Also in the bank: "That's the sort of exceptional service we take for granted". Yes, yes it is but I don't think it means quite what you think it means
Proper lol @timidwheeler ‘s manager. People really need to learn logic in school. It’s the basis for understanding maths.
I was assessing a student. I signed them off as competent noting that their "performance was adequate". I was told that this was not good enough and all our students should be more than adequate in order to meet the required standard.
Our company has a pretty egalitarian bonus scheme. If the company meets or exceeds the revenue target for the year we all get one, which is percentage of your salary. Junior staff get 7.5%, senior staff get 15%. The two bands is a bit elitist, but at least we're all in the same boat as to whether you get one or not.
am so angry about Scott’s pro a trump stance that I am sad
He's got previous. I love Dilbert, but Adams' politics are somewhat questionable. He's a "men's rights" activist amongst other things. Here's a choice Adams quote:
"The reality is that women are treated differently by society for exactly the same reason that children and the mentally handicapped are treated differently."
His response to the backlash from this was to imply that anyone disagreeing with him were too emotional to understand what he meant.
I love Dilbert, but Adams’ politics are somewhat questionable.
+1 for this. I used to really enjoy his blog, when it was clever and thought provoking.
As soon as Trump came on the scene it descended rapidly into madness.
In the world of audit adequate is high praise indeed.
Now though they’ve realised what a stupid idea that was and changed it.
Some IT companies are known for either still doing or having done the extreme version of this. Where the bottom ranking people were automatically fired each year. So wasnt so much office politics and office open warfare and they ended up losing good people if they happened to be in the really good teams.
Not just employers - supposedly intelligent people in charge of education do it too. Sir Michael Wilshaw, the chief inspector of schools and head of Ofsted at the time , famously condemned the fact that one in five pupils were leaving primary school without reaching the "national average" in English.
Some IT companies are known for either still doing or having done the extreme version of this. Where the bottom ranking people were automatically fired each year.
Amazon and Netflix are this mentality on steroids e.g. targets for % of staff to be dismissed each year etc.
Amazon and Netflix are this mentality on steroids e.g. targets for % of staff to be dismissed each year etc.
Jack Welch has a lot to answer for popularising that.
I once had an interesting conversation after a week long training course. I was told that clearly I’d knew I’d pass as I walked in on the first morning with huge confidence and showed it through out. I did pass but was pulled for not reaching my normal high marks. I got 97% not 100%.
They suggested I should be disappointed in myself, I told them I wasn’t and they should mark my paper again as I knew I’d got everything right and at a pass of 65% that’s all I needed so why have a pop.
I did get 100% 😬
Where the bottom ranking people were automatically fired each year. So wasn't so much office politics and office open warfare and they ended up losing good people if they happened to be in the really good teams.
Been in same ranking system but never seen good people made redundant because of it (I am in a large company though) There were always enough not so good people to remove and in the rare case a good person was at bottom they just moved internally (and easily got another job because they were good!)
If you are trying to reduce costs by removing people (which is usually a pretty good way of doing it) then it seems like a fair approach to me.
None of my managers have ever been left in any doubt about the contempt in which I hold the annual PD game.
None of my managers have ever been left in any doubt about the contempt in which I hold the annual PD game.
Thankfully my manager has the same attitude hence I've not had a Performance review or any objectives set for so long that I can't actually remember the last time it happened.....
I’m still waiting for my midterm review for 2012. Paperwork manages to be completed on time and I get a pay rise each year due to me exceeding expectations.
A colleague once wrote on his review in answer to his relationship with his manager, “my management interactions endanger my motivation”. No one batted an eyelid.
If you are trying to reduce costs by removing people (which is usually a pretty good way of doing it) then it seems like a fair approach to me.
Depends how how much you have to pay out after the inevitable tribunal, that you’ll lose, I guess.
We have a crappy annual appraisal system, no one gets automatically fired but a certain %age of people need to be fit into each category (I think it's 5, 10, 70, 10, 5% with 70% being the "meets expectations"). Trouble is it's still very subjective as it depends on how high the standards of your reviewing manager are but also means a certain amount of people need to be in the "you're absolutely useless" category - fortunately there's been enough people that can't be arsed to actually go through the review process (so automatically get the lowest rating) that it's not caused dramas yet but it still pisses me off. I just do the minimum (in the review) to get the middle mark (although apparently answering "." to 15 questions relating to career aspirations and development wasn't sufficient information...).
At my last job it was a case of my boss leaning over from his desk next to mine and asking if everything was going OK. At the job before that my manager was as much a cynic (if not more so) as I was about the whole performance review system so we'd use the appraisal meeting to big up things I'd done.
We get rated in 5 categories. I can get below expectations in two of them and normal in two, and my manager makes me feel great after the meeting. Another manager within our division can give colleagues five 'exceeding expectations' and still make them feel like shit.
Depends how how much you have to pay out after the inevitable tribunal, that you’ll lose, I guess.
Why would I lose. As long as people have been fairly ranked removing the lowest ranked individuals is a legal method of redundancy. Have done it quite a few times and never come anywhere near a tribunal.
If you have then it suggests you didn't do it very well...
molgrips wrote
We get rated in 5 categories. I can get below expectations in two of them and normal in two, and my manager makes me feel great after the meeting. Another manager within our division can give colleagues five ‘exceeding expectations’ and still make them feel like shit.
"I expected you to be an abject failure who quit after two months but you are scraping through by the very skin of your teeth" is still "exceeding expectations" - if your expectations are low to begin with 🙂
Mate of mine worked until recently in Abu Dhabi. Managed a small team made up of local employees. After his first set of performance reviews he was called in by the Director of HR (also a local) and asked why he had given 'satisfactory' ratings to his team members, and why was he unhappy with their performance. To which he replied that he wasn't unhappy, hence the satisfactory ratings. At which point HR explained that 'satisfactory' meant turning up to work each day. Any more than that (like actually doing the job whilst there) was deemed to be 'highly satisfactory' at least, and if they didn't break anything then it could even be 'excellent'. Different world
As long as people have been fairly ranked removing the lowest ranked individuals is a legal method of redundancy.
I'm not sure I understand that. Redundancy is when a POST ceases to exist isn't it?
As long as people have been fairly ranked removing the lowest ranked individuals is a legal method of redundancy.
Agreed, it would be interesting to know if you were carrying out a redundancy process by permanently (or at least for the medium term) reducing the head count and not reemploying. If so, that is not what is being discussed above.
My personal bugbear. I was line manager to a supervisor who was, frankly crap. She’d organised a project before she came to my dept which enjoyed some success, but she’s done it by going out and doing all the work herself rather than leading her team. Based on the result of this she was given a job with strategic responsibilities, working alongside the local authority lead on a complex work stream. She immediately fell out with her LA colleagues and was hopelessly out of her depth. I spent many frustrating hours showing her how to knit together strategic requirements into operational delivery, encouraging her to look for best practice basically leading her by the nose, but it all fell on stony ground. I felt sorry for her, but she was clearly promoted beyond her ability, and ended up resenting what she perceived as my criticism.
Come appraisal time we had a long heart to heart and we discussed how she needed to grow into the role, and graded her as mostly meets expectations with one requires improvement. I thought I was being generous. Cue a bitter and protracted grievance procedure involving my line manager who told me she had demanded that her grading was changed to exceeds expectations across the board. Her evidence was that she’d been so graded over the last three years, and needed a stellar appraisal report so she could apply for further promotion. I offered to regrade her more honestly and produced detailed evidence as to why. Her gradings stood.