1. The rater’s IQ need not be superior to the ratee. Proof is when your boss asks you to draft correspondence that she can very well write under English 101.
2. You must be in the wrong company when the really talented people get low grades and the ones who get high grades (with the equivalent one-month bonus to boot) are those who have mastered the art of geriatric nursing (e.g. wiping someone else’s puny ass)
3. You slept/asslicked your way to the top and you expect me to respect you? It doesn’t matter if you have the power to rate me. Credibility should not be bought or even demanded from your subordinates, it’s earned.
4. Performance evaluations truly suck in companies where the basis for promotion is who you know, not what you know. (and in this case I haven’t had a merit increase in four years which makes me a total bimbo, despite obviously knowing my ABCs).
PEs have also become the ultimate refuge of power-trippers who have been suffering from PMS, gangbanged the wrong way, or accosted for a traffic violation at the time of the rating.
From an email, here are actual quotes taken from Federal Government performance evaluations:
“I would not allow this employee to breed.”
“This employee is really not so much of a has-been, but more of a definite won’t be.”
“This young lady has delusions of adequacy.”
“He sets low personal standards and then consistently fails to achieve them.”
“This employee is depriving a village somewhere of an idiot.”
“This employee should go far, and the sooner he starts the better.”
“A gross ignoramus — 144 times worse than an ordinary ignoramus.”
“He’s been working with glue too much.”
“He brings a lot of joy whenever he leaves the room.”
“When his IQ reaches 50, he should sell.”
“A photographic memory but with the lens cover glued on.”
“A prime candidate for natural de-selection.”
“Donated his brain to science before he was done using it.”
“If you give him a penny for his thoughts, you’d get change.”
“Takes him two hours to watch 60 Minutes.”
“It’s hard to believe he beat out 1,000,000 other sperm.”
Career Thoughts for the Day from Tom Peters:
It’s over. No more vertical. No more ladder. That’s not the way careers work anymore. Linearity is out. A career is now a checkerboard. Or even a maze. It’s full of moves that go sideways, forward, slide on the diagonal, even go backward when that makes sense. (It often does.) A career is a portfolio of projects that teach you new skills, gain you new expertise, develop new capabilities, grow your colleague set, and constantly reinvent you as a brand.
As you scope out the path your “career” will take, remember: the last thing you want to do is become a manager. Like “résumé,” “manager” is an obsolete term. It’s practically synonymous with “dead end job.” What you want is a steady diet of more interesting, more challenging, more provocative projects. When you look at the progression of a career constructed out of projects, directionality is not only hard to track — Which way is up? — but it’s also totally irrelevant.
Instead of making yourself a slave to the concept of a career ladder, reinvent yourself on a semiregular basis. Start by writing your own mission statement, to guide you as CEO of Me Inc.
It’s this simple: You are a brand. You are in charge of your brand. There is no single path to success. And there is no one right way to create the brand called You. Except this: Start today. Or else.
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