Performance self-evaluation

Question

My company has changed its methods of performance review to incorporate
the labor-saving (for those who matter) step of having employees
evaluate themselves. I know that many of you have had to wrestle with
this very issue, and because you are the smartest group of people
around, I know I am turning to the right advisors when I ask you: What
is the cleverest and most professional way of stating that you are doing
the work of three to four people, with fewer resources than were
available to you a decade ago, and therefore the fact that "the lights
are still on" is a testament to your ability and general staunchness?

Answer 1

I used to have a Mordac cartoon taped to my door. Hehe.
"Jim Henderson" wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
On Thu, 24 Oct 2013 08:57:33 +0000, Dave Taylor wrote:
> Jim Henderson <[email protected]> wrote in news:0pW9u.351
> [email protected]:
>
>> On Wed, 23 Oct 2013 20:20:22 +0000, Craig Wilson wrote:
>>
>>> If the lights NEVER go out, they will never appreciate you. Quickly
>>> fixing a broken network is what makes an admin great.
>>
>> If the organization understands that.
>
> Most don't. At all. A bad sign is the term "Hard Drive" referring to
> the PC on the desk from Management, especially when it is your boss or
> your boss's boss.
I've worked for some that did - and they were great companies to work
for. It's the ones that think technology never fails without human
intervention that you need to be extremely wary of.
>> I once worked for a company that didn't understand that. Instead of
>> being happy that I was able to recover most of the data from a crashed
>> server (by calling in a few favors), they were angry that I "hadn't
>> told them the backups were no good" (which actually meant "I hadn't
>> made them listen to me when I said the backups were failing").
>
> /Mumble
I had a lot more to say about it than that. I've told the story here
before about that - I was scheduled for a sponsored trip to N+I that
year, and the employer was going to make me take vacation time for the
trip. The excuse given was "if the plane crashes, our insurance would be
responsible for paying out, and since we're not paying for the trip, it'd
just be a mess to sort it out." Yeah, because planes between SLC and Las
Vegas crash every other day. They had apparently never heard of a nifty
little legal thing called a "waiver of liability".
So when they decided to *suspend me without pay* (for their failure to
listen to me), they pitched my ability to go to N+I without buring
vacation time as a "silver lining".
So I went. I learned stuff. I then refused to use what I learned on the
job. Didn't stay much longer after that - one instance of "Oh, you know,
I talked to 3Com at N+I about something like this, but I don't remember
now what they told me."
I was a *lot* younger (and far less wise) then. But it did feel good
to be able to say that (at the time).
When I left (over a different issue - a very poor manager to doled out
blame and grabbed all the praise for the team's work), I left with
nothing to go to - and even though I nearly lost my house because of the
lack of work, having *nothing* to go to was an improvement in
circumstances. That place was "the underworld" to work at.
>> Some companies do look to mete out blame when IT systems fail. Those
>> companies tend to not retain competent admins for very long.
>>
>> Jim
>>
>>
> I heard of an admin getting caught making errors he could easily fix.
> Don't be that person. Be the "Is there anything else I can do for you
> while I am here" person.
Yep, that's excellent advice. Those who could be identified as "Mordac,
the preventer of information services" tend not to last long.
Jim
Jim Henderson, CNA6, CDE, CNI, LPIC-1, CLA10, CLP10
Novell/SUSE/NetIQ Knowledge Partner