Midyear reviews

One of the many bizarre additions to my life since going corporate has been the annual review process. In our company, that means a several step process including writing objectives, writing an annual personal development plan, a midyear review and an end of year review. The entire system was developed by human resources types and has only minimal actual relevance to laboratory workers. We would treat it as such except that end of year bonuses are tied to the ratings on the final process, so we have a little motivation to try and take it seriously.

Right now is midyear review season. Everyone spent last week writing pithy comments about how they were progressing along towards their objectives and this week we're all getting called into our managers' offices for half an hour of deep and insightful examination of our performance.

Back in grad school, "performance evaluations" were usually limited to belittling comments in lab meeting and the occasional impromptu dressing down just for fun. This whole process is still kind of foreign to me.

I have, however, noticed there are two basic approaches to the whole review:
(1) Thoroughly nonchalant. This person dashes off his/her comments in an hour or so, doesn't really worry too much about what will be said and probably has little to worry about. There may be offhand jokes with their manager about the whole matter.
(2) Bitter. Somewhere in this person's past is at least one very honest review. But it wasn't their fault. It never is. Their manager hates them.

So far, I am falling into category 1. I'll keep you posted.