Mental Overload

So the work thing is getting complex.

We're in the middle of the 'Goals and Objectives' portion of our -- what do normal people call it? Employee evaluation? The thing that's supposed to determine the yearly raises. Yeah, we were just starting to talk to our managers about all the wonderful things we'd done to earn our keep, and then the Company announces there'll be no raises this year.

Well, Mr. Motivation flew right out the window.

It ain't like there'd been a lot before. I'm having a hard time with this whole concept of writing a bunch of corporate-speak to let them know how much I want to give my life to this company anyway. I don't want to give them anything at all. I just want them to allow me to create beautiful systems that keep a plane flying majestically through the air, and pay me fair and square. Instead, they hand me a list of pie-in-the-sky company goals and ask me to sign up to 'em, maybe even give a little detail on how my own personal and career goals coincide with their own ruling-the-universe goals, and everything will be just fine and dandy.

Unfortunately, I'm not a very good team player, leastways not playing by their rules.

Actually, I'm not good at playing games at all. In fact, I hate playing games. Never did get any joy out of beating other people (what most people call 'winning'), and sure as heck-fire didn't get any joy out of losing. I'm not what anyone would call 'gracious' about losing.

It's not like there's much advantage to playing the game, either way. If you write up the meaningless drivel the way they want it, you look good to your boss, but it don't make a whole mess of difference in your pay or your self-esteem. Does anyone really enjoy writing or reading all those magic words and phrases that came straight out of some Business Management book-of-the-month? Does anyone even understand it?

In the old days of test pilots, they looked to their annual physical like this: you could walk out of that office no better than you walked in, or a whole lot worse. There was no advantage to it. Same way with the Employee Evaluations. If you work your tail off trying to make the boss look good, you'll still have to admit some kind of failure along the way because it's required for everyone to have some kind of improvement goals. So some way or t'other, you have to have some criticism. Even if you create the world's best software, your boss has to be able to say that you could've done it better, else there's no concrete goals for next year. Ain't no such thing as perfect.

When you've been dog-tired the whole year, worn to a frazzle and ready to drop, just to support those artificial delivery dates that don't mean anything anyway, there's no way the review is going to be anything but painful. Oh, lots of room for improvement, let me tell you!

So they give me a set of 'template' goals, fresh from the Company brain trust, and tell me to write some of my own that line up with those. And right there at the top of the list is the one that says it all.

"Meet financial targets."

That's CorpSpeak for "Work cheap and fast so we can give lots of dividends to the stockholders; and then when you're done, we're gonna lay you off and ship your job to India. After we send you over there for a month to train the guys who are going to be doing your job."

Last year's version was quite successful. They laid off all the hardest-working guys, then turned around and re-hired them through a contractor (at a steeper price, but at least they didn't have to pay benefits, right?), then told the Customer flat-out that all that turmoil would have absolutely no effect on deliveries.

Right.

So I'm having a bit of difficulty filling out these "Goals and Objectives" without turning all kinds of cynical.

Probably complain more about this later, but this subject is wearying my brain.