Whew!

[susandennis]

Today at the pool, the rumor mill said that the pool was going to close for 6 days sometime before Thanksgiving so they could replace the skylights.  One person said 2 days and then another 2 days.  Another person said 3 days and then another 3 days.  I decided not to worry about it.

Tonight I checked the web page and whew.  The pool is closing this Friday and Saturday and next Friday and Saturday BUT they are opening on both Fridays for my early morning swims so, in reality, the only shifting I have to do is Saturdays.  I'll probably go back to my old pool and maybe even take a class again.  Nice.

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Tomorrow I get to meet a long time LJ friend. babsbuni was on my friends list forever and then, like so many, kind of moved away from LJ and went off my list in some purge or another.  But, apparently, she did not lose me and last week said she would be here for work and staying at the hotel 2 blocks from my house!!  and could we get together.  ABSOLUTELY!!  Plus, tonight, I realized that she was actually not on my friends list and has be posting a little so maybe she'll come back now that I've added her back in :).  Anyway, I'm really looking forward to meeting her.

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I just read that Microsoft has changed its evaluation system.  Just as I was leaving the company, they implemented this strange performance curve grading system. Every manager had to rank the people reporting to them on a true curve. This means at any given time, someone who reports to them had to be terminated or put on a program towards termination.  Of course, this didn't happen across the board but I do know of people who didn't suck who were fired because of the system and I know of at least a couple of managers  who left rather than have to fire people who didn't deserve it.  And, worst of all, it did not cull out those who really needed to be culled - they still managed to stay in and preserve their layer of deadwood.  It was really demoralizing.  And now it's gone. I expect there was a lot of dancing for joy on campus this afternoon.

Comments

[babsbuni.livejournal.com]

Yayayay! I'm looking forward to meeting you! I've been keeping up with people on my FL even though I haven't been posting to LJ. LJ was a very much needed escape when I was married. It was my stress relief and therapy. Now that I've been divorced for 3+ years and I'm so completely happy, I have found I don't need to vent/complain in LJ anymore. I should post more. Now, it would be more of "Yay, my life is great!"

[susandennis]

Hey, you! Don't mock my LJ entries!!

Never mind, I'll take you out in person tomorrow - hehehe

[babsbuni.livejournal.com]

Huh? No no no. No mocking here. But if you think you can take me out in person....bring it!!! (: Woo hoo!

[susandennis]

my lj is just one 'my life is great' entry after another sprinkled with swim reports :)

[babsbuni.livejournal.com]

I've noticed. I love it. Truly.

[mrdreamjeans.livejournal.com]

At my former job, they changed ways they evaluated people each year. I was responsible for writing reviews for my leasing agents. In the final year, my boss was required to tie my performance to that of my leasing agents, in a sense, I was held accountable for their mistakes.. I provided ongoing training, discussed performance issues when they came up; I didn't feel it was fair to score me on their mistakes. Maybe, I was living in a fool's paradise, but my team was rocking it with regard to occupancy numbers. The final year evaluation sealed the deal for me, made me determined to leave.

Enjoy the time with your LJ friend!

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

The intent of the evaluation system is to make everyone strive harder to be one of the top performers. Instead, it tends to create situations in which people aren't as concerned about how the *team* is doing, but about how they, themselves, are doing. It never really made sense, unless you didn't think too hard about it.

I've seen some incredible people say that they despised it because they had teams where *everyone* was a really good performer, and everyone deserved to be well rewarded, and some folks wouldn't be. I can kind of get the notion that some managers will always say that all of their people *really are* top performers, and not all of them can be right. But that doesn't mean that *some* of them aren't.

I've never really understood it.