Performance reviews - how do you handle t hem?

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It's time for annual performance reviews. I'm good at my primary work duties but struggle with some situations. For instance, there was a network outage happened in the midde of a webinar I was hosting, and I became visibly upset and did not react well to one of the team members (a non tech person) trying to make himself look better to others in the room by blaming me for the problems. Turned out it was a company wide outoage, but smartypants didn't know it, and decided to take control by putting me down in front of others. Anyway - it was a bad day and I reacted poorly.

My question to the group is, how do you evaluate yourself for social/work related issues that autistic people are going to not do well on by default? Skim over it? Acknowledge the problem and your DX? What's the best approach? FYI, my boss/employer know of my diagnosis (aspergers) and some of the ramifications.

I don't tell my employers that I have an ASD.

I tell the truth within a "self-evaluation," in a diplomatic manner.

If I got a bad review, I wouldn't handle it too well.

My performance reviews are crazy. For the last several years they go from the highest possible praise to the lowest condemnation and intimation that termination is the best option... I have had no idea what my bosses expected and seem to have done great things that saved my job and stupid things that nearly cost my job without any awareness of what or why. The reviews always seem to blindside me.

My approach to the ghastly torture they call "self appraisal" is to write about what I really enjoy and am good at, notable things that were problems and I could use training to do better on and so on. This is an area where there is very little feedback, so I never know if I did that well or badly.

I think this may be one of those situations where you are supposed to absorb understanding by telepathy or osmosis and somehow just get it. I don't.

I am sorry that you have to go through this. I am having my own evaluation in a couple of weeks. I have absolutely NO idea what to expect.

Supposedly HR is revamping the whole annual review processes to "improve" it. I suspect this will mean things will be even worse next year, but I try to suppress this kind of negative expectation as it is wrong at least 50% of the time.

I hate them and do little to self-advocate in them. At best I ignore the negatives and gloss over the positives with one liners. I find them to be rather pointless in practice for the most part. It IS helpful in understanding how your employer is viewing your work if they take it seriously. As far as advice all I can say is that it is an opportunity to improve your image so unless requested to discuss this particular incident I would ignore it. NT's have bad days and inappropriate reactions as well so don't beat yourself up over it. Good luck!

Apparently I handle them poorly. In my last one...well, there had been a political fiasco in reaction to something I'd done, but all agreed that it came from space and couldn't have been foreseen, wasn't actually my fault. Then up it pops on my review, with something about "the furor" over it. I pitched a fit, refused to sign it until that section was rewritten, and my poor boss could not understand why I was upset. I wound up resigning that whole part of my job, figuring that if my boss, who'd been on my side through the whole business, still kinda held me responsible for it, then there wasn't a way to win, and I'd wind up taking the fall for other faculty shenanigans, too. In retrospect it was the right idea, but I was much too emotional about it.

I would like to say something here. You all apparently have jobs, right?

How has "pretending to be something one is not" been working for you guys? Even though you guys are trying your best a number of you are still getting bad performance reviews.

How has it worked by playing this game? What has been the outcome overall by what we say here? The final outcome seems to be "Heads you lose, Tails you lose."

http://whyifailedinamerica1.wordpress.c ... ompromise/

Well -- I get highly uneven performance reviews, not bad ones. Which is how things have gone my whole life. A/Bs and Fs.

How's it been working? I've got a kid who's done well and feels herself to be a member of the educable middle class, is busy internalizing all its expectations and standards, and is off at summer camp with a horde of other similar. They're -- who knows, swimming, golfing, water-skiing, I don't know. She's actually quite at home with all that stuff and I suspect she'll find that life far, far easier than I have, when she's grown up. I drove her to camp in a car that didn't fall apart underneath us, and am now on vacation in a city, in a nice apartment in a nice neighborhood, and I've just had a good workout and am about to go wander around with some good coffee. Later will go to a symphony conducted by one of the best conductors on earth. When the two of us go home, we'll go to a pleasant house.

In many respects I've wasted my time: I've done things I'm good at that weren't what I'm best at and find most important, and have spent a lot of time trying to bash my way into places where I don't belong. I've certainly, often, worked too hard. But I've also had tremendous liberty, tremendous opportunity, and in many respects America is a good place for me. Not the craziness, the guns, the paranoia, the Christianity. But the openness and opportunity. I'm a woman and a Jew, and yet I live my life more or less as I please.

Are there better ways to live, yes. On balance, though, I've been well-suited enough. But see what I say in ten years.

What openness? What opportunity? If America was an open society then why are there numerous social standards in which one is not allowed to deviate from whatsoever? IMHO, it is the opposite. We are a conformist culture.

Are other countries not the same? or, on occasion, worse? Which countries are the least expecting of conformity, and with equal or greater opportunity?

What openness and opportunity?

cubedemon, I'm the descendant of Jewish tradesmen and housewives, and a girl, and yet I've been able to walk into almost every profession I've demonstrated even a fleeting interest in. I've worked in two national legislatures. Been invited to attend top universities. Have walked into conversations at the tops of various professions and been welcomed, made friends. Been asked to run for office. Have been allowed to teach at a university. Chatted with Nobelists. I raise a child on my own, and no one says boo to me about it. I live where I want, sleep with whomever I want, marry whoever I want to marry. I even have control over my own body, something not usual for women around the world. If I want to go for a five-mile run half-naked, nobody will tackle and cover me and arrest me and throw rocks at me. Instead my doctor will praise me for taking good care of myself. Which is why I'm healthier, nearing 50, than the women in my family from every generation before me.

That's one hell of a lot of openness and opportunity. Now -- is what I've done usual, no. We've talked about this before: this country is wonderful for people who are strong and energetic and talented and can hold themselves together and make a go of it. Doors, wide open. Sucks monkey balls for everyone else, including those very same people if they lose their grip.

Dante's Inferno: Second Circle of Hell vs. Ninth Circle of Hell

Can you tell me what strength and energy? What is the essence of these things? What exactly is talent? Again what is the essence? Can you get me to the heart and soul of these things?



How do you know?



Does this mean there is not a lot of openness and opportunity for those who do not fit your interpretation of what is "strong and energetic and talented and can hold themselves together and make a go of it" Why is the American version of strong better and more noble than other versions of strong?

Does this mean that I'm correct and that people in America have no intrinsic worth and are instead seen as commodities?

What is weakness? Why?

What is independence? What is dependence? Why is independence a virtue and dependence a vice? How does true independence exist?

Why is it ignoble to blame external entities no matter the situation? What is the fundamental reasoning for the belief in the internal locus of control?

Why must one be energetic?

We have to decide all these philosophical questions for ourselves, our version of the "correct answers."

We have to create our own worth--even if we are mere "commodities." We can't allow ourselves to be the victim of "forces"--whether of Marxism, capitalism, any "ism." We have to be individuals outside the fray.

There will be setbacks--but we must pick ourselves up from the Muck--or at least make the attempt. We have to get rid of the putrid scents of the Muck.

We have to seek to improve our microcosmic existence, even amid the pain caused by macrocosmic forces.

How do we do this?



Why is victimhood always ignoble? Was the great philosopher Socrates not a victim of ancient Athens? Yet, did he not still win in the end?



Why? Why can't one be a victim to do this just like Socrates? Why is victimhood ignoble?



Why? Improve in what way? What should we improve and how?

1. We have to figure out the answers to various philosophical questions primarily via our worldly experience. Perhaps, if I had a belief in a Supreme Being, two, or innumerable, I might be able to provide a more substantive answer. As it stands, however, this is my conception of things.

2. Socrates did win out--however, there is some question as to whether Socrates, himself, reaped the rewards of his victory. Again, if there was a belief in a life beyond ourselves, a different answer would be forthcoming.

I believe most victimhood to be painful, not really ignoble. Alas, most of the times, the "victims" do not reap the benefits of their martyrdom.

The Roman Christians of the 1st through 3rd centuries, great martyrs, were certainly victorious, in the sense that their little religion spread far and wide, eventually adopting many different theologies. Their influence, while not necessarily paramount, is still considerable.

It would have been nice had the individual Christians buried in the catacombs would have reaped the rewards of their martyrdom, instead of suffering through various types of torture without any remumeration. I find actually find them, as a collective, quite noble. Individually, it varies--in the sense of "more or less noble," rather than "ignoble."

3. I meant, in a pure sense, improving our existence--in a material, intellectual, aesthetic, and ethical sense, despite the "forces" which seek to bring us down to adherence to mass movements which seek to sublimate individuality.

I'll admit, I will never be a great philosopher; my tendency is think concretely and fight individual battles as they arise, rather than the great abstract battles which philosophers wage.

cubedemon: briefly - none of this has anything to do with nobility. And nobody cares who you blame or don't blame. In this country, as has always been true in this country, able people have opportunity, which means that they aren't shut out (much) by class or caste, family background, a long list of other things that define, in other countries, what work you may and may not do, how you may or may not live, what education you may or may not have.

"Able" simply means "can do [thing you want to do] in the current circumstances." There is no absolute definition. If you're going to succeed in this country you have to be energetic because it takes a great deal of energy to keep making an enterprise work day after day. Nobody else will come along and make it work for you. If you have the strength to do the thing you imagine, make that thing happen, and it's not actually illegal, then you'll find few barriers here. That's all "opportunity" means. And it's in contrast to how things work and have worked in many other places. In that sense, commodification is a good thing. If most endeavors are translatable to money, and there are no social rules saying who may and may not have money, then anyone whose natural talents allow them to get money can play.

I'll make that more tangible. I'm a writer. In this country most writers are poor unless their families are rich. You get no support from the state for being a writer, and there is no market for much writing. People don't want to buy it. This state of affairs upsets a lot of writers, who believe the government should support them with grants because of the cultural importance of what they do. I think this is insane. The very last thing a writer wants is a government grant, because once the government starts paying, the government starts caring about what you write and starts trying to control it. That's a terrible state of affairs, just ask Solzhenitsyn. So unless you enjoy writing propaganda for whoever's in office, you're much better off being poor and tired and working a day job and writing what you please, secure in the knowledge that nobody cares about what you're doing.

It's a bad business when your society is ruled by ideas, rather than something as neutral as money. Because the ideas have to be someone's ideas, and they're likely to be quite, quite loony, with few contact points with reality. I have never seen things get nastier faster than in a group of powerful people fighting over whose ideas will run the show.

Speaking of loony ideas: Protestant theology likes to ascribe success to God's favor and virtue. That's because this country was founded by a load of cracked religious zealots. We're stuck with it, apparently. But that's the source of the moral values assigned to strength, helplessness, etc. That old creep Luther and his co-wackadoodles, all busy deciding what God likes and doesn't like.

I think the next two posters made great points.

I just wanted to comment on this particular one, because it speaks to me. Maybe one of those nature vs nurture things, but, I feel like I chose the internal locus of control because I grew up around people who seemed to turn over all of their power to external forces. The 'someone should fix this' or 'someone should take care of me' attitude I encountered never seemed to be good for anything except a reason to complain.
Most people aren't THAT black and white about it obviously, but, my situation certainly was. To me, blaming others for their lack of opportunities was illogical, when I saw there were changes that could be made to change the circumstances, thereby giving one different opportunities. And the more I made those choices myself, the more it reinforced my personal belief that taking responsibility for everything that touched me in life with pretty empowering, so I only believed it more strongly.

There are times in my life when I've taken it perhaps a bit too extremely... when something goes 'wrong' I pick apart and analyze any tiny thing that might have prevented it and not dealt harshly enough with those who have done me wrong because I was the one who chose to engage in a relationship with them and put up with their behavior for so long or was 'dumb enough' to not see an obvious betrayal or advantage coming.
But, for the most part, it has worked for me.

It's possible I would not have insisted upon such control in my life if I did not know the powerlessness that comes with being physically disabled... so, perhaps I need to be thankful for even that suffering.

There is still friction with some people from my old life who feel like I judged them because I'm not like them and take such personal pride in my choices... but, I tell them what my Grandma told me, "you wouldn't worry so much about what other people think of you, if you realized how seldom they did." (ie my views aren't about them, they're about me, even if they think otherwise)