Why should it be like this? To be caught in different minds while filling up self-performance sheet. I mean why should we do when it is our superiors who should do the performance measuring. I just don’t get it. I have to mark myself as in how I performed the task that was given to me which would always be: I did the best. Nah it can’t be like that, they say, you are supposed to be pragmatic in filling it up. What the heck does that mean? I am good at whatever I do, I say with a smile. Do you want it to be relative and if so I am not the one who should be doing it instead, you should be evaluating us. They would have none of it. It is the process, they answer. I know when to keep quiet. So, how do you fill it up?

This is going to be a real problem especially if you are working in the IT. What you do is code and may be test it and then you fix the bugs(if any). Oh! we prepare docs too. Now the code you 'write' might be a very good job done from the perspective of your boss while you think its just a small task which is being given unnecessary prominence. When its time for the self-appraisal as they call it, you cannot be pretty sure about what your boss thinks about that job you did in the last month. So you might go with a lower grade and he actually who thinks it to be genuinely good job would be surprised to see yourself grading it less and might alter his opinion just because you don’t think that was your best job or dangerously leave it as you graded without a second thought and am sure the latter happens the most. And the next criteria which you graded high might be scaled down to a lower grade as your boss shares a different view. All get together and you are in deep s**t. You might actually go with grading best for all the criteria and the idea itself is really sympathetic as everyone knew very well that it cannot be true especially in a company as huge as ours. No one is going to do all the jobs in the project and hence you can be sure your testing is inferior to the person next to you whose main job is that while yours is documentation. Don’t ask me how can one portray something good in his appraisal if documentation is the only job in his 4 month project time. That is irrelevant. Anyway I digress. Show something you did under each criteria and grade it, they say. So if you attend certain lectures irrelevant to your project or even to your domain it is not going to matter. Mention it and everything that you did under the sun and yes even the two lines script that you copied from Unix forum to do a simple task would do. Sigh!

During my school days we used to have a teacher who used to give tests and then ask us to change the sheets with others and correct them. Who in his right frame of mind in this world would do that, I used to think(no morals and ethics), and now looking at the big corporate doing it I am going to take it with a pinch of salt when they say they are going to use the statistics.Throw some ‘A’s and some lower grades to compensate as to show that you actually care for the process and truly doesn’t think it to be another frivolous task. Yes that would do and that is what I did. Now I await my manager’s opinion. I would say he would better go with it. Who wants another hour of unnecessary argument rather fight.