My manager just told me I got a 3/5 on my eval yet again because in the past six months
- I did everything that was asked of me and
- I did a lot of things that weren't asked of me and
- I didn't catch anything on fire and
- I put out someone else's fire and
- I prevented several fires from ever being started in the first place,
but that's not good enough. The person who started the fire that I put out is getting promoted because they showed initiative in starting the fire. I didn't show enough initiative putting it out for them or preventing fires on multiple other projects. Apparently creating two of my own projects that never caught on fire also didn't demonstrate enough initiative. From now on I'm applying for one new job per day on company time.
Don't take it personally, managers at bigger companies have to evaluate their teams on a bell curve. The whole team can't score a 5 and someone has to be worse than the group.
That is called stack ranking and even though it is used in a lot of companies it is widely considered a bad idea. A lot of large companies don't actually use it.
Your manager probably just doesn’t like you, find a new one if you can, there’s no point swimming against the current - you’ll just get tired and get nowhere
My manager just told me I got a 3/5 on my eval yet again because in the past six months
- I did everything that was asked of me and
- I did a lot of things that weren't asked of me and
- I didn't catch anything on fire and
- I put out someone else's fire and
- I prevented several fires from ever being started in the first place,
but that's not good enough. The person who started the fire that I put out is getting promoted because they showed initiative in starting the fire. I didn't show enough initiative putting it out for them or preventing fires on multiple other projects. Apparently creating two of my own projects that never caught on fire also didn't demonstrate enough initiative. From now on I'm applying for one new job per day on company time.