Annual Reviews

Ah, that time again—the 1 hour you spend 3 months preparing for which boils down to your boss telling you how much you're worth to the company.

My review was fine, nothing spectacular, somethings kind of came as a surprise (my boss doesn't understand the issue that I'm facing), somethings I expected (I'm brilliant), and other things were kind of odd (despite practically offering me a promotion to team lead my 'leadership skills' were ranked as 'needs improvement.' (HUH???)

There were two things that upset me:

1. My raise was less than half of what I got last year; my boss claims the tool recommended the percentage I got. For the record, my rent went up by a greater percentage than my salary.

2. My previous manager (the one who quit because he was so bad) filled out some feedback for me, and said (seriously, honestly) that "Based on feedback metrics and recruiting recommendation [I] had to be pulled from the interview loop." Um... what?!? Ignoring for a minute the fact that "conduct 3 interviews a week" is included in my performance review, but, seriously? This is the first I had ever heard of that. I mean, what's wrong with my interviewing? Do I suck (I happen to think I'm good)? Is it because very few people pass my bar (I went about 9 interviews straight turning people down, maybe if they didn't suck, or if LaBoca actually picked decent candidates...)? Am I too lax (um, doubt that)? What, what, is it? And, why couldn't he say to me, "Hey, Granola, you need to lower your standards just a bit. We want more people getting through." Sure, that's easy enough to fix. I just don't understand. Blissfully, I wasn't really rated on that.