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I think it's a mistake to think of these kinds of goals as an extra burden. Instead, they're a way to enlist your employer in the work of advancing your career. When you're writing down your goals, you're opening a negotiation about what you will do and what you will learn in the next few months. If your basic idea of work is "you rent yourself, your time and energy to the employer, the employer pays you, and you're even" then asking you to set goals for yourself makes little sense. "Clean the coffee machine before you lock up" isn't really a negotiable goal. But if you work to create intellectual and social capital for both yourself and your company, then it makes all the sense in the world to negotiate goals. If you have the goal of learning new tech things, by all means tell your supervisor. They have the responsibility to help you with that. (Obviously they also have the responsibility to get the work done.) "I want to get to the point where I am the go-to person on zumbiwidgets" is music to the ears of a supervisor. They can help you do that, with training, assignments, conferences, mentoring and the like. Or, they can say, "wait, wait, we're phasing out zumbiwidgets. How about working with acmewidgets instead?" In either case it's a way to get your supervisor on your side. |