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by TomVDB 1910 days ago
My manager got the message after I copied my personal growth and goals 3 years in a row from the previous self-review.

In my late forties, I know what I can do and I’m very good at it. I know what I can’t do well, and I avoid it and tell them to make sure things don’t go bad. (Mostly anything related to managing other people.)

I will learn new technical things on an as-needed basis if there’s a project that requires it, or if it tickles my personal interests. They know that, it won’t change.

I don’t need personal career growth plans. I have no interest in being anything more than a principal engineer. I don’t need goals. Give me a complex technical task and it will get done.

It’s been 8 years now since I rejected to fill in a self-review, and things couldn’t have been better.

Every year, I get a nice bonus, a boat load of RSUs, and an above average salary increase. They seem to be happy with my work.

I hope you as a manager would respect a goal of “I want things to stay the way they are, and that’s the end of it.”

2 comments

sounds like you have a good manager. you should take a moment and feel happy about that :)
I have had a lot of very good managers over the years!

And when I didn’t, I fixed it one way or the other.

> isappointed. If that happens often enough, the system falls apart since any promises of "career growth if you meet these goals" will no longer be trusted.

Can you share specifics of "boat loads of RSUs" (100-200K/yr 3-yr vesting?) and "above average increase" (5%)? Just want to have a figure I can shoot for.