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I would note that all of that is based on an extremely trusting relationship with one's manager, and that the employee's input actually matters to company leadership. Given my experience at my current MegaCorp, being honest as an engineer got me precisely nowhere even with all the diplomacy in the world, same story for many of my coworkers. It's less malice and more neglect, you make the case for X with all the calm, professional argumentation you can muster, point out how it's a win-win for all involved, and you get patiently listened to followed by radio silence even with followups. In the meantime you just put all your cards on the table, the people with power know exactly what you want and if it's contrary to their desires you'll be first in line for layoffs if they happen, or otherwise sidelined. Not just talking my experience either, witnessed this with multiple co-workers. So you have to play the game. Our "goals" that we have to fill out every year are some variation on the "keep doing what we're doing but better-er" BS, and keep your actual goals close to the vest until you can make the right contacts to carry them out, if you can. Seems to me goals are a very lopsided, very risky information exchange that leaves the manager holding even more cards then they already do. A manager can fire me at will and nothing really changes for them, I can potentially leave a manager for another job but only after doing a lot of groundwork with zero guarantees of a smooth transition and/or throwing my life into chaos. Why make the power dynamic even more lopsided? I've had one manager out of four so far who actually did right by us and earned our trust, that was a nice couple of years, we got what we needed and performed accordingly. The rest have just been leveraging us for their next promotion, and one of them even gas-lit us with false deadlines (thankfully he didn't last long). So long as that's the typical experience, "goals" are just a Venus Flytrap for developers. It may sound trite and obvious, but trust must first be established, and it often isn't. |