How your employer will grade you?

[cssriraman]

Hi all,

I have been working as an Office Specialist past 3 years. Recently I got a promotion/change in my career as a VB/VBA Programmer since I have little bit stuff in vb/vba. I don't have previous experience as a programmer.

When I was an Office Specialist my manager will grade me based upon how much pages I worked, how much time I worked, etc. But, as a programmer how they will grade me. I cannot approach them directly for this.

You know, I worked about 1 day to develop a program in vb that increased the productivity (some sort of conversion in MS office) of my company about 35%. And I also I worked about 5 days for a project that increased a productivity only 2%. So, I have very big confusion about my growth, etc.

I would like to know how your employer grades you. How you will prove you are better than others? How you will bargain for more growth, promotion, Sal etc.?

I know these are silly questions. But each and every one of you will have different opinion and experience. So, please share your opinion on this. So it will be useful for me and persons like me to be the best in our organization and also in our domain.

Thanks,

CS.

[dglienna]

Every employer is differently. If they like you, then you will most likely get a good review. If they don't, then you won't pass probation.

[RhinoBull]

I don't really know what you mean by "grade" but I do know that you'll need to do your job to make all of your boses and users happy. You will sometimes have nothing to do at all and some days might be your worst nightmare. Programming is an intellectual type of work and cannot be graded based upon "how many pages of code" you might have produced per hour/day/week/month/...
I also wonder what kind of company that is if "one day development" could make amazing 35% improvement in the business productivity... If you like programming then get yourself a new job.

[dglienna]

I created a form in Word that someone used to fill out by hand and then type. It used to take 3 hours to complete, and after using my form, he can now do the same task in 45 minutes. He is very happy, and doesn't need to write it out by hand. Stil, only 25%, but it's not that hard as some employers still employ old methods that are silly.

[RobDog888]

It depends on your employeer. If they track projects and time spent on each, they will use that to gauge any profit or loss on each project. If your projects are profitable then your on your bosses good side. If your always over budget or overrun allocated hours for a job then your on his crap list.

Productivity is realtive to the project/job. If you optimize a task 35% but go over the hours then its a loss until the ROI balences it out.



I give myself good grades all the time as I , like dglienna, am my own boss.

[Hack]

I am not my own boss and get "graded" on a variety of things.

The number one thing is: are my customers happy? As a commerical developer, that is a biggie.

Also, we have specific coding standards and naming conventions that we are required to follow. This is important as many different programmers can, and often are, working on the same thing at the same time, and everyone needs to know what your code is doing. All of us go through weekly code reviews in which our code is not only looked at with an eye toward stability and usefullness but also looked at with an eye toward following our existing standards.

[kaihirst]

Its a funny old worl in the wya employers grade their employees on things. when I worked on work experience at school I was graded rather constructively on valid points, but now im an employer, I grade on many different things.

for instance..

A two minute job done by a junior programmer of ours might save us a bit of time and alot of effort, and I might grade that person average as hhis overall workload is medium, yet Ill grade that task as high...

I'd like to say that I stick to an overall outlookof each employees work ethic, and contribution to teh working environment. and overall quality rather on specifi jobs which might vary.

this probably doesnt help you at all but that the way I try and do it..

But everybodies different.

Kai

[Hack]

kaihirst: You run your own business right? I would imagine that you, also, have developed coding standards to with which your programmers must adhere. I think it is very important to learn the standards of your company.

[Shaggy Hiker]

When I was an Office Specialist my manager will grade me based upon how much pages I worked, how much time I worked, etc. But, as a programmer how they will grade me. I cannot approach them directly for this.

That piece alone tells me that you can take advantage of the system. If you work for people so rigidly unimaginative that they have to resort to meaningless metrics in place of actual opinions, you can game them, and they're a bunch of......

If they are looking for simple metrics, then make up some for them. You're now doing something that is very hard to measure quantitatively, so make the best of it. Point out the percent improvement, point out the lines of code written. What do they have to compare you against? It sounds like they probably have no yardstick for the work you are doing, so they will THINK you are doing alot if they can see some results, and if you tell them you ARE doing alot. Detached, uncreative folks are always willing to accept a crutch.

I guess I just feel that your employer sounds pretty unimaginative. If that is the case, it will have to be up to YOU to show that you are valuable, because it doesn't sound like they know how to evaluate the subject.

[RhinoBull]

That piece alone tells me that you can take advantage of the system. If you work for people so rigidly unimaginative that they have to resort to meaningless metrics in place of actual opinions, you can game them, and they're a bunch of......

That's funny but it's also true.

[Samurai Danny]

I concur.

[sevenhalo]

I really have no idea and I'm nervous about it.

I'm the only webform, winform, dba and solutions architect we have (I'm also the backup network admin). My boss is the company's primary network admin. I'm just about to finish my first year; so I guess I'll find out soon enough.

In my old jobs, it really did boil down to a popularity thing. Since all the projects were done as groups and divided into tiny tasks, your accomplishments were your department's accomplishments. The only thing that made you stand out from the other developers in the yearly review room was a) how good you were with the boss and b) how much you didn't try and push changes into the current system (somehow, the bigger the department, the more reluctant people are to change ANYTHING).