As I think about it – the manager shuffle has a bigger effect on promotion velocity than actual curve ranking. Both suffer, but I rarely see a manager willing to promote someone who’s only worked for them for a few months – and when we expect employees at lower levels to move up or out, it can have a long lating effect.

And yes, the military does go thru its periods that people get layed off, I’m thinking of after the first Gulf War in the 90s.

HR and evaluations is quite an art in reflecting true value without demoralizing people. That’s why good managers are so important.

I actually might have accepted this if it were not for the fact that when I saw my written review this past April, there were some things identified which I felt were important issues that needed to be addressed. Then I heard generally that the review had been sat on since January and immediately alerts started going off in my head.

Could I have done more there? Maybe. But I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t a fit for the culture of that team which hardly communicated at all about anything of substance, with everyone going off into their own little bunker to do their perceived tasking.

Personally, up until that point I was working hard to provide and show my value to the company, but when it became clear that for some reason I would be unable to achieve that which I felt was necessary to succeed, then it was time to move on, for me.

Could I have done more to be more proactive in this area? Yeah I could have, I’m partially culpable in this case, and it is something I’ll remember the rest of my life, but at some point, a manager has to make himself available to his employees too. I don’t know if you run into that sort of problem at MS, but it’s ultimately what compelled me it was time to move elsewhere. I just wasn’t a fit on this particular team.

While I read your posts mostly from an employee perspective, I’ve known some managers that could really use this type of guidance, especially in QA. I hope you continue writing posts that are helpful for managers (and employees).

Beth’s case resonates strongly with me, not because of her surprise but because she tried to figure out what would be expected of her from management. Whenever I’ve tried to do this, I’ve always found it worth my time and it has always been appreciated.

But I’m probably foreshadowing an upcoming post too much now, so I’ll leave it at that.

And I say this as someone who has pretty much always received the top rating throughout her career. The system actually works well for me personally. But we should be spending our energy shortening the feedback loop not only for our software quality, but for our teammates to be able to improve individually and together.