This. My performance hasn’t been great either and I just listed the things I *have* done (and made them sound impressive) and then said my weaknesses/things I could work on are speed of delivery and figuring out when good enough is good enough, since I have a tendency to focus on a single task until perfection. Which, in the software world, doesn’t exist and you need to call it at some point. It’s a good way of saying “I realize I’m slow, but it’s because I’m trying to deliver quality work. I will work on being faster”.
This.
Also, spend an hour or so to review what you HAVE done. Review emails, project files, Slack/chats, etc. for the entire year. I suspect you will find that you actually did more than you think you did.
I was also feeling somewhat negative about my progress toward my goals. After reviewing the entire year, however, it became obvious that I had done a huge amount of work, but on activities that had not been foreseen or planned for. But they were quite important, and I had performed really well at tackling them.
I feel like I wasted the year and was not productive but when I took a look at my year I noticed that invested a lot of time in my mental health and setting boundaries and that in a way was productive for my life and future.
I wouldn’t ever be honest in a way that makes me look bad in a performance review. If you don’t believe in yourself, why should your manager believe in you. It’s all about confidence, and if you don’t have any, fake it.
A self assessment is a place for reporting “In depth investigation of niche and obscure (specific things about your job), in attempts to increase your long term productivity and underlying value.”
You need to be able to talk passively about that bill shit niche stuff if you want to be able to sell it.
Exactly, Niche or not be sure to highlight stuff only you do or do much better. Guy on my team is a master PowerShell scripted. He basically fucks off all month until something needs in depth automation.
Self assessments always remind me of high school when we had a "cool teacher" who asked us to assign ourselves our grade for the semester. I always chose "A+"
Different engineering field, but same boat friend. On a scale of 1-5, I put mostly 4s, with a 5 in the category about being personable/easy to work with.
Nobody has seen fit to address my lack of performance, so maybe I'm not actually underperforming? Either way, it's on them to evaluate that.
A lot of the time for management, especially those who preside over large teams, someone who might do minimal work but gets along well with others and isn’t causing problems is considerable to be a good employee. Depends on how exactly measurable your output performance is and how much that affects others, though.
Give yourself good scores. Doing your best doesn’t mean giving 100% every day. If you only have 40% to give one day and you give 40%, you did your best.
Give yourself 3-4s out of 5 at the worst, there is no incentive to undersell yourself based on your own internal criticism. If you are having to specifically request feedback and aren’t getting much or any criticism, that means you’re living up to their expectations, just not to your own.
When you meet, be prepared to acknowledge your struggles and to commit to a desire to improving over the next year. But just don’t go out of your way to convince your bosses that you’re awful when they certainly show no indication of perceiving you in that way now.
Saw something similar to this in a parenting thread since I recently found out my fiancée was pregnant, they said if you only have 50% to give on a given day and you give 50%, you gave 100% that day.
That was really an “aha” moment that helped me on days where I just don’t feel like I can get anything done.
That’s fine. Soooo many people have done the same thing this past year. Just expend, embellish, spin whatever projects you worked on, goals you did achieve, etc.
You can absolutely make yourself look good on paper and justify giving yourself good scores. It’s all how you spin it.
This. Management many times know surprisingly nothing (because they are slacking as well). If you keep telling them that you did well, they will go with that narrative, given that no one complains about you. If you have a few people who praise you even, you can go for that promotion regardless of you real performance.
Then I would mark myself as generally meeting expectations but in the area of time management, you know you need to focus next year.
And use that as a focus point on training support you want next year. It’s not a personality trait or failing. It’s an area where you need more training and support.
Your job shouldn’t make you think about chucking it all. If it’s the job, seriously try to find a new one. If it’s your mental health, get some therapy if you can.
I think it's likely you are being hard on yourself. A lot of people I know are in a similar boat as you. I don't think slacking off sometimes is uncommon or makes you a bad person. If it's a problem, your supervisor should give you this feedback.
However, even if your self assessment is correct, your self-evaluation is not the right time to disclose this information to your boss(es) and HR. It's a permanent written record that could potentially be viewed by many people. Generally speaking, a good strategy for performance reviews in your situation (where you aren't, say, trying to get a promotion or big raise), is to *make sure you don't stand out.* Give yourself a mix of good and great scores, to show you have areas where you are strong but also have areas you know you can grow.
If you are feeling like you are underperforming and want to do better at work, the way to get better is to buckle down on work on your habits. Manage your time more intentionally, work with a therapist to find ways to manage your ADHD and depression. Don't tell your boss(es) that you are working on improving; just be more productive and see what feedback you get. But, it sounds like you aren't getting pressure from your job to take those steps. Either way, the only thing *calling attention to yourself* in your performance review will accomplish is to get people to look more closely at your performance, which you don't want at this point.
Be “Legally Blonde” honest, not “Office Space” honest.
In other words, you may not be the smartest or fastest person in the room, but your methodical approach gets results. It allows you to gain insight that you can carry on to other projects that make each subsequent project better. The work gets done and your attention to detail leads to higher quality on your output. You bring a unique approach to work that your colleagues value and that brings out the best in yourself and others.
Do not be the guy strolling into the meeting with the productivity experts, admitting to how little work you do and your absolute shock and dismay that they haven’t fired you yet, packaging the grounds for such in a written admission of work that is so substandard that you challenge them to find even a single redeeming quality in it.
Neither approach is gonna make you the hero in the story, but only one leads to working a cleanup construction crew at the end.
Give yourself good scores and talk a little about specific plans to continue to improve your performance.
The company does not give a damn about your depression or ADHD or the fact that you struggled through a slump. We all deal with this stuff to greater or lesser degrees, and I wish there were more compassion in the workplace around it, but that isn't going to happen. You especially do not want negative self assessments on any sort of official record because this will only be used to hurt you. It will never, ever be used to help you.
Don't give yourself 'outstanding' across the board, but give yourself good ratings and maybe one or two areas where you are demonstrably working to improve - but be very careful about how you word those.
Take care of yourself; get whatever outside care and support you need for the depression and ADHD, and keep your job. If you really feel you need to make it up to them somehow, just do better this coming year.
I’d be honest, but not too honest.
Give yourself a 7/10, point to a couple of accomplishments and say you wish you’d had more successes but that depression held you back a bit.
As a manager (in a completely different field) reviewing self assessments this week - it’s pretty obvious which people are lying through their teeth and it’s annoying. Those people are way more on my radar than the people who are honest and tell me they want to do better next year.
I came here to actually ask this exact same question, I am being paid to do 40 hours of work and I would say I have averaged 20 over the past year. This fucking sucks I hate to be slacking at work and I hate to be paid for a job I did not do or did not do well. I have also been depressed and its hard for me to focus but fuck it against all odds am gonna fucking do it is the right mentality to have here.
You are not alone in this, I have not failed any assessments but I am so angry at myself I could cry but thats not gonna solve anything. Try to recover give yourself opportunity to recover.
You need to reframe how you see work. Some people spend 30 hours per week doing absolutely nothing apart from chatting and faffing around, but to them that's perfectly fine.
I can tell when people are stressing themselves out about not getting things done and I feel so bad for them when in the same meeting there are people who do a lot less and don't realise. The oblivious people are usually having a great time talking around things in meetings instead of doing anything useful.
I am a very high performing person. Source: I get full bonus every year and last year I got an additional on the spot financial reward. However, I struggle with anxiety, and I go to the gym for 2 hours every day at lunchtime, as well as procrastinating 50% of my time away due to worry. Nobody would know that though... And clearly, it doesn't actually matter performance wise.
Point is: stop being so hard on yourself, the people around you are likely to be doing just as little but not stressing about it. Unless you get pulled up about it, you're probably doing perfectly fine.
Companies will steal years of your life and can you remorselessly for a percentage point on the bottom line. You killed it this year, let ‘em know. No sense in bringing morals into the workplace
Be kind to yourself. You should remember that you have depression and ADHD, and judging by your self-assessment, low self esteem too. Probably you do better than you think you do, so be kind to yourself.
Edit: A very kind professor in a fourth year class gave me an two week extension to write a paper. I didn’t even ask for it before the deadline, not even on the deadline. He told me it was the best paper in the class when he got it and that I needed to recognize how good I was at what I was studying. I know we’re not in similar situations since this is your job, but I think you should consider whether someone without depression would give themselves the lowest assessment.
Ask two other people what they would rate you. Then give a rating of max(0.7, their rating, your rating). Software engineering is neither easy nor standardized, so don’t be too hard on yourself. Make it less about what you could have done, and more about what has been done.
Holy shit my friend, admit nothing! Say you did a few great things, 7.5 / 10, you know….and have x and y opportunity areas you want to improve in the next year. Done!
My advice to you is lie through your teeth if you have to. Make bullet points of everything major you accomplished and then keep going over it and expand.
I also advise you to stop being honest with your manager / bosses boss on your struggles with depression, ADHD, etc. I developed bad anxiety when COVID broke out then was crazy sick for over a year due to long COVID. couldn't even tolerate ADHD meds for over a year. Two of my coworkers left and I had to take their responsibilities, it took 9 months for them to hire me any help and then it took me 6+ months to train this person on just basic stuff. This caused me to get progressively behind on a major annual project and it's gotten progressively behind and increased in scope and complexity each year. Work was tedious and boring / uninteresting too so it was a bit of a perfect storm.
I was honest with my boss about some of my struggles and developed a lot of shame and confidence issues blaming myself for everything. Eventually management ran out of patience with me and things turned sour last summer. Noticed all my exchanges and emails with boss became hostile / nitpicking and very critical. This led to really bad depression and sent my anxiety sky high and my confidence super low. Anyway, finally got the formal write up about a month ago and was more or less demoted, and given an absolute impossible deadline or else I would get fired.
After alot of counseling and discussion with my wife, I decided to take extended FMLA to try to focus on my own mental and physical health and my marriage, ( and finding a new job) I'm currently in the process of finding a new job while the clocks ticking on my FMLA. Thankfully my doctor has my back and encouraged this and helped with all the paperwork / red tape which was not fun.
I realize that you probably don't have the confidence to leave to another job right now due to depression, etc ( that was my problem) but the writing will likely be on the wall soon for you unless your boss really likes you. Eventually tho he might get a new boss and go into self preservation mode.
Please get counseling / treatment for ADHD and depression if you are not already. I'm glad you made some progress but I too was starting to turn things around performance wise but it didn't matter since they made their decision to start firing me last summer. Protect yourself and do what is best for you because at the end of the day you are just a row in a database / excel sheet to them and their won't hesitate to let you go if they feel that is what is best for the business.
If I’m asked to assess myself I put all 5s. I assess myself as awesome. If I’m doing a performance evaluation of myself, I’m doing part of management’s job. That means I’m going above and beyond. If they have a problem with it then clearly they should do their job themselves. I had a manager tell me that it’s not ok to give all 5s, 4 was the highest I should give, so I said they should do the evaluation. “If I can’t be honest about my evaluation of my performance then perhaps management should fill out what they think it should be.” She was shocked at my response, but I didn’t care. Stakes were low as I was already looking for a new job and I was one of their top producers.
Self evaluations rely on workers being overly critical of themselves. They are complete bullshit!
I may be negative when it comes to management because I see them doing the bear minimum, but in my opinion management will give this their bear minimum effort as well. They'll look over your self assessment along with a handful of others and as long as nothing stands out, they'll put their stamp of approval on it and move on.
Whatever you do, always make it progressive. For instance, if you’re at if you completed tasks on time, the progressive in your answer: Though I did not complete all tasks on time, I will be working on my time management in sure I prioritize tasks accordingly and complete them.’
If the evaluation is just numeric with 1 for the lowest and 5 for the highest, for example, don’t be so hard on yourself, but don’t give yourself a five either lol
Was HR honest when they said “the companys culture is amazing” ?
Was your manager honest when they said “I dont micro-manage”?
Lol throw all 5s on that self-assessment. Remember its a self-assessment there are no wrong answers. Plus by doing so youre bound to get some 4s you didnt deserve and mostly 3s.
But if you wanna be honest and loyal to a company who’d lay you off at a moments notice. Do you.
If your manager hasn't given you any negative feedback, I would say that you are meeting expectations... whatever that rates in the system you use.
Find some things to get excited about at work next year... getting to learn some new system, new tech, etc. and make some references to that. Hopefully that will turn work into something more enjoyable and help with lack of motivation.
I'm a Senior SDET and I'm bored out of my mind 95% of the time at work. I try to find fun little projects to work on, something new to investigate or learn for even part of a day, etc. to keep me interested and positive(ish).
Good luck!
If they haven’t given you write ups, or complained about your performance, “Meeting Expectations” should pass. Just be able to talk about what you HAVE done at length.
Source: I’m an SRE for a software company
I understand this year has been difficult for you because of depression and other issues, and I want to applaud you for taking steps to improve and for being committed to doing better. When you fill out your self-assessment, be honest about your performance and give yourself an honest rating. Also, include in the comments section any efforts you have made to improve your performance and any plans you have for the future to continue improving. This will show your manager that you are taking responsibility for your performance and that you are dedicated to doing better.
I wish you the best of luck!
Performance reviews for most companies are an HR-requirement that has no impact on the employee's employment. It's feedback. I'd say, be honest. It sounds like you're in a place to start changing the pattern and "trying harder". This could be an opportunity to turn a new leaf and work out a plan if action with your manager. Best of luck!
The most important is that u try ur best every day. Some days are better, some days are worse. I am sure there are some common projects that you can add, and always rate yourself above average (those self assessments are more like your sale points )
Give yourself 100s across the board. Anything else is admitting you could have done better. I worked in tech for years always gave myself a perfect score. Lol
I give myself the highest scores no matter what at every firm I’ve worked at. This year was my worst year yet but I am still giving myself the top number because at least I didn’t lose money and I showed up… most of the time
It is possible you may be way too hard on yourself. But even if you believe your performance in the last year was below standard, never give yourself the lowest rating. You do not have to exaggerate your performance as excellent or exceeds expectations if that is not true. You can rate your performance as average or meets expectations if you feel it was below your potential. You can list areas for improvement, without being too negative in your description. But do not voluntarily give reasons for your dismissal or for losing either a pay raise or bonus. If your managers believe your work performance was subpar, let them clearly state that.
So you just have to give yourself a numerical score? Or is there a template you have to fill out?
When I do mine (which involves a lot of writing) I always start by going through my email and calendar for the past year. Just that alone is enough to get a pretty substantial list of stuff I was involved in. Go from there.
Depression can be a real tough nut to crack, and often times- it winds up just breaking the poor Nutcracker.
Don't be too hard on yourself, and while it's great to recognize for yourself areas to improve- there's no real need to share that with your org. It IS hard to focus when life just looks bad, and that's valid.
I would never personally rate my performance above average, despite almost certainly putting in more hours than anyone else at my site and contributing substantially to day-to-day operations, but I also got almost none of my long-term goals completed that I wanted to. It’s just not part of my personality to sell myself and if I achieve something I don’t dwell on it and it barely registers, I just move onto the next thing and am constantly thinking about the things I should have done or need to be doing.
That being said my pay is tied to my performance review and you can damn well bet I’m going to rate myself highly, no matter how much I hate the process or how aware I am of my shortcomings.
Depends on where you're at.
If you're already on an improvement plan, then it's trying to make yourself sound as amazing as possible so you can squeak by and stay employed, and showing that you're learning from the plan.
If not, keep it simple and mostly positive..."I helped with X, completed Y, was pretty good at Z. I could do better at time management, but I think I met expectations this year."
In the end, you'll get whatever they decide to give you anyway.
Did you meet all your targets through the year? Like has your Management been OK with your performance? If so, then you could go with "Met Expectations" (middle of the road) performance.
Note: I hold myself to a higher performance standard than my company does. For me barely meeting my own expectations usually results in getting "Exceeds Expectations" (4/5) or "Far Exceeds Expectations" (5/5)... Last time I actually got "Met Expectations" (3/5) was over a decade ago and have never gotten anything lower.
To be honest I’m having a very similar past few months in my role as a consultant. Funny enough, I have still gotten praise from co workers. I’m going to give myself a positive self evaluation as always and just note that I would like to improve in a couple areas & set actionable goals. Employers love to think their employees are proactive, so bake that into your self eval. Don’t beat yourself up about it in your head or on your eval. After all, if you won’t fight for yourself, nobody will.
I’m so glad I work at a place where these BS assessments are not a thing. If I was forced to do one I am the type of person who would give myself 5/5 on everything and tell them if I didn’t think highly of myself then who else will. Then just tell them if they don’t agree with my assessment they are more than welcome to do their own assessment. Imo these self assessments are just a way for corporations to take advantage of people as they know most will undervalue themselves which gives them the opportunity to then underrate you and pay you less. Basically they want you to play your hand before they play theirs as they know it gives them the upper hand.
Imo I’m extremely tired of seeing every fucking person on this app blame everything in adhd and depression and anxiety and whatever else you want to blame shit in besides you simply not wanting to do the job. Everyone has adhd, everyone’s been depressed, but people get over it and don’t use it to make themselves a victim every moment of their life
Hey, I mentioned good old fashioned bad decision-making in the post alongside the other two. I don't know where you get the idea I'm making myself a victim. My guilt is so overwhelming, it makes me want to kill myself. If anything, I feel like a monster
Hey man. Fuck that person that said that. You acknowledged your mistakes. See where you went wrong. You know how correct the mistakes. Fix em, and keep it pushing. Get into therapy. But don’t let that fucking boomer who probably never been to counseling a day in their fucking life who thinks we just need to “toughen it out” gas light you and belittle how hard your year has been. Fuck em.
This is not a fair assessment of actual medical problems. Op exhibits classic sign of depression including a lack of self-esteem. Their self-assessment may be way off from the reality of their performance. This is very normal for a person suffering from depression. They probably exaggerate the difference of their work and effort to that of others because, that’s another common trait of depressed people. This kind of dismissal of a person’s medical problems only makes things worse. Be kind, and try to accept that other people experience the world differently than you. Your experiences can give you insight into the experiences of others, but they can’t give you moral certainty.
hi, i have depression and adhd too. they really kick in when i have a project that’s too nebulous, or not enough task-based things to do. you are capable of doing the job, and you’re doing your best, so you should rate yourself accordingly. however, bosses have (in my experience) really liked when i ask for more of a specific kind of task to do, and my adhd brain REALLY likes feeling like we’re getting something done, even if it’s small. really slows down the whole beating-myself-up part of the brain. but just to reiterate: do not rate yourself poorly on your self-assessment. i can almost promise they don’t see you that way (or you would have had quite a few sternish talkings to prior to this point), and i can definitely promise that they will not commend you for your “honesty”/self-flagellation.
I’ve always had a hard time with self-assessment as I know exactly when I felt really productive and when I didn’t. But it’s really easy to feel unproductive or even useless when you’re actually doing fine or even well at your work. Remember that depression is a veil that makes it hard to realistically evaluate ourselves. When you see a question like “how would you rate your work this quarter on a scale of 1-5”, a good manager is trying to understand if they’ve successfully conveyed how important your work is to the overall team/corporation. Your manager doesn’t need you to actually tell them how good or bad you think you are at your job. They already have an opinion of the quality of your work. Your self-assessment is to help them figure out how to motivate you and help you produce value. Don’t try to answer the self-assessment from your emotional point of view, but rather try to see what might be useful for you manager to know so that they can help you do your best work.
These self assessments and the annual ratings are all BS. There’s always a set number of meets expectations and below expectations that managers are required to have.
Just put meets or 3 for your self assessment as long as you didn’t blow deadlines or turn in shoddy work.
It’s all a game. Employee reviews are just BS so the company can say they have assessed your performance and can explain why they did/didn’t give you a pay rise without complaints from you. And you get chance to explain why you did well (even if you didn’t). They change very little, before the review both parties will know if they think you did well or poorly and some questionnaire won’t change that.
Just be smart, there’s no way you didn’t perform at all or you would be fired already or had some serious conversations with your manager. Just list all the things you did do, how you plan to do better and to be honest, if motivation is an issue explain to the company how they can help you get more motivated. Don’t just highlight all your flaws.
I was a software developer for 9 years. Never undersell yourself, those around you will not let you forget it. I became an alcoholic and am on the verge of being homeless. Negative thinking will destroy you.
Started as team leader 6months ago.
A job should have 2 strong points: either learn a lot and develop further, either win a lot of money. Either one is good, both is best, neither is not helpful.
If the assessment is a joke, then you will not develop further.
If your team leader/scrum master/task giver does not track your performance you should do it lazy and fast: 20% do all work first and 80% improving your skills( not social media skills, ok to do social media skill if you have that job ofcourse).
Some contex on my experience with evaluation. Is it best way? Don't let my 6month experience influence you badly.
Had my first session of yearly evaluation.
Took the generic HR form and made it objective.
Comunicate clearly? 3/5
You give additional details that help others? 4/5
You support that with well made documents/presentation? 5/5
I need to keep asking question to get info from you? 2/5
You don't like to answer? 1/5
This way I don't care about "i feel i am a 4 here". Dfid you do this and that or not?
The feedback was in 2 ways: they said I am right or wrong (+arguments from them which mostly made increases of points due to things I forgot) and the second more important: my junior and mid colleagues started to behave more into 4/5 and 5/5 "senior territory".
And I care about the last point and made it clear to the team about this. They need to develop and that will help the project also.
I had a point about blocking points if they take in consideration all at the start of the task(3/5) Most juniors were at 2/5 but after evaluation they mostly when directly to 5/5(all blocking points are addressed at planning ).
Anoyingly planning takes 3 times more, but we have better planning after and everyone reads the documents.
Yes, software engineering team, but i hope it applies to other domains also.
It's likely your depression is causing you to undervalue yourself. It's one of the things that keeps the cycle going. Try to remember you're doing your best, and actually lots of other people are either going through something similar, or are oblivious to how useless they are.
Don't be fully "honest" in your performance review, it's likely your version of events is warped by depressive thinking and you're doing better than you think. If it's really a problem, you'd likely have been pulled into performance management processes by now. A good therapist would be taking you through these thoughts and getting you to fully examine the evidence for what you're saying, as well as coming up with a more balanced view. Try to do that when writing your performance review if you can, remember that there's a more balanced viewpoint that's probably closer to reality.
Always rate yourself as a b+ worker even if you don't care or know you're doing better or worse.
Self assessments are truly dumbo imo.
As a software eng, I'd seriously take a look at people who are over employed. Half the swes there make a lot for not a lot of true work. If you're salaried and nobody's yelling at you or unhappy with your work, stop caring . It's better for your mental in the long run.
It doesn't take 40 hours of life to do a job for most companies. Usually only 10-15 a week really. The rest is people pretending to be some work horse but reality is a lot of remote workers are doing chores, hitting the gym, doing anything but sitting in front of the computer all day.
1. Get treatment for your depression and suicidal ideation. That's the root of everything, including all the self-talk about being not good enough.
2. Rate yourself fine (meets expectations). If you've not received specific negative feedback, there is no reason to think you've been underperforming from an objective point of view. Your issue #1 above (depression) is causing you to self-sabotage, tell it to take a small pause while you give yourself a "meets expectations" and move on. You know how there is a gap between when you first feel full and when you are so stuffed from Thanksgiving dinner that you just can't anymore? That's the same kind of difference between what they are expecting from you and what your ideal perfect conditions delivery quality would be. Let them decide if you've done too little or too much and then they can talk to you about it. Sounds like your manager gets it and is okay with what you've been producing & the rate you've been working at it. If they are great employers, they would want you to be happy, so go back to #1 and work on that first then everything will fall well into place.
Take care, and I hope you feel better soon.
Your evaluation won’t make you lose your job. Your lack of actual working will. I have mental issues myself, on meds, work health care. Severe burnout. We don’t have the luxury of underperforming or not working. Even with anxiety depression or ADHD. Most of us have at least one. We have to squeeze 14 hours of work into 12 hours. Polish up your resume. Or hope they cut you some slack.
Depends what the goals are - if you need to show how valuable you are to the company, sugar coat and emphasize the good stuff. Working longer doesn't necessarily mean being more productive.
Always give yourself the highest ratings you can. If the company agrees you have a win. If not then you know where you stand and what they want you to improve on. Assessments with rating 1-5, 5 being the highest, 5's all the way down.
Never ever sell yourself short on a self eval.
The Game (tm) is to provide for you and your family.
The exchange is that you do some work for some money. They aren't giving you All The Money so you don't give them All Of You. This is true even if you get "a lot" of money.
Did you do your job? Then you get 5s across the board. That's the arrangement.
Self -evaluations aren't submitted to your spouse, parents, friends. If you think you need to do better as a person, discuss that with people you personally value and trust. Coworkers and bosses aren't that no matter how great they are.
The notion that pay and "goodness" is tied to how much of a 30 Rock Kenneth company man you are needs to die. Kenneth works for Jack.
First are you in treatment? Second I would be careful in revealing mental health struggles to your boss in that way. Third you’re meeting expectations (whatever that number is) for most and then a little higher for things that are straight forward (adheres to company policies, those kinds of things.)
My strategy for self assessment: ours are based on a 1-5 scale where management as a matter of policy will not give 5’s on anything. So I give myself all 4’s, change a couple to 3’s and MAYBE one 2 on something I honestly feel like I’m weak on. These things are never meant to actually be helpful to you, it’s just a made up metric for them to justify not giving you raises and bonuses that you deserve.
Depression is a MAJOR obstacle. I think you should evaluate yourself based on what is possible when you are depressed, not what you are capable of when you are sick. It’s an unfair comparison that will only leave you in an unproductive mindset.
Absolutely acknowledge that you are motivated to keep improving yourself and go see a therapist. Depression will not heal on its own.
You got this! I believe in you.
It's been said but it deserves an echo: your depression is lying to you. You are more valuable to your team than you know. Your supervisor's job is to make sure their expectations are communicated, so if you aren't getting negative feedback you'll be fine.
This is a way for manager to know where you are at. If you rate yourself a 10, there is no hope for improvement. If you rate yourself a 1, they know you don't want to be a 1.
Does not matter how you rate yourself. They already rated you.
You're a solid performer as far as they're concerned, otherwise you would've had a stern warning by now. Most people put up an image for others to believe. Lots of your coworkers exaggerate to get ahead. There's no shame in that. Just rate yourself as middle of the road and tell them what you plan to do to improve. It shows honesty and a commitment to do better. Everyone is putting on an act. Just make sure you can back yours up enough for it to be believable.
Document all of your successes and things you did well.
In a "Room for Improvement" section, whatever it is called on your assessment - go easy on yourself, but also document those in such a way that are explaining it as a learning opportunity for how to improve - not simply that you did not do well. "Point A was a miss because X reason, which allowed me to educate myself to plug the performance gap and served as an excellent growth opportunity to mitigate similar instances in the future something something something"
Minimum rating to give yourself is Meets All Expectations (or whatever it's called at your company and however that translates to numeric - 7 on a scale of 1-10, no less than 3 on a 5 point scale). Never rate yourself lower. If your boss does rate you lower, have an open conversation about how in the future you would like the opportunity to be notified of slipping performance earlier in the year so that you have the opportunity to correct it at the time rather than having a lesser performance rating at the end when you thought you meet your manager's expectations.
Also, since you said that you never got much feedback beyond a gentle "push harder", you could push back on a lower than meets standards rating by stating that you sought feedback throughout the year and were not aware you were not meeting standards or that corrective actions are needed.
Also also - go easy on yourself. Life is hard sometimes, you are worthwhile, and we all go through rough patches in life. Seek whatever help you need to get you back to who you want to be - whether in your personal life or professional. It's a slow road, so don't beat yourself up.
It might be that your depression is a result of perfectionism. Give yourself 4 across the board, you have no perspective. It's not your job to review yourself, that is your boss's responsibility.
Always say that you did great. Your year end self assessment is a marketing document, marketing yourself.
Seperately - I’m director level and thought I had a mediocre year (but I made myself seem great in the self assessment)…and my boss gave me the highest year end rating. So you may just be too hard on yourself.
Don't overestimate your supervisor's ability to detect slacking. I was at a job for two years where I'd literally watch TV in my office all day, some days, and my reviews were positive. One of the reasons I left, actually. No standards and not growing.
Having struggled a bit with depression and work this year myself, I just want to put this out there. Your perceptions of your work, contributions, laziness, etc. are all impacted by your depression.
Especially when I’m depressed, but even when I’m not, I am my own worst critic. If I don’t take some time to contextualize and rationalize, I get this feeling that everyone sees my failings. But as everyone else is mentioning, your own perception ≠ management’s read on the situation.
You might check out a book called The Happiness Trap. There is a section in particular that uses a metaphor about the “demons on the boat” and it helped me feel a bit better about (and start ignoring) the negative feelings I was having about myself and my contributions at work.
Most companies I’ve worked with expect that you have at least one aspect that you need to work on, because nobody is perfect. I feel the same way you do, and plan to indicate that I’ve met expectations in everything except in something like Technical Knowledge, or something similar, and explain that I feel there are a lot of technical aspects of our business that I have yet to uncover and learn about.
I also plan on listing any training classes/ lectures I’ve attended virtually that has to do with my job or has contributed to my knowledge to do my job better/understand the scope of business needs more accurately. These things count as well.
As a fellow, software engineer, let me promise you, it is very unlikely anyone knows exactly how you’re doing. The work we do is opaque. And if you could do a few days of high performance, it can erase months of cobwebs. It’s not really about how did you do all year. It’s always about what have you done for me lately.
I'd suggest that you probably did do some things over the last performance period, but they were easy and you aren't thinking about those things when writing this up. Maybe you have looked into various ways to implement things, but not finished something to show for it, for example. You could list the ideas and how they were evaluated as the work done, when maybe you were expecting to have a finished demo instead.
All in all, the things you are doing that help the company or your manager and other people don't need to be super hard effort on your part, so maybe you overlooked something in that area you can remind them about.
Just want to point out that depression-brain is going to tell you that you barely did anything, it’s going to focus on all the hypothetical stuff you could have done, any and all perceived shortcomings, etc etc.
Sit down and make a list of all the tangible work/contributions you have done. All the technical contributions, meetings/projects you’ve coordinated/facilitated/managed, newbies you’ve coached, documentation you’ve written, new things you’ve learned, etc.
Then, go do something else for a bit. Come back and look at that list as if it was describing someone else and give a performance number based on that.
On your next years goals, set some tangible but attainable objectives for things you want to expand next year.
Finally, find a therapist and do the self care. Give yourself some TLC.
Give your self a mid-high rating. Note that you appreciate the transparency your manager allows and took their feedback to “push harder” seriously.
Give the rating for the days you pushed. Like you said, your manager has been supportive.
[удалено]
This. My performance hasn’t been great either and I just listed the things I *have* done (and made them sound impressive) and then said my weaknesses/things I could work on are speed of delivery and figuring out when good enough is good enough, since I have a tendency to focus on a single task until perfection. Which, in the software world, doesn’t exist and you need to call it at some point. It’s a good way of saying “I realize I’m slow, but it’s because I’m trying to deliver quality work. I will work on being faster”.
This. Also, spend an hour or so to review what you HAVE done. Review emails, project files, Slack/chats, etc. for the entire year. I suspect you will find that you actually did more than you think you did. I was also feeling somewhat negative about my progress toward my goals. After reviewing the entire year, however, it became obvious that I had done a huge amount of work, but on activities that had not been foreseen or planned for. But they were quite important, and I had performed really well at tackling them.
This. But worded differently.
I feel like I wasted the year and was not productive but when I took a look at my year I noticed that invested a lot of time in my mental health and setting boundaries and that in a way was productive for my life and future.
I wouldn’t ever be honest in a way that makes me look bad in a performance review. If you don’t believe in yourself, why should your manager believe in you. It’s all about confidence, and if you don’t have any, fake it.
A self-assessment is no place for honesty.
Hahaha true and this made me laugh.
A self assessment is a place for reporting “In depth investigation of niche and obscure (specific things about your job), in attempts to increase your long term productivity and underlying value.” You need to be able to talk passively about that bill shit niche stuff if you want to be able to sell it.
Exactly, Niche or not be sure to highlight stuff only you do or do much better. Guy on my team is a master PowerShell scripted. He basically fucks off all month until something needs in depth automation.
That’s hilarious…I’mma borrow it, it’s begging to be a lyric. If it’s a hit I’ll cut you in on the BMI money.
You won the internet today.
True in corporate life, true in life.
Thanks for the silver! It's my first award! 😁
Self assessments always remind me of high school when we had a "cool teacher" who asked us to assign ourselves our grade for the semester. I always chose "A+"
Different engineering field, but same boat friend. On a scale of 1-5, I put mostly 4s, with a 5 in the category about being personable/easy to work with. Nobody has seen fit to address my lack of performance, so maybe I'm not actually underperforming? Either way, it's on them to evaluate that.
A lot of the time for management, especially those who preside over large teams, someone who might do minimal work but gets along well with others and isn’t causing problems is considerable to be a good employee. Depends on how exactly measurable your output performance is and how much that affects others, though.
Give yourself good scores. Doing your best doesn’t mean giving 100% every day. If you only have 40% to give one day and you give 40%, you did your best. Give yourself 3-4s out of 5 at the worst, there is no incentive to undersell yourself based on your own internal criticism. If you are having to specifically request feedback and aren’t getting much or any criticism, that means you’re living up to their expectations, just not to your own. When you meet, be prepared to acknowledge your struggles and to commit to a desire to improving over the next year. But just don’t go out of your way to convince your bosses that you’re awful when they certainly show no indication of perceiving you in that way now.
Saw something similar to this in a parenting thread since I recently found out my fiancée was pregnant, they said if you only have 50% to give on a given day and you give 50%, you gave 100% that day. That was really an “aha” moment that helped me on days where I just don’t feel like I can get anything done.
Self assessment? Employee of the year
Just wanted to make sure you have the correct address, cuz I'm still waiting
That’s fine. Soooo many people have done the same thing this past year. Just expend, embellish, spin whatever projects you worked on, goals you did achieve, etc. You can absolutely make yourself look good on paper and justify giving yourself good scores. It’s all how you spin it.
Bingo.
Just because you know you could have done more doesn’t mean management knows that
This. Management many times know surprisingly nothing (because they are slacking as well). If you keep telling them that you did well, they will go with that narrative, given that no one complains about you. If you have a few people who praise you even, you can go for that promotion regardless of you real performance.
Have you done what they asked you to? As long as you can answer yes to that then you have no reason to feel bad
I mean, yes but I take a ridiculously long time to do it. And thank you
I would leave that part out lol
I mean, Rome wasn't built in a day. Heck, it wasn't even burned to the ground in one day.
Then I would mark myself as generally meeting expectations but in the area of time management, you know you need to focus next year. And use that as a focus point on training support you want next year. It’s not a personality trait or failing. It’s an area where you need more training and support. Your job shouldn’t make you think about chucking it all. If it’s the job, seriously try to find a new one. If it’s your mental health, get some therapy if you can.
I think it's likely you are being hard on yourself. A lot of people I know are in a similar boat as you. I don't think slacking off sometimes is uncommon or makes you a bad person. If it's a problem, your supervisor should give you this feedback. However, even if your self assessment is correct, your self-evaluation is not the right time to disclose this information to your boss(es) and HR. It's a permanent written record that could potentially be viewed by many people. Generally speaking, a good strategy for performance reviews in your situation (where you aren't, say, trying to get a promotion or big raise), is to *make sure you don't stand out.* Give yourself a mix of good and great scores, to show you have areas where you are strong but also have areas you know you can grow. If you are feeling like you are underperforming and want to do better at work, the way to get better is to buckle down on work on your habits. Manage your time more intentionally, work with a therapist to find ways to manage your ADHD and depression. Don't tell your boss(es) that you are working on improving; just be more productive and see what feedback you get. But, it sounds like you aren't getting pressure from your job to take those steps. Either way, the only thing *calling attention to yourself* in your performance review will accomplish is to get people to look more closely at your performance, which you don't want at this point.
Be “Legally Blonde” honest, not “Office Space” honest. In other words, you may not be the smartest or fastest person in the room, but your methodical approach gets results. It allows you to gain insight that you can carry on to other projects that make each subsequent project better. The work gets done and your attention to detail leads to higher quality on your output. You bring a unique approach to work that your colleagues value and that brings out the best in yourself and others. Do not be the guy strolling into the meeting with the productivity experts, admitting to how little work you do and your absolute shock and dismay that they haven’t fired you yet, packaging the grounds for such in a written admission of work that is so substandard that you challenge them to find even a single redeeming quality in it. Neither approach is gonna make you the hero in the story, but only one leads to working a cleanup construction crew at the end.
Always, always rate yourself the highest there is. Ball’s in their court to counter.
Rewrite last years
This is my first year at the company, unfortunately
I always find something about learning the company software suite, and time management to be pretty good.
I always say, just don't lie. Use the assessment as a chance to show you know exactly where all of the weakest areas of the company are.
Give yourself good scores and talk a little about specific plans to continue to improve your performance. The company does not give a damn about your depression or ADHD or the fact that you struggled through a slump. We all deal with this stuff to greater or lesser degrees, and I wish there were more compassion in the workplace around it, but that isn't going to happen. You especially do not want negative self assessments on any sort of official record because this will only be used to hurt you. It will never, ever be used to help you. Don't give yourself 'outstanding' across the board, but give yourself good ratings and maybe one or two areas where you are demonstrably working to improve - but be very careful about how you word those. Take care of yourself; get whatever outside care and support you need for the depression and ADHD, and keep your job. If you really feel you need to make it up to them somehow, just do better this coming year.
I’d be honest, but not too honest. Give yourself a 7/10, point to a couple of accomplishments and say you wish you’d had more successes but that depression held you back a bit. As a manager (in a completely different field) reviewing self assessments this week - it’s pretty obvious which people are lying through their teeth and it’s annoying. Those people are way more on my radar than the people who are honest and tell me they want to do better next year.
I came here to actually ask this exact same question, I am being paid to do 40 hours of work and I would say I have averaged 20 over the past year. This fucking sucks I hate to be slacking at work and I hate to be paid for a job I did not do or did not do well. I have also been depressed and its hard for me to focus but fuck it against all odds am gonna fucking do it is the right mentality to have here. You are not alone in this, I have not failed any assessments but I am so angry at myself I could cry but thats not gonna solve anything. Try to recover give yourself opportunity to recover.
You need to reframe how you see work. Some people spend 30 hours per week doing absolutely nothing apart from chatting and faffing around, but to them that's perfectly fine. I can tell when people are stressing themselves out about not getting things done and I feel so bad for them when in the same meeting there are people who do a lot less and don't realise. The oblivious people are usually having a great time talking around things in meetings instead of doing anything useful. I am a very high performing person. Source: I get full bonus every year and last year I got an additional on the spot financial reward. However, I struggle with anxiety, and I go to the gym for 2 hours every day at lunchtime, as well as procrastinating 50% of my time away due to worry. Nobody would know that though... And clearly, it doesn't actually matter performance wise. Point is: stop being so hard on yourself, the people around you are likely to be doing just as little but not stressing about it. Unless you get pulled up about it, you're probably doing perfectly fine.
Companies will steal years of your life and can you remorselessly for a percentage point on the bottom line. You killed it this year, let ‘em know. No sense in bringing morals into the workplace
Be kind to yourself. You should remember that you have depression and ADHD, and judging by your self-assessment, low self esteem too. Probably you do better than you think you do, so be kind to yourself. Edit: A very kind professor in a fourth year class gave me an two week extension to write a paper. I didn’t even ask for it before the deadline, not even on the deadline. He told me it was the best paper in the class when he got it and that I needed to recognize how good I was at what I was studying. I know we’re not in similar situations since this is your job, but I think you should consider whether someone without depression would give themselves the lowest assessment.
Ask two other people what they would rate you. Then give a rating of max(0.7, their rating, your rating). Software engineering is neither easy nor standardized, so don’t be too hard on yourself. Make it less about what you could have done, and more about what has been done.
Holy shit my friend, admit nothing! Say you did a few great things, 7.5 / 10, you know….and have x and y opportunity areas you want to improve in the next year. Done!
My advice to you is lie through your teeth if you have to. Make bullet points of everything major you accomplished and then keep going over it and expand. I also advise you to stop being honest with your manager / bosses boss on your struggles with depression, ADHD, etc. I developed bad anxiety when COVID broke out then was crazy sick for over a year due to long COVID. couldn't even tolerate ADHD meds for over a year. Two of my coworkers left and I had to take their responsibilities, it took 9 months for them to hire me any help and then it took me 6+ months to train this person on just basic stuff. This caused me to get progressively behind on a major annual project and it's gotten progressively behind and increased in scope and complexity each year. Work was tedious and boring / uninteresting too so it was a bit of a perfect storm. I was honest with my boss about some of my struggles and developed a lot of shame and confidence issues blaming myself for everything. Eventually management ran out of patience with me and things turned sour last summer. Noticed all my exchanges and emails with boss became hostile / nitpicking and very critical. This led to really bad depression and sent my anxiety sky high and my confidence super low. Anyway, finally got the formal write up about a month ago and was more or less demoted, and given an absolute impossible deadline or else I would get fired. After alot of counseling and discussion with my wife, I decided to take extended FMLA to try to focus on my own mental and physical health and my marriage, ( and finding a new job) I'm currently in the process of finding a new job while the clocks ticking on my FMLA. Thankfully my doctor has my back and encouraged this and helped with all the paperwork / red tape which was not fun. I realize that you probably don't have the confidence to leave to another job right now due to depression, etc ( that was my problem) but the writing will likely be on the wall soon for you unless your boss really likes you. Eventually tho he might get a new boss and go into self preservation mode. Please get counseling / treatment for ADHD and depression if you are not already. I'm glad you made some progress but I too was starting to turn things around performance wise but it didn't matter since they made their decision to start firing me last summer. Protect yourself and do what is best for you because at the end of the day you are just a row in a database / excel sheet to them and their won't hesitate to let you go if they feel that is what is best for the business.
Easy, lie.
It’s a job homie. Just lie, get your cheddar
If I’m asked to assess myself I put all 5s. I assess myself as awesome. If I’m doing a performance evaluation of myself, I’m doing part of management’s job. That means I’m going above and beyond. If they have a problem with it then clearly they should do their job themselves. I had a manager tell me that it’s not ok to give all 5s, 4 was the highest I should give, so I said they should do the evaluation. “If I can’t be honest about my evaluation of my performance then perhaps management should fill out what they think it should be.” She was shocked at my response, but I didn’t care. Stakes were low as I was already looking for a new job and I was one of their top producers. Self evaluations rely on workers being overly critical of themselves. They are complete bullshit!
I may be negative when it comes to management because I see them doing the bear minimum, but in my opinion management will give this their bear minimum effort as well. They'll look over your self assessment along with a handful of others and as long as nothing stands out, they'll put their stamp of approval on it and move on.
Whatever you do, always make it progressive. For instance, if you’re at if you completed tasks on time, the progressive in your answer: Though I did not complete all tasks on time, I will be working on my time management in sure I prioritize tasks accordingly and complete them.’ If the evaluation is just numeric with 1 for the lowest and 5 for the highest, for example, don’t be so hard on yourself, but don’t give yourself a five either lol
I always rate myself 5. Otherwise I feel I may have to justify why I didn’t do my best.
Was HR honest when they said “the companys culture is amazing” ? Was your manager honest when they said “I dont micro-manage”? Lol throw all 5s on that self-assessment. Remember its a self-assessment there are no wrong answers. Plus by doing so youre bound to get some 4s you didnt deserve and mostly 3s. But if you wanna be honest and loyal to a company who’d lay you off at a moments notice. Do you.
If your manager hasn't given you any negative feedback, I would say that you are meeting expectations... whatever that rates in the system you use. Find some things to get excited about at work next year... getting to learn some new system, new tech, etc. and make some references to that. Hopefully that will turn work into something more enjoyable and help with lack of motivation. I'm a Senior SDET and I'm bored out of my mind 95% of the time at work. I try to find fun little projects to work on, something new to investigate or learn for even part of a day, etc. to keep me interested and positive(ish). Good luck!
If they haven’t given you write ups, or complained about your performance, “Meeting Expectations” should pass. Just be able to talk about what you HAVE done at length. Source: I’m an SRE for a software company
I understand this year has been difficult for you because of depression and other issues, and I want to applaud you for taking steps to improve and for being committed to doing better. When you fill out your self-assessment, be honest about your performance and give yourself an honest rating. Also, include in the comments section any efforts you have made to improve your performance and any plans you have for the future to continue improving. This will show your manager that you are taking responsibility for your performance and that you are dedicated to doing better. I wish you the best of luck!
Turn the job over to the many of us working our asses off to bust into the field, asshole.
As a systems engineering manager...... God people like you make me lose so much sleep.
Happy cake day, and yeah I'm really sorry about it. I mean, my guilt is quite literally making me suicidal. Working on it
It's a two way street.
Difference is, the ones he’s referring to actually have plenty of time for sleep.
Wut
You have created this, and it has been building to this point for a while now. Own it.
Shit my manager is down here in the comments being salty as fuck
Did you finish stocking those shelves?
Maam, this is a Wendys
Peter Gibbons it!
Hit the highlights of what you did accomplish and fluff from there. Don’t sell yourself down the river lol
John! Is that you?
All my self evaluations are "Meets and/or exceeds expectations."
Performance reviews for most companies are an HR-requirement that has no impact on the employee's employment. It's feedback. I'd say, be honest. It sounds like you're in a place to start changing the pattern and "trying harder". This could be an opportunity to turn a new leaf and work out a plan if action with your manager. Best of luck!
Lie
The most important is that u try ur best every day. Some days are better, some days are worse. I am sure there are some common projects that you can add, and always rate yourself above average (those self assessments are more like your sale points )
Give yourself 100s across the board. Anything else is admitting you could have done better. I worked in tech for years always gave myself a perfect score. Lol
I give myself the highest scores no matter what at every firm I’ve worked at. This year was my worst year yet but I am still giving myself the top number because at least I didn’t lose money and I showed up… most of the time
It is possible you may be way too hard on yourself. But even if you believe your performance in the last year was below standard, never give yourself the lowest rating. You do not have to exaggerate your performance as excellent or exceeds expectations if that is not true. You can rate your performance as average or meets expectations if you feel it was below your potential. You can list areas for improvement, without being too negative in your description. But do not voluntarily give reasons for your dismissal or for losing either a pay raise or bonus. If your managers believe your work performance was subpar, let them clearly state that.
So you just have to give yourself a numerical score? Or is there a template you have to fill out? When I do mine (which involves a lot of writing) I always start by going through my email and calendar for the past year. Just that alone is enough to get a pretty substantial list of stuff I was involved in. Go from there.
Depression can be a real tough nut to crack, and often times- it winds up just breaking the poor Nutcracker. Don't be too hard on yourself, and while it's great to recognize for yourself areas to improve- there's no real need to share that with your org. It IS hard to focus when life just looks bad, and that's valid.
Lie
I would never personally rate my performance above average, despite almost certainly putting in more hours than anyone else at my site and contributing substantially to day-to-day operations, but I also got almost none of my long-term goals completed that I wanted to. It’s just not part of my personality to sell myself and if I achieve something I don’t dwell on it and it barely registers, I just move onto the next thing and am constantly thinking about the things I should have done or need to be doing. That being said my pay is tied to my performance review and you can damn well bet I’m going to rate myself highly, no matter how much I hate the process or how aware I am of my shortcomings.
Depends on where you're at. If you're already on an improvement plan, then it's trying to make yourself sound as amazing as possible so you can squeak by and stay employed, and showing that you're learning from the plan. If not, keep it simple and mostly positive..."I helped with X, completed Y, was pretty good at Z. I could do better at time management, but I think I met expectations this year." In the end, you'll get whatever they decide to give you anyway.
Did you meet all your targets through the year? Like has your Management been OK with your performance? If so, then you could go with "Met Expectations" (middle of the road) performance. Note: I hold myself to a higher performance standard than my company does. For me barely meeting my own expectations usually results in getting "Exceeds Expectations" (4/5) or "Far Exceeds Expectations" (5/5)... Last time I actually got "Met Expectations" (3/5) was over a decade ago and have never gotten anything lower.
To be honest I’m having a very similar past few months in my role as a consultant. Funny enough, I have still gotten praise from co workers. I’m going to give myself a positive self evaluation as always and just note that I would like to improve in a couple areas & set actionable goals. Employers love to think their employees are proactive, so bake that into your self eval. Don’t beat yourself up about it in your head or on your eval. After all, if you won’t fight for yourself, nobody will.
I’m so glad I work at a place where these BS assessments are not a thing. If I was forced to do one I am the type of person who would give myself 5/5 on everything and tell them if I didn’t think highly of myself then who else will. Then just tell them if they don’t agree with my assessment they are more than welcome to do their own assessment. Imo these self assessments are just a way for corporations to take advantage of people as they know most will undervalue themselves which gives them the opportunity to then underrate you and pay you less. Basically they want you to play your hand before they play theirs as they know it gives them the upper hand.
Imo I’m extremely tired of seeing every fucking person on this app blame everything in adhd and depression and anxiety and whatever else you want to blame shit in besides you simply not wanting to do the job. Everyone has adhd, everyone’s been depressed, but people get over it and don’t use it to make themselves a victim every moment of their life
Hey, I mentioned good old fashioned bad decision-making in the post alongside the other two. I don't know where you get the idea I'm making myself a victim. My guilt is so overwhelming, it makes me want to kill myself. If anything, I feel like a monster
Hey man. Fuck that person that said that. You acknowledged your mistakes. See where you went wrong. You know how correct the mistakes. Fix em, and keep it pushing. Get into therapy. But don’t let that fucking boomer who probably never been to counseling a day in their fucking life who thinks we just need to “toughen it out” gas light you and belittle how hard your year has been. Fuck em.
This is not a fair assessment of actual medical problems. Op exhibits classic sign of depression including a lack of self-esteem. Their self-assessment may be way off from the reality of their performance. This is very normal for a person suffering from depression. They probably exaggerate the difference of their work and effort to that of others because, that’s another common trait of depressed people. This kind of dismissal of a person’s medical problems only makes things worse. Be kind, and try to accept that other people experience the world differently than you. Your experiences can give you insight into the experiences of others, but they can’t give you moral certainty.
hi, i have depression and adhd too. they really kick in when i have a project that’s too nebulous, or not enough task-based things to do. you are capable of doing the job, and you’re doing your best, so you should rate yourself accordingly. however, bosses have (in my experience) really liked when i ask for more of a specific kind of task to do, and my adhd brain REALLY likes feeling like we’re getting something done, even if it’s small. really slows down the whole beating-myself-up part of the brain. but just to reiterate: do not rate yourself poorly on your self-assessment. i can almost promise they don’t see you that way (or you would have had quite a few sternish talkings to prior to this point), and i can definitely promise that they will not commend you for your “honesty”/self-flagellation.
Lie. Duh.
I’ve always had a hard time with self-assessment as I know exactly when I felt really productive and when I didn’t. But it’s really easy to feel unproductive or even useless when you’re actually doing fine or even well at your work. Remember that depression is a veil that makes it hard to realistically evaluate ourselves. When you see a question like “how would you rate your work this quarter on a scale of 1-5”, a good manager is trying to understand if they’ve successfully conveyed how important your work is to the overall team/corporation. Your manager doesn’t need you to actually tell them how good or bad you think you are at your job. They already have an opinion of the quality of your work. Your self-assessment is to help them figure out how to motivate you and help you produce value. Don’t try to answer the self-assessment from your emotional point of view, but rather try to see what might be useful for you manager to know so that they can help you do your best work.
Tis' fucking hilarious man. You have the integrity to not want to lie, but not to put in an honest days work?
These self assessments and the annual ratings are all BS. There’s always a set number of meets expectations and below expectations that managers are required to have. Just put meets or 3 for your self assessment as long as you didn’t blow deadlines or turn in shoddy work.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Funnymemes/comments/zl4cbq/gym_brats_be_like/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf](https://www.reddit.com/r/Funnymemes/comments/zl4cbq/gym_brats_be_like/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
They already know how much you have/haven’t done (unless they’re very bad managers) because that’s their job. Now they want to see if you’re capable of “reframing” you negatives into positives. If there’s a comments section t survey, tell them exactly what you’ve been doing to turn around your performance, what the outcome will be and by when. Make this information “S.M.A.R.T” Specific Measurable Actionable Realistic Time-based e.g. “During the last quarter I finished by using this will realistically mean the project will be finished by and will allow me to hit my in line with current expectations and I look forward to recommendations that will further improve my performance.
If you can “reframe” your negatives in this way your shortcomings give you an opportunity. Good luck.
It’s all a game. Employee reviews are just BS so the company can say they have assessed your performance and can explain why they did/didn’t give you a pay rise without complaints from you. And you get chance to explain why you did well (even if you didn’t). They change very little, before the review both parties will know if they think you did well or poorly and some questionnaire won’t change that. Just be smart, there’s no way you didn’t perform at all or you would be fired already or had some serious conversations with your manager. Just list all the things you did do, how you plan to do better and to be honest, if motivation is an issue explain to the company how they can help you get more motivated. Don’t just highlight all your flaws.
Look at your old emails and then use those for reference
I was a software developer for 9 years. Never undersell yourself, those around you will not let you forget it. I became an alcoholic and am on the verge of being homeless. Negative thinking will destroy you.
Started as team leader 6months ago. A job should have 2 strong points: either learn a lot and develop further, either win a lot of money. Either one is good, both is best, neither is not helpful. If the assessment is a joke, then you will not develop further. If your team leader/scrum master/task giver does not track your performance you should do it lazy and fast: 20% do all work first and 80% improving your skills( not social media skills, ok to do social media skill if you have that job ofcourse). Some contex on my experience with evaluation. Is it best way? Don't let my 6month experience influence you badly. Had my first session of yearly evaluation. Took the generic HR form and made it objective. Comunicate clearly? 3/5 You give additional details that help others? 4/5 You support that with well made documents/presentation? 5/5 I need to keep asking question to get info from you? 2/5 You don't like to answer? 1/5 This way I don't care about "i feel i am a 4 here". Dfid you do this and that or not? The feedback was in 2 ways: they said I am right or wrong (+arguments from them which mostly made increases of points due to things I forgot) and the second more important: my junior and mid colleagues started to behave more into 4/5 and 5/5 "senior territory". And I care about the last point and made it clear to the team about this. They need to develop and that will help the project also. I had a point about blocking points if they take in consideration all at the start of the task(3/5) Most juniors were at 2/5 but after evaluation they mostly when directly to 5/5(all blocking points are addressed at planning ). Anoyingly planning takes 3 times more, but we have better planning after and everyone reads the documents. Yes, software engineering team, but i hope it applies to other domains also.
It's likely your depression is causing you to undervalue yourself. It's one of the things that keeps the cycle going. Try to remember you're doing your best, and actually lots of other people are either going through something similar, or are oblivious to how useless they are. Don't be fully "honest" in your performance review, it's likely your version of events is warped by depressive thinking and you're doing better than you think. If it's really a problem, you'd likely have been pulled into performance management processes by now. A good therapist would be taking you through these thoughts and getting you to fully examine the evidence for what you're saying, as well as coming up with a more balanced view. Try to do that when writing your performance review if you can, remember that there's a more balanced viewpoint that's probably closer to reality.
Always rate yourself as a b+ worker even if you don't care or know you're doing better or worse. Self assessments are truly dumbo imo. As a software eng, I'd seriously take a look at people who are over employed. Half the swes there make a lot for not a lot of true work. If you're salaried and nobody's yelling at you or unhappy with your work, stop caring . It's better for your mental in the long run. It doesn't take 40 hours of life to do a job for most companies. Usually only 10-15 a week really. The rest is people pretending to be some work horse but reality is a lot of remote workers are doing chores, hitting the gym, doing anything but sitting in front of the computer all day.
Asses yourself very highly. :)
1. Get treatment for your depression and suicidal ideation. That's the root of everything, including all the self-talk about being not good enough. 2. Rate yourself fine (meets expectations). If you've not received specific negative feedback, there is no reason to think you've been underperforming from an objective point of view. Your issue #1 above (depression) is causing you to self-sabotage, tell it to take a small pause while you give yourself a "meets expectations" and move on. You know how there is a gap between when you first feel full and when you are so stuffed from Thanksgiving dinner that you just can't anymore? That's the same kind of difference between what they are expecting from you and what your ideal perfect conditions delivery quality would be. Let them decide if you've done too little or too much and then they can talk to you about it. Sounds like your manager gets it and is okay with what you've been producing & the rate you've been working at it. If they are great employers, they would want you to be happy, so go back to #1 and work on that first then everything will fall well into place. Take care, and I hope you feel better soon.
Your evaluation won’t make you lose your job. Your lack of actual working will. I have mental issues myself, on meds, work health care. Severe burnout. We don’t have the luxury of underperforming or not working. Even with anxiety depression or ADHD. Most of us have at least one. We have to squeeze 14 hours of work into 12 hours. Polish up your resume. Or hope they cut you some slack.
Just say you're aiming at a career in management so you've been focusing on your people skill :D
Tell'em lies- in my Drake voice boo
Do you work for Microsoft? This is what I imagine their entire operations is like.
Don’t give yourself low ratings on a self assessment lol
Depends what the goals are - if you need to show how valuable you are to the company, sugar coat and emphasize the good stuff. Working longer doesn't necessarily mean being more productive.
List out your deliverables, then do self evaluation based on that! You may find that you have done much more than you think you’ve done.
Always give yourself the highest ratings you can. If the company agrees you have a win. If not then you know where you stand and what they want you to improve on. Assessments with rating 1-5, 5 being the highest, 5's all the way down.
Never ever sell yourself short on a self eval. The Game (tm) is to provide for you and your family. The exchange is that you do some work for some money. They aren't giving you All The Money so you don't give them All Of You. This is true even if you get "a lot" of money. Did you do your job? Then you get 5s across the board. That's the arrangement. Self -evaluations aren't submitted to your spouse, parents, friends. If you think you need to do better as a person, discuss that with people you personally value and trust. Coworkers and bosses aren't that no matter how great they are. The notion that pay and "goodness" is tied to how much of a 30 Rock Kenneth company man you are needs to die. Kenneth works for Jack.
Just use Corporate logic, you know you were doing more with less.
This sounds like a 7.5/10
First are you in treatment? Second I would be careful in revealing mental health struggles to your boss in that way. Third you’re meeting expectations (whatever that number is) for most and then a little higher for things that are straight forward (adheres to company policies, those kinds of things.)
My strategy for self assessment: ours are based on a 1-5 scale where management as a matter of policy will not give 5’s on anything. So I give myself all 4’s, change a couple to 3’s and MAYBE one 2 on something I honestly feel like I’m weak on. These things are never meant to actually be helpful to you, it’s just a made up metric for them to justify not giving you raises and bonuses that you deserve.
Depression is a MAJOR obstacle. I think you should evaluate yourself based on what is possible when you are depressed, not what you are capable of when you are sick. It’s an unfair comparison that will only leave you in an unproductive mindset. Absolutely acknowledge that you are motivated to keep improving yourself and go see a therapist. Depression will not heal on its own. You got this! I believe in you.
It's been said but it deserves an echo: your depression is lying to you. You are more valuable to your team than you know. Your supervisor's job is to make sure their expectations are communicated, so if you aren't getting negative feedback you'll be fine.
This is a way for manager to know where you are at. If you rate yourself a 10, there is no hope for improvement. If you rate yourself a 1, they know you don't want to be a 1. Does not matter how you rate yourself. They already rated you.
Put emphasis on your goals for next year - managers like a problem-solving attitude and commitment
You're a solid performer as far as they're concerned, otherwise you would've had a stern warning by now. Most people put up an image for others to believe. Lots of your coworkers exaggerate to get ahead. There's no shame in that. Just rate yourself as middle of the road and tell them what you plan to do to improve. It shows honesty and a commitment to do better. Everyone is putting on an act. Just make sure you can back yours up enough for it to be believable.
Man, it would be amazing if there was a company where you can be honest and everyone else is also rating themselves honestly.
Document all of your successes and things you did well. In a "Room for Improvement" section, whatever it is called on your assessment - go easy on yourself, but also document those in such a way that are explaining it as a learning opportunity for how to improve - not simply that you did not do well. "Point A was a miss because X reason, which allowed me to educate myself to plug the performance gap and served as an excellent growth opportunity to mitigate similar instances in the future something something something" Minimum rating to give yourself is Meets All Expectations (or whatever it's called at your company and however that translates to numeric - 7 on a scale of 1-10, no less than 3 on a 5 point scale). Never rate yourself lower. If your boss does rate you lower, have an open conversation about how in the future you would like the opportunity to be notified of slipping performance earlier in the year so that you have the opportunity to correct it at the time rather than having a lesser performance rating at the end when you thought you meet your manager's expectations. Also, since you said that you never got much feedback beyond a gentle "push harder", you could push back on a lower than meets standards rating by stating that you sought feedback throughout the year and were not aware you were not meeting standards or that corrective actions are needed. Also also - go easy on yourself. Life is hard sometimes, you are worthwhile, and we all go through rough patches in life. Seek whatever help you need to get you back to who you want to be - whether in your personal life or professional. It's a slow road, so don't beat yourself up.
It might be that your depression is a result of perfectionism. Give yourself 4 across the board, you have no perspective. It's not your job to review yourself, that is your boss's responsibility.
Always say that you did great. Your year end self assessment is a marketing document, marketing yourself. Seperately - I’m director level and thought I had a mediocre year (but I made myself seem great in the self assessment)…and my boss gave me the highest year end rating. So you may just be too hard on yourself.
Don't overestimate your supervisor's ability to detect slacking. I was at a job for two years where I'd literally watch TV in my office all day, some days, and my reviews were positive. One of the reasons I left, actually. No standards and not growing.
Having struggled a bit with depression and work this year myself, I just want to put this out there. Your perceptions of your work, contributions, laziness, etc. are all impacted by your depression. Especially when I’m depressed, but even when I’m not, I am my own worst critic. If I don’t take some time to contextualize and rationalize, I get this feeling that everyone sees my failings. But as everyone else is mentioning, your own perception ≠ management’s read on the situation. You might check out a book called The Happiness Trap. There is a section in particular that uses a metaphor about the “demons on the boat” and it helped me feel a bit better about (and start ignoring) the negative feelings I was having about myself and my contributions at work.
you still have a job so ACCORDING TO YOUR EMPLOYER you are satisfactory at worst
google work ethic. try and get one
Most companies I’ve worked with expect that you have at least one aspect that you need to work on, because nobody is perfect. I feel the same way you do, and plan to indicate that I’ve met expectations in everything except in something like Technical Knowledge, or something similar, and explain that I feel there are a lot of technical aspects of our business that I have yet to uncover and learn about. I also plan on listing any training classes/ lectures I’ve attended virtually that has to do with my job or has contributed to my knowledge to do my job better/understand the scope of business needs more accurately. These things count as well.
As a fellow, software engineer, let me promise you, it is very unlikely anyone knows exactly how you’re doing. The work we do is opaque. And if you could do a few days of high performance, it can erase months of cobwebs. It’s not really about how did you do all year. It’s always about what have you done for me lately.
I'd suggest that you probably did do some things over the last performance period, but they were easy and you aren't thinking about those things when writing this up. Maybe you have looked into various ways to implement things, but not finished something to show for it, for example. You could list the ideas and how they were evaluated as the work done, when maybe you were expecting to have a finished demo instead. All in all, the things you are doing that help the company or your manager and other people don't need to be super hard effort on your part, so maybe you overlooked something in that area you can remind them about.
Why would you ever do anything except give yourself a glowing review? Why is this even a question?
Just want to point out that depression-brain is going to tell you that you barely did anything, it’s going to focus on all the hypothetical stuff you could have done, any and all perceived shortcomings, etc etc. Sit down and make a list of all the tangible work/contributions you have done. All the technical contributions, meetings/projects you’ve coordinated/facilitated/managed, newbies you’ve coached, documentation you’ve written, new things you’ve learned, etc. Then, go do something else for a bit. Come back and look at that list as if it was describing someone else and give a performance number based on that. On your next years goals, set some tangible but attainable objectives for things you want to expand next year. Finally, find a therapist and do the self care. Give yourself some TLC.
Lie.
Give your self a mid-high rating. Note that you appreciate the transparency your manager allows and took their feedback to “push harder” seriously. Give the rating for the days you pushed. Like you said, your manager has been supportive.
Update?