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Jun. 20th, 2005 10:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
plonqAs a "manager" in this company, I am required to fill out a development profile every year. It's on a web interface this time around, so the process is slower than ever! Progress is a wonderful thing.
Among the things I have to fill in are concepts like Corporate Values, Core Competencies, and (my favourite) Business Generic Competencies. The generic competencies include influence and persuasion, relationship management, policies/process/procedures - well, you get the idea. There are about a dozen equally-concrete generic competencies where I, and then my boss get to rate me as contributing, applying, guiding, or shaping. We then rate that against the desired competencies outlined in the job profile as set in the position guide for my job. The only problem is that unless Human Resources has chosen to hide this information from us, there is no position guide for my job. My job is actually a conglomeration of inherited duties from other jobs.
This web application also has a few irksome quirks, such as the fact that under the Education category, you can only include an institution and program that they have previously entered into the system. If I had graduated from an institution that they have not previously entered then I am, for all purposes, uneducated because there is no free-form field. Ah, but the institution that I attended is listed - and they have a checkbox bearing the label "Completed?" I completed two years before I dropped out, so I'll just fill in the institution and program and then uncheck that box. Simple, no?
Nope.
It won't let me past this entry unless I fill out both the level (undergrad, masters, doctorate, etc) and the year I graduated. The "Completed?" checkbox apparently does nothing. What the heck, I may as well fill in that I got a Doctorate in Computer Science, and then uncheck that box. "Well, y'see, I dropped out two years into the seven-year Doctorate program."
The best part of it all, though, was when I clicked on the button labelled "CLOSE WINDOW" (there is no SAVE button) and the application came back with an error reading, "Your data was not saved because you did not use the CLOSE WINDOW button and closed the application in an unsafe manner." Argh! Apparently the people who designed this application weren't required to complete one of these things. There's 45 minutes of my life that I won't get back.
I think what irks me most is that this process is predicated on the assumption that you should not be happy doing what you are doing. If you're not shooting for the presidency of the company, and looking to step on anyone who gets in your way then you're not a model employee. You should never be happy with what you have. If our employees aren't fiercely competitive then how can our company be competitive?
Among the things I have to fill in are concepts like Corporate Values, Core Competencies, and (my favourite) Business Generic Competencies. The generic competencies include influence and persuasion, relationship management, policies/process/procedures - well, you get the idea. There are about a dozen equally-concrete generic competencies where I, and then my boss get to rate me as contributing, applying, guiding, or shaping. We then rate that against the desired competencies outlined in the job profile as set in the position guide for my job. The only problem is that unless Human Resources has chosen to hide this information from us, there is no position guide for my job. My job is actually a conglomeration of inherited duties from other jobs.
This web application also has a few irksome quirks, such as the fact that under the Education category, you can only include an institution and program that they have previously entered into the system. If I had graduated from an institution that they have not previously entered then I am, for all purposes, uneducated because there is no free-form field. Ah, but the institution that I attended is listed - and they have a checkbox bearing the label "Completed?" I completed two years before I dropped out, so I'll just fill in the institution and program and then uncheck that box. Simple, no?
Nope.
It won't let me past this entry unless I fill out both the level (undergrad, masters, doctorate, etc) and the year I graduated. The "Completed?" checkbox apparently does nothing. What the heck, I may as well fill in that I got a Doctorate in Computer Science, and then uncheck that box. "Well, y'see, I dropped out two years into the seven-year Doctorate program."
The best part of it all, though, was when I clicked on the button labelled "CLOSE WINDOW" (there is no SAVE button) and the application came back with an error reading, "Your data was not saved because you did not use the CLOSE WINDOW button and closed the application in an unsafe manner." Argh! Apparently the people who designed this application weren't required to complete one of these things. There's 45 minutes of my life that I won't get back.
I think what irks me most is that this process is predicated on the assumption that you should not be happy doing what you are doing. If you're not shooting for the presidency of the company, and looking to step on anyone who gets in your way then you're not a model employee. You should never be happy with what you have. If our employees aren't fiercely competitive then how can our company be competitive?
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you're lucky...
Date: 2005-06-20 10:22 pm (UTC)And there I have to tell him what I think of my job, my colleagues, him, how he does his work...
It's just that he's a spineless lump with no initiative and the direct reason why my department doesn't HAVE a real boss, and therefore the reason why my job often sucks...
(He still hasn't hired or appointed a new head of IT since the organisation was regionalized back in 2002)
I've seen worse web-forms, too.
I have to enter a time-sheet into one...
The time-sheet isn't used for payment, but to register what kind of tasks I spend my time doing. Only, I only HAVE one task... 'IT maintenance and support'... (They won't give me two tasks 'IT maintenance' and 'user support' to register on)
I only bother to do it once a month, and then I sum up all the hours for that month and write them into the field for the last day of that month...
(I get the hours directly from a report from the punch-clock or whatever you call it every month... Yeah, I punch in and out, so the hours are already registered in another system)
Re: you're lucky...
Date: 2005-06-21 12:56 pm (UTC)So far I've done virtually nothing of what was set out at the start of the year, but my job tends to go that way. So much of it is ad hoc that it's hard to predict in January what I'll be doing by March.