The Insider Guide to Careers
Insider information, secrets and tips about getting hired and building careers. For employees and job candidates.
Beginning in school, we are taught to evaluate our performance in relation to others. This trend continues in universities with relative grading, which in turn seeps into the workplace in multiple ways.
One easy way for managers to discuss relative performance is during performance evaluation. Each individual is ruthlessly compared to expectations in role. “Expectations in role” refer to what a hypothetical above-average employee would do in your place. The manager then tries to match you with the hypothetical dream employee who exists only in one place: the manager’s mind.
In many companies, performance evaluation is a disaster. Expectations vary wildly from one manager to the other. The root cause remains the same: every manager has a hypothetical, imaginary benchmark employee in mind. HR tries to ensure some discipline by conducting calibration sessions and conducting manager training. However, many business leaders do not take HR seriously and underinvest in these programs. The net loss is to the employee who is not treated fairly with either promotions or performance evaluations.
There is another insidious reason that companies cannot solve by themselves. It is the way Western capitalism has been defined. There is a perennial urge to be dissatisfied and unhappy. The richest people in the world are in Silicon Valley, and they also happen to be among the most dissatisfied. This is because of intense benchmarking, but it is done so viciously that it saps the person’s soul.
In companies, people get angry and jealous when colleagues get promoted. They think of the company as a family which makes unbiased and fair judgements about capabilities and competencies. Workplaces are seen as an extension of school. Similarly, managers become the schoolteachers. Employees do not forget their erstwhile teachers who supposedly objectively evaluate the kids under them. All these are constructs of the mind.
Companies are not a family; they are a collection of people who are out to create profits. Most relationships are transactional in nature. Anyone who thinks otherwise is just fooling themselves. Secondly, considering managers to be wise people who make unbiased judgements is also wrong. Managers are as human as anyone else; they make lots of mistakes. They often play favourites and choose people similar to them in upbringing and appearance. When employees miss out on promotions, usually, it is not because of them. The blame often lies with inadequate funds, lack of openings, budgets, managerial incompetence, etc. People who take failure to get promoted too seriously usually deal themselves a great disadvantage. It does not help to ask managers why the promotion did not happen. Often, the manager will not tell you the exact reason and may give you new skills to work on.
Knowing how a company works, most people should take a chill pill and avoid taking such institutions too seriously. A person who has been promoted multiple times and makes much more compensation than you is not necessarily better than you. The person may be lucky to be in the right place at the right time. Since billions of people are in the workforce, even the extreme one-in-a-billion chance occurs all the time. If you understand how probability works, you will not be surprised by unlikely events. Unlikely events are way more likely than what your brain suggests.
Avoid jealousy and envy. Try to get satisfaction from your own work. Look within to gain inspiration and motivation. Do not crave adulation from the world; it will disappear as soon as it arrives. Do things you like and absorb yourself in that work. Show unlimited enthusiasm for that work and ensure it benefits the larger world. If you check these boxes, there is no reason for you not to have a dream career. Do not trivialize your own greatness by demeaning and envying others.
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