No brag, just fact

In every company I have worked for since graduating college in 1980, I have had to fill out annual or bi-annual performance reviews. Now, I understand that there has to be a way of measuring progress, and back in the days when we actually got raises, there was even some motivation for doing this. However, in this time of great economic boom for the rich under the Shrub, and the time of 0-1% raises for us middle class white collar working stiffs, there just doesn't seem to be a real motivation for me to remember everything I have done for the past year.

First, how am I supposed to remember everything I did right over a whole year. I would have had to spend most of my time writing things down instead of actually working. And it takes a week or more to go through all my old notes just to determine what I did. Aren't released products and met schedules enough to satisfy management?

My boss said, when asked why we had to do this: "The forms are a pain, but they make it easier for management to review set of reviews more quickly. I need your input by the end of today."

For that matter, remembering tends to make me angry when I realize that I will, like most of the rest of the engineers in the company, get a 1% raise. I put in a lot of work, a lot of hours and a lot of my emotion into my project. That should be reward enough I suppose, if my job were one I loved. However, I do admit I work for the money, and programming computers pays too well. Raising and supporting children certainly changed my perspective on how much bullcrap I would put up with in order to keep a job.

Well, all of that said, and I still have a performance review to get to my boss by the end of the day...