maxopedia

I read this post a while back, and it stuck with me.

I had a moment today at work where I felt like I was in grade school again. I had a performance review. I don't have too much of a beef with performance reviews, because you need some sort of metric, but generally someone's review of you is not based on the actual work you do, but their perception of the work you do. This is why even if you really do nothing all day at work, as long as you keep telling your boss in detail about what you do -- up to a limit of course -- will make him think you're a superstar or something, as long as your peers think you're okay.

I've had performance reviews I thought were helpful. This was not one of them. I felt like I was about ten years old. It actually made me respect my reviewer less, although he is a guy that I do generally respect.

There's a famous sociology text that talks about the concept of a total institution, Asylums by Erving Goffman.

Very large corporations tend to share many of the same features as schools, prisons, and mental health facilities. Although this seems a little extreme, and I'm personally biased towards this viewpoint, I think that this is a very important concept that one needs to hold in their head. Basic psychological experiments involving placing people in positions of power generally bodes ill for their subjects. Placing people in charge of total institutions is particularly nasty.

I intend to do some research into this topic, and post my findings as relates to my corporate environment.

to be continued...