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Hello Monks,
I am sure most of you have had to submit a report detailing
what you have been doing to earn your pay.
<rant>
I always have felt that such reports are only required
when your boss is too stupid and/or lazy to understand what you do, let
alone remember what they asked you to do in the first place!
</rant>
I have a tendency to be too humble in these reports.
For example:
What I did
I wrote a simple LWP Perl script based on poorly written example
from a vendor.
What I would usually say.
I customized example LWP Perl script to interface to vendors web-site.
<tongue in cheek>
Now here's my question. What would shameless buzzword monger write?
The Url accessed begins with https, so could I claim to be
an expert on SSL certificate base encryption/decryption?
When I rewrote the vendor's script I move bits of it into
my own Perl module and broke the data submission and data retrieval
parts of the vendor's script in to two different command-line
tools that interface to our database.
What would a shameless self-promoter say about that?
I had to install Perl modules and run make. Does that make
me a systems adminstartor?
I had to create a table on a Oracle database. Does that make me
Larry Ellison?
</tongue in cheek>
Please fell free to have fun with your replies.
Thanks |
Re: (OT)Employee Status Reports or Shameless self-promoting
by Anonymous Monk on Apr 23, 2003 at 20:48 UTC
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What I did:
Aimlessly surfed PerlMonks.org, chatting in the cb and posting rambling meditations.
What I would say:
Invested a substantial amount of time learning from, and contributing to, one of the largest global communities dedicated to the advancement and exploration of one of the industry's hottest trends...perhaps even subtly guiding the development of the industry culture as a whole. All-the-while strategically enriching myself professionally and personally in an entirely value-adding endeavor for this conglomerate. | [reply] |
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++ to you, whoever you are... :)
Next time, please login first, so my ++ is not so useless :)
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Re: (OT)Employee Status Reports or Shameless self-promoting
by dws (Chancellor) on Apr 24, 2003 at 00:34 UTC
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I always have felt that such reports are only required
when your boss is too stupid and/or lazy to understand what you do, let
alone remember what they asked you to do in the first place!
Having been a boss several times, let me offer up the other side of this. Status reports serve several purposes. First, they provide a uniform way of gathering some of the information that goes into annual reviews. (A boss should be taking notes along the way, anyway.) Think of this as a record of what happened. You might write something like
"I reworked the vendor's example script, breaking out useful parts so that we could reuse them, and adapting the script to provide two command-line tools that use our database."
Second, status reports provide a way for a boss to verify that you're doing what they expect. It's a poor way, but it's a way. You'd think it would be a simple matter of wandering around and looking, except that takes a lot of time, and bosses are often just as starved for time as you are. (There's often nuttiness going on at a higher level that you see very little of.)
Third, status reports provide weekly time for you to step out of your rut and reflect on what you've been doing. Most good developers will do this on your own, but requiring the status report is a way to stick this opportunity in everyone's face.
Fourth, reports are a way to gather input from people who might otherwise sit on it. Many of the managers I've worked for have asked for a "Problems/Suggestions" section on each report. In your case, a reasonable thing to note (assuming you haven't done this already) is
"I have concerns about the quality of the work we're getting from our vendor. The example they provided was poorly written."
And fifth, there's the possibility that your boss is also under a requirement to provide a status report. Asking his/her staff for reports provides raw material, making his/her job somewhat easier.
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I once worked for Electronic Arts, and they added one feature to the weekly status report that helped to make it seem less of a useless chore: the status reports were all collated and re-summarised as they passed up the chain, but the resulting document was then annotated during discussion at the board meeting, and that then passed back down the chain for everyone to see.
It really focuses your mind when your name appears in the top level report, and the chairman of the company has scrawled a 'good job', or maybe a 'why is this bozo still working for us?' against it. :)
Hugo
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And fifth, there's the possibility that your boss is also under a requirement to provide a status report
Indeed. Having a good status reporting system and a solid paper trail can save an enormous amount of legal hassles when it comes to contract disputes. You often find that requests for these sort of papertrails start in a legal department (or after a costly dispute ;-)
I found the best way to do them was to waste a lot of time writing a bunch of perl scripts to help me keep my timesheets and produce appropriate summary reports ;)
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Re: (OT)Employee Status Reports or Shameless self-promoting
by TVSET (Chaplain) on Apr 24, 2003 at 00:08 UTC
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From my experience, it is not WHAT you write, but what PERIOD can you cover. Blogs and and .bash_logout-what-have-you-done scripts are very useful of that staff. Seriosly, whatever you put in your .bash_logout gets executed when you close the shell. That is pretty good time to ask yourself what have you done while that shell has been open. Use your imagination.
Secondly, BOFH excuses are really working! You can skip about 20% as being a rough joke, but the rest of them are pretty good for whatever text you send to the management. If you search Google, you might even find them in fortune format (otherwise it's easy to convert).
There are also random phrases generators, which take a list of words for each part of the phrase and make a lot of reasons to get paid for whatever is that you do. Check Freshmeat.net to find those.
General rule that I like to follow is that: there are plenty of words that can take several meanings - use them all when talking to people that pay. If you are asked, you can provide whatever explanation that fits both you and the cash-guy. Most of the times you will not be asked anyways. :)
Now, from all that theoretical talk to practical examples.
- Real thing:
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use CGI;
- Explanations:
Web interface development with standard
specification complient environment for HTTP and
FTP web protocols, including self-debugging and
software bug prevention technologies.
- Real thing:
=head1 NAME
My::Module
=cut
- Explanations:
Object Oriented Programming (from now on OOP) with
technical documentation scripting and generation
using cross-platform, self-generating techniques.
You've got the idea... :)
P.S.: I hope my boss is not reading this, since I do provide real life examples. :)
P.P.S.: If you still have difficulties and need customized versions - /msg me :)
Leonid Mamtchenkov | [reply]
[d/l]
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Re: (OT)Employee Status Reports or Shameless self-promoting
by submersible_toaster (Chaplain) on Apr 24, 2003 at 06:34 UTC
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I say:In striving to foster greater understanding of the company
goals and workflow, I have provided my time in a mentoring capacity to
colleagues where the need has been apparent, Developed new strategies to facilitate
a proactive repair and maintenance schedule within the company and leveraged the
benefits of peer review and code amalgamation in a wide area networking environment
I did:
- LART users who _REALLY_ deserve it
- Randomly rotate office mice and keyboards, so no-one suffers constantly
- Posted to PM
administration I can take, it's the support that kills me | [reply] |
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