taking credit
Apr. 5th, 2022 12:49 pmI wrote an entry last week about how I had to convince my employees to seek credit and claim victory when they finish something, so their accomplishments aren't just lost in the noise. ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dandylover1 asked... "if she wrote the article, would her name not be on it? Why would someone not seek recognition for a job that he did? That is quite odd."
Oh my gosh. This is how the technical world works. All the time. I have to PULL TEETH to remind my team to report their wins, project completions, finish lines. Every year we have annual reviews where we ask our engineers to remember what they worked on and what accomplishments stuck out, and they HATE it. "I did lots of stuff, leave me alone, I'm too busy!"
One reason we don't seek recognition is that the jobs we do are so collaborative it's hard to draw the line around "I did this great thing." Day 1 as an engineer I was told to take a drawing, change one little connector part number, give it a new drawing number and put my name on it. This did not make me want to brag to my mom that I was an AIRPLANE DESIGNER. I'd just gotten out of school where that kind of assignment is called "plagarism". But in industry it's called "streamlining!" Someone within our company created it, the more I can stand on their shoulders the better. Not only is it faster but the drawing checkers and certification types would get downright mad at me for NOT using a proven design.
Then there's the post-creation workload aspect... the guy who's name was on the first drawing did not WANT to be on the second one because he wanted ME to get the calls and questions from the installers about it. Our company does not put engineer/designer names out on web articles, we want customers contacting the team support lines that are purposefully staffed with people whose job it is to answer questions, that way everyone else can get some work done around here.
And the last reason... there's no black and white measuring stick to tell who's doing a good job, at the end of the year your boss doesn't say "your name was on five articles". We are measured much more objectively. If you're really heads down and don't know much about the organization, you REALLY will not know what's a big important deal and what's not. You are evaluated by people who work closely with you, and they know what you do no matter what name is on it. Today I wrote up a beautiful white paper, my direct supervisor knows I did it, the people who work closest with me know I knock this out, and that's enough. I'm not putting my NAME on the document to be sent around because again, I'd get ALL the questions, ugh!
So that is why technical people will spend entire careers cranking out small changes to existing designs and never pause to think "hey, one of those was a big deal." Have I done some good things at my job? Sure. But I'm past those and on to the next thing, being evaluated on what I'm doing for today's problem... I just keep running.
dandylover1 asked... "if she wrote the article, would her name not be on it? Why would someone not seek recognition for a job that he did? That is quite odd."Oh my gosh. This is how the technical world works. All the time. I have to PULL TEETH to remind my team to report their wins, project completions, finish lines. Every year we have annual reviews where we ask our engineers to remember what they worked on and what accomplishments stuck out, and they HATE it. "I did lots of stuff, leave me alone, I'm too busy!"
One reason we don't seek recognition is that the jobs we do are so collaborative it's hard to draw the line around "I did this great thing." Day 1 as an engineer I was told to take a drawing, change one little connector part number, give it a new drawing number and put my name on it. This did not make me want to brag to my mom that I was an AIRPLANE DESIGNER. I'd just gotten out of school where that kind of assignment is called "plagarism". But in industry it's called "streamlining!" Someone within our company created it, the more I can stand on their shoulders the better. Not only is it faster but the drawing checkers and certification types would get downright mad at me for NOT using a proven design.
Then there's the post-creation workload aspect... the guy who's name was on the first drawing did not WANT to be on the second one because he wanted ME to get the calls and questions from the installers about it. Our company does not put engineer/designer names out on web articles, we want customers contacting the team support lines that are purposefully staffed with people whose job it is to answer questions, that way everyone else can get some work done around here.
And the last reason... there's no black and white measuring stick to tell who's doing a good job, at the end of the year your boss doesn't say "your name was on five articles". We are measured much more objectively. If you're really heads down and don't know much about the organization, you REALLY will not know what's a big important deal and what's not. You are evaluated by people who work closely with you, and they know what you do no matter what name is on it. Today I wrote up a beautiful white paper, my direct supervisor knows I did it, the people who work closest with me know I knock this out, and that's enough. I'm not putting my NAME on the document to be sent around because again, I'd get ALL the questions, ugh!
So that is why technical people will spend entire careers cranking out small changes to existing designs and never pause to think "hey, one of those was a big deal." Have I done some good things at my job? Sure. But I'm past those and on to the next thing, being evaluated on what I'm doing for today's problem... I just keep running.