The Yearly Review Feedback That I Could Never Accept

I have the ability to be a profound jackass. So, most feedback that’s been included in yearly reviews is probably fair. But, fifteen, plus, years ago, I did get one annual review that had one negative remark on it that bothered me then and still does to this day.

Some annual meeting with a big technology company, we’ll call them Big Tech Company “X”, that was one of our vendors. I was tasked with giving a presentation around how we are using their products. In particular, there were certain shortcomings that we had gone to great lengths to engineer / architect around. I was privately discussing these issues with a couple of employees of Big Tech Company “X”. I / We put together a presentation that would convey these issues to senior leadership of Big Tech Company “X”. The whole meeting was forty five minutes. There were probably 15 slides including Intro, Agenda, and the “Thank you. Any Questions?” side.

The meeting came and went. The presentation was delivered. The technical points were made and desired product changes discussed. I accomplished the goals that I set out to achieve in terms of messaging. My contacts at Big Tech Company “X” told me it was successful to the extent that it gave them one more customer story to push things in the direction we all wanted to see the product go. Success…or, so I thought.

Fast-forward about four months and it was time for my annual review. Things were pretty good. I got high-marks in every category they measured. The feedback that was received was mostly positive with one exception. There was one team leader in my department, not in my chain of command, who stated that I needed to understand my audience and stay on topic in meetings. My first response was to ask what specifically they were referring to. The only example cited was the meeting with Big Tech Company “X” that I already described.

I pointed out the entire point / theme of that meeting was what was covered. The message was delivered. The points were understood. By this point, the product roadmap now officially had at least one of the changes we were asking for in that meeting being incorporated into an upcoming release. My leader stated they understood, but HR rules stated that this feedback could not be removed or changed. Within a few weeks of this moment, I was starting a new position within the same company, but in a different department. So, I didn’t bother pursuing it further.

But, that manager who wrote that feedback was completely clueless and out-of-the-loop regarding what that meeting was actually meant to accomplish. It’s not like this was a secret. It was the subject of much discussion in the weeks leading up to the meeting. That has always bothered me, but I was marching to the beat of my own drum then and I still am today. So, we go on.