>Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis in their book, "Schooling in Capitalist
>America," showed that supervisor ranking of employees mirrored teacher
>evaluation of high school students. Both schools and companies rewarded
>those who were punctual, deferred gratification, showed school (or
>company) spirit, deferred to authority, were perseverant, etc. Those
>penalized were aggresive, creative, and the like.
>
>Michael Yates
Actually, to this day I hate getting reviewed on a yearly basis, even
though I have been going through this process for the 33 years I have
worked in corporations. Columbia does have a grading system in place and I
have received "very good" ratings every year. Tops is "exceptional", "very
good" is next, with "acceptable" and "marginal" rounding things out. The
last full-time job I had before Columbia was at Goldman-Sachs which also
used a grading system. It is not really the question of how much of a raise
I will get that gets me so worked up. The difference between an
"exceptional" and a "very good", especially in the austere 1992 to 1997
period, was negligible--amounting to a 3 percent versus a 2 percent raise
most years.
I just don't like being rated. Period. It reminds me of high school. For
some reason, grades at Bard College did not bother me that much because
nobody took them seriously. It's one of the reasons I will never submit
anything to a scholarly journal again. The whole process reminds me of
turning in a term paper, with your name in print being equivalent to
getting a good grade.
The other thing that seems ridiculous is how little being graded has to do
with actual job performance. If I have a decent boss and am given
interesting work, as is the case now, I tend to put in a decent effort. I
have been here nearly 10 years, a record for a job-hopper like myself.
Louis Proyect
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