The Review…

Just a week or so after writing the “Corned Beef” entry about the differences between the small, statewide company I now work for and the large, global financial organization I used to work for, I’ve found one more difference.

Just days ago, I received a sort of performance review, nine months in.  The review was fairly typical—all good nothing bad.  Nothing that I should do better at or improve upon. Just “keep doing what you’re doing”.

At the last company, they reviewed a little differently.  Basically, it was like being graded on a final exam and then being told that you’ll never be able to get higher than a C.  Everyone got C’s.  If you got a D or an F, then you should be fired.  If you got an A or a B, then you should be promoted.  They didn’t like to do either, so no matter how hard you tried, you’d never get more than a C.  And then they’d bullshit with you and tell you that a C is great—it means you’re doing your job satisfactorily.  Ugh.

Along with my review, I was informed that they’d be adjusting my salary. To give a little background on this, when I interviewed at this smaller company and they asked me what I’d like for my starting salary to be, I told them I’d think about it over the weekend. That weekend, I came up with a number that was much larger than my salary at the global, financial organization and figured that I could rationalize it because I’d be losing some “perks”.  Those perks weren’t really that big of a deal, but when you’re negotiating a salary, they become golden nuggets. I let the HR person know what number I’d come up with and she replied that it was in at the top of the range they’d planned on paying, so she’d be fine with it.  Whoa.

So last Friday, during this performance review, I’m told that they’d be adjusting my salary. They’d done a review of people that perform the same job that I do and what salaries these people make and determined that I wasn’t making enough. Let me repeat that.  I’m not getting paid enough. I’m getting paid too little.

So, they’re going to raise my salary to the level it should be at. Where that is, I don’t know. It could be very little, or it could be a lot more.  Something tells me that they wouldn’t go to this much trouble if it’s just a cost of living increase.

Anyhow, did I just fall asleep and wake up in a dream??  Come on now.  The last company probably wouldn’t have ever told me.