Hi all,
I am a junior software developer working in an IT department of about 20 people. I have been on the job for 5 months.
I see my manager very rarely, maybe twice per month. He does not do O3’s with me, and I have received minimal feedback & coaching from him. I am delegated some tasks by my team lead, but I am also permitted to – and often do – start up other ad-hoc projects with my coworkers as I see fit. I do not have an official job description or clear performance objectives.
As you can probably tell by now, my manager is extremely “hands off”, and puts complete faith in his directs to “do the right things” and “do things right”.
I appreciate how much workplace autonomy I have, but part of me is a bit hesitant because I do not have a clear understanding of how my manager is MEASURING my PERFORMANCE.
Any thoughts on this? Have any of you been in a similar situation? As a manager, how would you react if one of your directs asked you how you are measuring their performance?
It's entirely possible that
It's entirely possible that your manager doesn't have a clear understanding of how they're measuring your performance.
If you asked me, I'd tell you about my priorities for your role, and the growth objectives I had for you, and where I want you to focus your energies for the next step in your career (which would basically be for you to become a better support for my career, by doing bits of my job so that I can take on bits of my boss's job).
Then again, I didn't speak to some of my people for a whole 3 days, and apologized to them for it when I had the chance.
In the environment you describe, I suspect you'll need to be relatively proactive. Tell your boss how you're doing (subtly, appropriately, and never at someone else's expense). He'll probably believe you.
I'd say you should
I'd say you should ask.
Whether your company does performance reviews or not (and I suspect they do), your manager will be asked to characterize the performance of his directs at some point in time. Even if he doesn't have any specific metrics, you asking about them will make him think about them. You might even be able to come up with some for him, by pointing out some of the things you do well at.
Nobody gets asked to play a sport without being told how the score is kept - with some sharp questions, you'll be able to figure out how your manager is measuring your performance.