Here's the agenda i took to HR

[ravencallscrows]

Note: because i'm sending this to HR also, it follows conventionally accepted rules of capitalization, not my standard refusal to not capitalize myself except at the beginning of a sentence.

1. Communication problems with <name removed for privacy> about exactly what is expected- including requesting a weekly “checklist” of expected things. When I asked for this three weeks ago, I got one that week. We didn’t have a 1:1 the following week since I was sick, but I didn’t get one again this past week. If I’m not meeting expectations, I need to have them spelled out clearly so that I can be sure to focus first and foremost on the items on the list, in the priority which they’re given.
2. Lack of any negative feedback until after I submitted my review, continual negative feedback on everything since then; although I’m doing the same things now I’ve been doing all along. If my performance has been unsatisfactory all along, why didn’t someone mention it earlier? I’d have done whatever I could have to rectify the situation at that point. Waiting until less than a month before reviews are due seems like a punitive measure to punish me- or that I was a chosen scapegoat because someone in management said that a certain number of people needed to be given unsatisfactory scores on their reviews. My perception at the time I filled out my self-evaluation on my review was that with the additional responsibilities I’ve assumed in the department as a whole- adding Development and Release, Deployment and Roaming, and some Foundations test ownership to Document Storage Services; and owning all the setup automation- not just running it, but investigating the failures; I was honestly expecting a review score around 3.5, although I gave myself a 3 because there were two things which I couldn’t honestly say I completed successfully, although I think there were good reasons for both. Now I’d be shocked if I got anything higher than a 2.5, just given the feedback I’ve had in the past weeks.
3. Shifting expectation- I’m told one week that something in particular is needed in the build reports, then after I make sure to include it, something else needs to be in the next one.
4. Apparent tasking contradiction between needing to compile and analyze these reports (which take roughly 7 hours each, for the two to three builds we get a week) and the statement “you need to spend more time focused on finding quality bugs.” I’m working 40-45 hours a week at this point, we’re still eleven months from shipping, and a sizable amount of my time is being occupied compiling reports which have very little mission-critical information because there are still so many file changes, and will continue to be until all the features for Office 11 get locked down. Tracking file changes is very important when there are a few number of changes from build to build, but we’re looking at < lots- technical details which are not relevant here and are omitted because they're not going to be of any interest to anyone and may be under NDA>, and reconciling all these changes is very time consuming, which takes time away from actual testing.
5. Apparent double standard- I have to publish these on a per-build basis, but no one else on the team seems to have any sort of similar deliverables.
6. Continued frustration with being not allowed to interview with other groups. I feel like a bad fit in my group- Office is not what I want to do as a career, and when that’s compounded by having to test in interfaces where I can’t read a single word to be certain the option I think I’m choosing is the one I actually want to be testing just adds an inordinate amount of stress to my work-life.
7. Questioned integrity. At the time, being asked to provide additional objectives for the mid-year evaluation didn’t seem like a big deal. It wasn’t even much of an issue when the points I provided were then posted as Manager comments verbatim (but rearranged) in that section of the document. With what’s seeming to be a bit of a vendetta now, I can’t help but wonder what things could have been said then but weren’t that could have prevented things from being the issue they are now.
8. Lack of any particular interest in my career development. I’ve asked several times for suggestions of classes to take or things to study which would make me more effective in my current job. I’ve had none suggested. With only a single instance, when I’ve asked to take a class, I’ve been told that it wasn’t a good time to do so.

I think things went pretty well. We'll see. I'm still prepared to resign here for another position elsewhere or for a contract position if need be.