Personal goal: to achieve a better work-life balance.

How I achieved this goal: I played video games all night and didn't do the assignment.

The problem is less to do with personal goals and more to do with how your company or manager implements them.

My team has their org goals, which is what our bonuses are based on, and each person’s individual goals that they set with me. Those goals have the boilerplate reviews, and we keep it metrics based. Did we miss, meet, or exceed our goals? There’s a formula, which everyone knows before the year starts (because we wrote them as a group and them got board executive sign off on them) that tells us what our bonus metric will be. We sink or swim as a group, myself included. Each person has individual goals related to their unique role, but those are largely “Did you perform at the level expected of your title and salary?” No fluff. No BS. Some of my people write sentences, some give concise bullets, some write 3 word answers. This isn’t the SATs, so it doesn’t matter how the info is provided.

Then we have the personal goals, which are 100% rooted in the question “what do you want next?” For some people, it’s to move into a more Sr role, for others to break into a new discipline (expertise in a particular area, management, or something completely different), and sometimes it’s as simple as “make $30k more per year” or “have more time with my kids in the evenings.” (For the last one, it’s usually easy - we are remote with few mandatory hours so it’s easy to modify a schedule to have free hours when needed) We set personal goals and I coach them to achieve them, but the only person they answer to if they don’t achieve them is themselves. It has zero impact on their performance metrics, bonuses, or raises.

I want to see everyone have the life and career they want, and we use these goals as way to work towards that. Our 1-on-1 meetings are NOT about their tasks. We have the task board and team syncs for that and I can schedule a 1-off chat if we need to address something. Instead we spend the 1-on-1 more or less on whatever topic they want to address. If something is stressing them, annoying them, etc, they have that time to bring it up and we can try to find a solution. One of my people has a goal to move to a city 9 time zones away. They also highly values their work/life balance, so flexing their schedule is likely not going to solve this so instead I’m helping them leave the team for a new job. Ideally I’ll keep them in the company, but if that doesn’t work out and they have to leave, so be it. It’s what’s best for them and everyone else here sees it - that shit goes a long way.

If you’re doing bullshit personal goals and nonsense 1-on-1 meetings, that’s the manager and culture at fault, not the concept as a whole.

Yes... I don't think I've met anyone who enjoys the reviews, the 1:1s, having to remember what I did this past year, and.. what you said.

Yeah, HR does a lot of weird shit. If you have a good boss, they will tell you what to write if you ask. Everyone thinks it’s bullshit except for the HR boss.

It could be or you can use then to get company resources to become more competitive on the market. As in being better paid. Do a lot of spreadsheeting? Have your employer purchase a course for you. Or if you want to advance to leadership have then get you a conflict resolution class. Go wild.

It's so BS that I now use ChatGPT to write most of this stuff for me because nobody cares what it says except for HR. They're just trying to justify their job and book up reasons they can use for why they fired you should the need arise.

It helps if you ask it to write in the style of some sample text so it doesn't sound fake, but even then, I'm not sure that I care enough to give HR even that much of my effort.

Just started with a new company and was told that we have quarterly reviews and requested I start working toward getting the AWS Solutions Architect certificate. I kinda hate it, but he also seems like a really nice guy and wasn’t the one that came up with the idea of quarterly reviews for the entire company.

Definitely don’t look forward to future reviews where I actually have to give updates and have “met goals” and such.

Ever notice how "personal goals" are supposed to be focused on work? That's because companies are using it to extract more productivity from the same number of employees for the same price. They're trying to exploit human nature through gamifying your workload for a dopamine rush. When this is realized it often feels condescending, because it is.