Tag: evaluation

Always Evaluate Your Tools & Processes

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When I was building the PC for the golf sim, I had a temporary table in my office and I was turning my chair from my desk to the table and back while I installed and configured Windows. Each time I went from the mouse on the PC to the Apple Magic Trackpad I wanted the mouse again. I’ve been using the trackpad for about a year, since I built the desk.

Prior to this desk, I actually had the MacBook Air right in front of me and used its keyboard and trackpad. The trackpad on a MacBook is actually much better than this “magic” one. It really struggles with drag and drops, releasing the click action before I’m done. Maybe it’s user error, but I’d been struggling with that aspect since day one.

I ordered another mouse that same day.

This situation got me thinking. I know I’d been struggling with at least one aspect of the Magic Trackpad, yet I didn’t do anything about it. It took using the mouse to realize there’s a lot of performance to be gained.

Life is too short to struggle with the tools and processes we use. Is there anything else at work I’m struggling with? Maybe I could write more scripts to automate things I do frequently. How can I improve my woodshop processes?

Bill and Melinda Gates on Teacher Evaluation

Nick Momrik1 Comment

98% of our school teachers are rated “satisfactory.” Clearly, rating systems that pass pretty much everybody are a fraud. Worse, such pass/fail evaluations don’t give teachers enough feedback for improvement. So why would we ever expect them to get better? Why would anyone who’s called to teach want to work under these conditions?

via Bill and Melinda Gates on Teacher Evaluation – WSJ.com.

I have a lot of conversations with a good friend who is frustrated with the system as well. I hope Bill and Melinda can come up with something from the work they are doing.

Performance Evaluation

Nick MomrikLeave a comment

I had my 6 month performance evaluation this morning and it went well. My boss praised me for being such a good employee and all that good stuff. We talked about some of my goals for the future, when I informed him that I’ve been looking for a new job for the past month or two. I explained how I hate answering phones and don’t really have any motivation for my job anymore since it’s not what I want to be doing for a career. He took it well because we had discussed in one of my previous evaluations that I wanted to get into programming. It’s what I love to do and when I’m doing it, it doesn’t seem like work to me. He also has always known that I wouldn’t be around very long. Sometimes I wonder how I’m still there after almost 2 years. Hopefully an opportunity will come my way soon.

We also talked about our upper management, raises, workflow, office procedures, student workers, and various other things. It was a good hour of talking about things we don’t normally talk about. I also made some suggestions for improvements to our Support Center and Help Desk. On Thursday afternoon I have another short meeting to review goals and sign my evaluation. I wonder if anyone has ever declined to sign their evaluation (maybe if they got a bad one?).

One thing that I have realized since returning to Saginaw yesterday afternoon is that I’ve kind of been slacking at work. This is due to the motivation factor (lack of). I’ve also realized that this isn’t fair to my co-workers or our customers, so it’s time to step it back up and get the work done.