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on having no ambition
Feb. 10th, 2010 12:09 amCommenting on another post crystalized something for me.
I do not have, nor have I ever had, any career goals, just job goals. I want to work with smart and interesting people, on cool and useful stuff. But that describes the sort of company I want to work for, and the environment I want to work in. I don't have a particular technology area that I want to advance. Nor do I have a particular role I want to fill in a company. I'm not like "I want to be the Chief Robot Officer of the Robot company." No, I'll do scut work if it's useful, I'll work on stuff that bores the snot out of me if I don't have to pretend to care, and I'll re-implement the sockets library for the third or fourth time if there's a plausible business reason for it (DO-178B certification).
This makes the annual goal setting exercise seem especially pointless. I'll participate in product and project planning, and I'll work towards those goals, and in absence of that I'll work on whatever management thinks would be a good use of my time. But career goals, I do not grok them.
(And in all my working years, I can't think of a single time that I, my manager, HR, or anyone else has looked at last year's goals to see how I did against them.)
I do not have, nor have I ever had, any career goals, just job goals. I want to work with smart and interesting people, on cool and useful stuff. But that describes the sort of company I want to work for, and the environment I want to work in. I don't have a particular technology area that I want to advance. Nor do I have a particular role I want to fill in a company. I'm not like "I want to be the Chief Robot Officer of the Robot company." No, I'll do scut work if it's useful, I'll work on stuff that bores the snot out of me if I don't have to pretend to care, and I'll re-implement the sockets library for the third or fourth time if there's a plausible business reason for it (DO-178B certification).
This makes the annual goal setting exercise seem especially pointless. I'll participate in product and project planning, and I'll work towards those goals, and in absence of that I'll work on whatever management thinks would be a good use of my time. But career goals, I do not grok them.
(And in all my working years, I can't think of a single time that I, my manager, HR, or anyone else has looked at last year's goals to see how I did against them.)
