This book is enlightening because it explains to you the reality of corporate politics, and it teaches you how to play politics.

I know this sounds cynical, un-ethical, and depressing. However, we’re all humans. We cannot get away from facing politics. I’d rather to see more honest and ethical people to win the political games.

The further you’re up the corporate ladder, the more important it becomes for you to be politically adept. There is no way around it.

That’s why this book could be a game changer to many of your career. If you think you’re not good at playing politics, you should read this book.

It’s written by one of the most well respect researchers in this field, a professor at Stanford University.

The book is Power: Why Some People Have It and Others Don’t

I left online advertising and returned to the E-commerce world.

I really enjoy working in the e-commerce world. E-commerce is retail, low margin, and ultra competitive.

But, I like the fact that I’m working with hard, tangible products. I’m actually selling real products.

There is a very clear score card. Good or bad, my performance is measured by well defined metrics. This is so much better than product management – the political nature of product management jobs is suffocating.

I’m glad I’m back to the game. E-commerce is fun.

Jake was a member of the senior management team in his company. On the surface, he got along really well with the president. They worked together at another company before they both came to work for Jake’s current company.

Jake told me that his last day would be two weeks from yesterday. In the high tech industry, the "norm" is for employees to give at least two-week advance notice.

Jake emailed me this morning at 5AM. Today is his last day.

Yes, he is supposed to be in good terms with everyone in the company. He doesn’t have any performance issue. His team has been performing well. He is a member of the senior management team. He did the right thing by giving two-week notice. But, he was still asked to go immediately.

I’m NOT surprised. For most of us, unless you belong to an union, the employment contract you sign is at-will. Either employer or employee can terminate the contract at any time. The two-week advance notice is a common courtesy, but employers are NOT required to honor your courtesy and professionalism.

When you offer your resignation, you really don’t know how your employer will react. You need to protect yourself. You need to expect the worst.

So, before you offer your resignation, you should be ready to leave immediately.

You should clear out your office, save contact information, and clean up your computer.

You should be ready to leave the second you tell your boss that you’re leaving.

Related posts:

• Quit early, and quit fast
• Seizing the enemy without fighting is the most skillful
• The clear and present danger of internal transfer
• The dirty secrets of performance review

Excellent resources:

• Corporate Confidential: 50 Secrets Your Company Doesn’t Want You to Know—and What to Do About Them

It’s All Politics: Winning in a World Where Hard Work and Talent Aren’t Enough

Every Employee’s Guide to the Law

Fired, Laid Off or Forced Out: A Complete Guide to Severance, Benefits and Your Rights When You’re Starting Over

Ten years is a long time. Life is short. Lately, I have been doing a lot of reflection and thinking about the past, present and future of my career.

In the next four weeks, I’m going to write a number of articles to reflect lessons learned from this past decade.

I’m also going to ask you for your feedback and inputs – if you have been reading this blog for a while, you probably have gotten some ideas of who I am. I’m trying to figure out how to make the next ten years of my career more fulfilling, and rewarding.

To quote serial entrepreneur and career expert Harrison Barnes:

“You need to be the person you want to be in your life and in your career.  So many people go through life never being who they want to be or doing what they want to do.

Job searching is among the most important activities in your life because it is when you get the chance to discover exactly who you want to be.  I encourage you to do this now!”

I want to make sure that for the next ten years, I will go through life being who I want to be and doing what I want to do.

Today, I’m kicking off the series by talking about my first job after college.

During the past twelve years, I have worked at 3 Fortune-500 companies, and 3 venture backed high tech start-ups. Looking back, the best learning and the most fun I had was at my first employer after college, Andersen Consulting. It had since changed its name to Accenture.

Right before I graduated from college, I had a personal crisis. I had done two software development summer internships during college. I did not like to sit in the cubicle by myself and write code everyday. I hated it. I really wanted to avoid any software development job after graduation.

Six months before commencement ceremony, one credit short of graduation requirement, I seriously thought about quitting my computer science program. One Sunday afternoon when I was talking to my mom, I started crying non-stop. I scared my parents so much that they immediately drove to visit me at school.

I ended up finishing the computer science program, but I was determined to get a non programming job.

I took a job at Andersen Consulting’s San Francisco Office. I started the job with a four-week training program. My cohort consisted of about twenty recent college graduates. We spent our first two weeks in San Francisco, and then another two weeks in St. Charles, IL., a suburb of Chicago. Andersen Consulting had a training facility in St. Charles at that time. It used to be a women’s college, which was turned into a corporate training facility.

The people in my cohort were smart, energetic, nice, interesting, and diverse. Just to give you a few examples of what they ended up doing after leaving Andersen Consulting:

• One person had served the country as Intelligence Officer in Afghanistan, and is currently working as an FBI Special Agent.
• One person left the corporate world and is teaching at a very innovative charter school. He was one of the most interesting and humorous guy I’ve ever met. If I live near his school, I would definitely let him teach my kids. 
• One person is running his own real estate investment company.
• One person has been pursuing a career in sculpture, and had his own show.

Most of us in the group became good friends. We had many interesting and stimulating conversations. We helped each other to go through the training program. I remembered that a few of us were falling behind in our assignment, everyone in the team stayed late to help their teammates to complete the work. I had not seen that kind of collaboration and team work in other corporations I worked at.

The two-week training at St. Charles was also a great learning opportunity for me. Professionals from all over the world came to St. Charles for training. My instructor was from India. My project teammates were Dutch and Finnish. I met two consultants who were from Andersen Consulting’s Beijing Office. I got to a know several Aussies consultants really well. For a fresh college graduate like me, it was an eye-opening experience. It was my International Business 101 lesson.

At Andersen Consulting I was introduced to the concept of knowledge management. As a professional service organization, Andersen Consulting understood that the knowledge and experience of its consultants were very valuable assets for the company. It had a Lotus Notes based knowledge sharing system — anyone in the company could share information, best practices, research, industry analysis, etc. with the entire company. Lotus Notes was an antiqued, closed system at that time. We had to periodically sync our desktop Lotus Notes client application with the server. However, the information in the database were really helpful. Andersen Consulting also build a very strong culture to promote knowledge sharing. I remembered that I contributed a few articles to the knowledge base, which were considered a plus in my annual performance review.

I know some cynical folks will say that "knowledge sharing" is a lot of BS. However, from my own experience, I think it’s very important for any organization to build a strong culture of knowledge sharing. It’s something to be taken seriously. And it needs to have the technical infrastructure to support it. Andersen Consulting showed me a great example of building a knowledge based organization.

Another thing I learned from Andersen Consulting was professionalism. During my tenure at Andersen Consulting, whenever I called or emailed a colleague (in some cases I had never talked to them before), he or she would always get back to me. Most people were very punctual, responsive, and helpful. These are very simple things, but you don’t see them in every company. In fact, I think professionalism is lacking in a lot of high tech companies.

So, as a fresh college graduate, Andersen Consulting was a great first job for me. I learned a ton, met a lot of good friends, traveled to different places, and gained exposure to many different industries, technologies, and cultures. It’s not a company for everyone. For example, I wouldn’t want to live a consultant’s life style now — I need to get home to play with my two kids every night. I cannot travel every week. But, if you just finished college or graduate school, and you don’t have any family commitment, Accenture could be a great place for you to launch your career.

Since I’m neither a USC Trojan fan nor a Tennessee Volunteer fan, I’m fairly indifferent about Lane Kiffin’s move from Tennessee to USC. From an ethical standpoint, I didn’t like how Lane Kiffin made empty promises to the Tennessee community and then bailed on them.

But, I have been fascinated by Lane Kiffin’s career moves. At the young age of 34, he is coaching a top college football program with an annual salary of $2 million. Two years ago, at age 32, he became the youngest head coach ever in the National Football League (NFL). In the past four years, he had switched jobs three times:

• In 2007, he quitted the offensive coordinator position at USC and became the head coach at Oakland Raiders. He had 5 wins and 15 losses as the head coach of Oakland Raiders in a little bit over a year.
• In 2008, after he was fired by Oakland Raiders, he became the head coach of Tennessee Volunteers, a major college football program. He finished his first season at Tennessee with a modest record of 7 wins and 5 losses.
• In 2010, after only one year at Tennessee, he quitted his job again and became the head coach of USC Trojans, one of the most high-profile coaching jobs in college football.

Lane Kiffin is a job hopper. He hasn’t won anything as a head coach. But, he kept getting high profile jobs with excellent pay.

I took a close look at Lane Kiffin’s career moves. Like him or not, I have to say that Lane Kiffin is very strategic in making career moves while managing the down-side risks. Let me share with you a few lessons I learned.

First, Lane Kiffin made bold moves with limited risks. When he was hired by Oakland Raiders, a lot of people were saying that he was doomed to fail. He had never been a head coach before. He had never coached in the NFL. All his previous experience was in college. He was hired by one of the most difficult, and hated owners in professional football, Al Davis.

I think Lane Kiffin was very smart in making this move. He knew what he was getting himself into. The chance for him to succeed in Oakland was low. But, this moved significantly raised his profile in the public. A 32-year old college offensive coordinator without any prior head coaching experience were hired by Al Davis? He must be really good. Although Al Davis was very controversial, he had a history of giving young coaches a chance. For example, he hired the legendary John Madden when he was young and unproven. John Madden led the Raiders to a super bowl.

Although Lane Kiffin was unproven as a head coach, there was a PERCEPTION that he was really good. The hiring by Al Davis further "validated" that perception in public eyes.

On the other hand, because Al Davis had reputation for being difficult and frequently firing head coaches, Lane Kiffin had low risk. If he was fired, the public would be very sympathetic to him. The press would put a lot of blame on Al Davis. That’s exactly what happened two years ago. Under Lane Kiffin, the Oakland Raiders had some improvements, but still had a bad losing record. He lasted for a little bit over one season.

But, the firing didn’t damage the Lane Kiffin brand much. He was soon hired by Tennessee. Some people bought into the perception that he was a great young coach. And they blamed Al Davis for Lane Kiffin’s failures.

Second, Lane Kiffin has surrounded himself with a very experienced team to put him in a position to win. When Lane Kiffin was hired by Tennessee, he was under a lot of pressure to deliver. Tennessee was part of Southeastern Conference (SEC), which is the most competitive conference with several college football powerhouses such as Florida, Alabama, Georgia, etc. As a young coach with little head coaching experience, Lane Kiffin knew that he needed help. He hired his Dad, Monte Kiffin, as the defensive coordinator for his team. Monte Kiffin was widely regarded as one of the greatest defensive coordinators in NFL history.

When Lane Kiffin made the move to USC, he brought with him Monte Kiffin, and recruiting coordinator Ed Orgeron. Ed was known as a power recruiter, who was the National Recruiter of the Year in 2004. So, Lane Kiffin essentially hired two superstar assistants when he took the job. He put himself in a very good position to win.

Third, Lane Kiffin increased his odd to succeed by moving into a less competitive environment. The Tennessee Volunteers is part of the SEC conference. That means Lane Kiffin will need to beat Florida and Alabama each year to just win the SEC before his team even gets a chance to compete for national championship. That’s going to be extremely difficult. The PAC 10 is also a competitive conference. But, USC is a notch above everyone else in the conference. It’s much easier for Lane Kiffin to lead USC to win the PAC 10, and then play for the national championship, as opposed to try to win the SEC every single year.

In summary, there are five lessons we can all borrow from Lane Kiffin’s job hopping play book:

• In the short term, perception is reality. Try to cultivate a public image that you’re the smart guy with enormous potential. Someone will offer you big job with big salary.
• Make bold moves, but protect your downside. 
• Surround yourself with smart and experienced people who will compensate for your weaknesses and help you succeed.
• Put yourself into the most conducive environment for wining.
• Experience is overrated. Perception will tramp lack of experience.

Am I being too cynical in writing this post? Well, I think one day Lane Kiffin will have to prove himself as a successful head coach. I do think he is in a pretty good position to do so. Only time will tell.

Let me finish this post with a quote from Benjamin Graham, the legendary author of The Intelligent Investor:

"In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run it’s a weighing machine".

The same applies to the job market: in the short term, the market is a voting machine based on perception of your potential. In the long run, the job market is a weighing machine that will count what you have done.

Related post:

• Sometimes all you need is one class to jumpstart your career
• Sometimes all you need is one class to jumpstart your career
• Don’t get screwed! Stock option questions you should ask before you join a start-up
• The good, the bad, and the ugly of management consulting

Excellent resources:

• Career Warfare: 10 Rules for Building a Successful Personal Brand and Fighting to Keep It
• Who Gets Promoted, Who Doesn’t, and Why: 10 Things You’d Better Do If You Want to Get Ahead
• The Hard Truth About Soft Skills: Workplace Lessons Smart People Wish They’d Learned Sooner

Professors, recruiters, career center counselors all told us that we needed to be team players to succeed in the real world.

But, is this really true? Is team work really that important for company and career success? Will being a team player help you build a successful career?

I have worked over a decade now.  I have had several employers so far: one management consulting firm, two Fortune-500 companies, 3 start-ups. Some of them have been successful while a few have failed miserably.

None of them operated in a "team environment".

From my own experience, it seems that 80/20 rule applies:

• 20% or less of the sales guys generated 80% or more of the company revenue
• 20% or less of the software engineers wrote 80% or more of the software code
• 20% or less of the QA engineers caught 80% or more of the software bugs
• 20% of less of the professional service consultants did 80% or more of the implementation work

Here are a few examples.

A star sales guy was arrogant, demanding, a pain to work with. But, he kept his job because he generated a significant amount of revenue for the company.

A software engineer was extremely high-maintenance. But, he was extremely productive when he was writing code. He would always get a good review because the company needed him although his peers hated to work with him.

A VP of Account Management was ruthless and clueless. But, by luck, her team operated in a very hot market. Customers would happily write a check without any selling. Her Account Management team met the sales goals although she had alienated a lot of people in the company. She still had her job.

I knew many people who worked at Oracle, a highly successful enterprise software company. Very few of them told me they enjoyed working there. It was a sales machine, but not a team environment.

Microsoft is one of the most successful high tech companies of our time. But, I heard a lot of complaints from current and ex-Microsoft employees about how political the place has gotten. Just read my Microsoft Layoff Satisfaction Survey.

Apple has been very successful in the past few years. But, everyone knows Steve Job is a micro-manager. It’s extremely difficult to work for him. But, he delivers, just not in a "team environment".

I could give you many more examples.

No, I’m not becoming cynical. I’m writing this post because I want us collectively to accept the reality:

• Every human being is dysfunctional. But, a dysfunctional human being can still make great contribution to the world.
• Every family is dysfunctional. But, a dysfunctional family can still raise great kids.
• Every company is dysfunctional. But, a dysfunctional company can still succeed.

Team work is neither necessary nor sufficient for building successful companies.

As an individual, each of us needs to figure out how to fit into the overall organization, balance our own interests with others’ interests, and maximize our contribution in alignment to the company’s profit objectives.

It’s not about being the team player. It’s about being the 20% or less that contribute to 80% or more.

Related posts:

• The clear and present danger of internal transfer
• The dirty secrets of performance review
• Microsoft Laid-off Employees spoke up! — Layoff Satisfaction Survey Results – Microsoft
• Layoff Satisfaction Survey Results — Sun Microsystems
• Layoff Satisfaction Survey Results — AT&T

Excellent resources:

• Living The 80/20 Way: Work Less, Worry Less, Succeed More, Enjoy More
• The Star Principle: How It Can Make You Rich
• The Natural Laws of Business: How to Harness the Power of Evolution, Physics, and Economics to Achieve Business Success

I was a computer science major, and Caleb studied economics. But, computer was Caleb’s hobby since he was a little kid. So, he took several computer science classes with me. We worked on many computer science projects together, pulling countless nighters.

Caleb was a brilliant computer programmer. Although he wasn’t major in computer science, he could have gotten a software development job anywhere he wanted.

But, Caleb’s career goal was to work for an investment bank. He was really into high finance. He took graduate-level finance classes when he was still an undergraduate. At that time, the "hottest employers" on campus were investment banks and management consulting firms such as Golden Sachs, Morgan Stanley, McKinsey, Bain, Boston Consulting Group, etc. Caleb had his eyes fixed on the top investment banks.

Caleb had read Liar’s Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street. He told me that the first two-year of his banking career would be like hell. He was prepared to fully dedicated himself to the banking job for two years, and then went back to school to get an MBA. He was prepared intellectually, emotionally, and mentally for the grind of investment banking.

In the end, Caleb was hired by one of the top two investment banks. The bank only extended one offer that year out of hundreds of applicants. Caleb was thrilled. Caleb started working for the bank in San Francisco late that summer.

Soon after Caleb started working, he disappeared from his friends. He was working day and night. He was working in the weekends. Although I was one of his closest friends and I was only 30-minute BART ride from him, I rarely saw him.

Several of us went to visit him one Friday evening at his nice 39th floor office in one of the tallest buildings in SF. He chatted with us for about 15 minutes, but he couldn’t go to dinner with us because he had to work.

He showed up on campus several times because he was part of the campus recruiting team for his employer. He would show up at the campus event, well-dressed, but look dead tired. We, his college buddies, would go to chat with him after the corporation presentation. He sounded really tense and business-like. He had to conduct himself in certain way. Most presentations ended around 7PM. He would head right back to work.

He ate all of his meals at work. Every night his employer ordered food for all of them.

A few months later, around the Christmas holiday, I had a chat with Caleb. He was stressed, tired, frustrated, and angry.

He had started to lose hair. This was a healthy young man who was only twenty-two years old. He told me that he took a business trip to the corporate headquarter in New York city. Every single male VP or above he saw at the corporate headquarter were balding. He told me that it was not uncommon for the young analysts and associates to start losing hair.

I asked Caleb what kept him so busy. He told me that as an investment banking analyst, you’re basically doing a lot of paper shoving. His work was like a secretary, proof-reading piles and piles of documents, and getting them delivered to clients under very tight deadline. It’s very high pressure for very mundane and tedious work.

In the investment banking industry, the organizational structure was a reversed pyramid. In his office, Caleb was the only analyst. There were a couple of associates, four VPs, and several directors. Basically, all of the tedious works were pushed down to the analysts and associates.

Analysts and associates made good money. But, if you divided their salaries by the actual hours they worked, the pay wasn’t great at all!

But, what’s worse was the culture of investment banking. There was little respect to individuals. It’s very hierarchical. The VPs or directors would curse at people when they got into an arguments. To put it mildly, many of the investment bankers would not pass Professor Sutton’s No Asshole Rule.

So, Caleb hated his job. He wanted to get out. In fact, he was so fed up with banking that he didn’t care about his career path any more.

He had a strategy and a plan. His annual bonus would be deposited to his bank account exactly one year after his start date. Before his "liberation day”, Caleb cleaned his locker. He removed all of the files on his computer. On the day that he got his bonus, he checked his checking account and made sure that the bonus money was wired into his account.

Then, Caleb walked into his managing director office around noon, and said "today is my last day. I’m done." The MD in the office was livid, and started cursing and shouting.

Caleb simply walked away.

Caleb never looked back. Today he work in a field that he would never have imagined or planned ten years ago. But, his career is thriving. He is in control of his own destiny. He is doing just fine without climbing the investment banking ladder and getting an MBA.

Caleb burned the bridge with the bank. He did something that every career advisor would advise against.

But, apparently, his story was quickly passed among wall street junior analysts. Even a few years after he quitted, people are still talking about what he did.

He simply did something that a lot of people wished they would have done.

Disclaimer: This is a true story. But, to protect confidentiality, the names in this story have been changed.

Related articles:

• The dirty secrets of performance review
• The clear and present danger of internal transfer
• The first time I cried at work
• Your relationship with your parents have a lot to do with your career success
• From laid-off dot com worker to medical doctor
• Are you interested in a lot of different things, but not sure what exactly you want to do about your career?
• GeekMBA360.com publishes How to get a job at amazon.com: A definitive Guide

Excellent resources:

• Monkey Business: Swinging Through the Wall Street Jungle
• Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco
• When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management
• The Predators’ Ball: The Inside Story of Drexel Burnham and the Rise of the Junk Bond Raiders
• Fiasco: The Inside Story of a Wall Street Trader

When I was an individual contributor, I bought into what management told me — setting SMART goals in the beginning of the year. Work hard throughout the year. Write thorough and insightful self-reviews and peer reviews. Get 360-degree feedback from colleagues. And I’ll get a review rating I deserve.

Co-worker told me not to take review seriously. But, I tried not to be cynical.

After I became a manager and went through the review cycle at a large Fortune-500 company, my perspective on performance review was totally changed.

Let me tell you how performance review was conducted at this company behind-the-scene.

Employees first received notification from management in mid-January to complete their self performance reviews as well as peer reviews by Feb 15. Managers were told to complete reviewing their team members by March 1. Review results, promotion and salary information will be made available on April 15.

This company had also eliminated curve for performance review — for example, in the previous years, there was a strict curve for performance review. 20% are top performers, 60% are meeting expectation, and the bottom 20% will be given warning (and possibly "let go".) However, the company had decided to eliminate the curve and made a big announcement to the employees.

In late January, I received an meeting invite from my big boss to meet with him and other peer managers who worked under him. We would have an important meeting on Feb 1. I asked him what the meeting was about and if I needed to prepare anything. He said that I didn’t need to prepare for anything. Just showed up at the meeting.

On the afternoon of Feb 1, my big boss, and the six managers who reported to him, met at a large conference room. The big boss walked to the chalk board, and said:

"We won’t have a curve this year. But, let’s assume that you guys are on a life boat. The boat is about to sink. Assume that you have to throw people out to save the rest of the crew, who on your team would you throw out first, second, third, etc? I want each of you to rank your team members that way."

We looked at each other. We were puzzled. "Why are you doing this?" One manager asked.

"Don’t worry about it. I just want to get a sense of your team members".

Reluctantly, we went through this exercise.

"I thought our company eliminated curve for this year’s performance review?" I couldn’t help to ask.

"We don’t have a curve. This is an informal exercise to get a sense of our staff." The big boss said.

After we finished this exercise, the big boss wanted us to rank all of the employees across the six teams under him. He also wanted us to  identify six people with "high potential".

This was the most demoralizing part — every manager was trying to have their own people ranked higher than people from other teams. The problem was that the six teams under the big boss were quite independent of each other — there was very limited interaction between the teams. But, that didn’t prevent managers to attack each other.

When I said that Henry of my team should be ranked high given his accomplishments, another manager said: "oh, I don’t think so. I interviewed him and was never impressed by him. I wouldn’t have hired him". But, he had been working for the company for two years now. How was his job interview related to his performance in the past year?

There was a lot of back and forth arguments in the room — the managers were negotiating with each other to agree on a top-to-bottom ranking of employees across the six teams under the big boss.

Suddenly I realized something. I asked the big boss: "the employee self-reviews and peer reviews won’t be due for another two weeks. We should review all of the documents before we go through this exercise."

"Oh, it doesn’t matter. I trust you guys. We don’t have the time to read all of those documents." The big boss said.

A week later, on Feb 8, the big boss convened a follow-up meeting. This time, he handed each manager a one-page document, which has the performance review score and salary adjustment for each team member.

The big boss said: "take a close look, and let me know if there is any glaring mistakes. Otherwise, we’re done".

He also mentioned that six employees have been identified as "high potential" — the "high potential" mark will not be shown on the employee review document. They would never find out, but the company would give them higher raise, and provide them with more training. We were all asked to keep this information strictly confidential.

This was one week before employees submitting their self review and peer reviews, and six weeks before manager was supposed to complete review.

In this case, employee self-review and peer review had absolutely no impact on the performance review results.

I would like to make a few observations about performance reviews in this company.

First, the single most important factor in performance review is your relationship with your boss. If you boss like you and need you, he will bat for you.

Second, people have short memory and they ask "what you’ve done for me lately". So, make sure you have some visible accomplishments in the months prior to your performance review.

Third, regardless of what management tells you, there will always be a curve — companies need a way to identify the "low performing individuals". 

Fourth, it probably doesn’t worth it for you to spend a lot of time on writing your self reviews and peer reviews. It’s very much a formality. Instead, spend the time building relationships and improve people’s perception of you.

Fifth, the result of performance review has a lot to do with perception of who you’re and what you’ve done, and has little to do with your actual contribution. This is particular true in large companies. Like it or not, accept the fact. Never let result of performance review to affect your self worth. It has very little to do with who you’re, and have a lot to do with politics and perception.

Does every company conduct performance review like this particular company? Probably not. But, I do think performance reviews are done poorly in a lot of companies.

Am I being overly cynical? My intention is to share with you what I learned first-hand about performance review. My hope is that collectively we could help improve the performance review process.

Personally, I believe in entrepreneurism — everyone should treat his/her career as running a company of one-person. Seek valuable, tangible feedback from your market, your customer, your colleagues, your subordinates everyday. You should do this on your own. Try to incorporate the feedback and improve immediately. Annual or semi-annual review is simply too late given how fast things are moving.

It’s your career. Your future. Manage your performance proactively. Don’t rely on the employer’s performance review. Give yourself a raise by working on side projects. You don’t want to put all of your egg into one basket by relying on your employer as your sole source of income. As you can see from this story, performance review is simple too political and too demoralizing for most people.

Related posts:

• The first time I cried at work
• Flow, career satisfaction and happiness
• How to deal with bullies at work
• How to identify bad boss: The boss who is always late
• 8 Things you should do if you feel stuck in your career
• Are you interested in a lot of different things, but not sure what exactly you want to do about your career?

Excellent resources:

• Corporate Confidential: 50 Secrets Your Company Doesn’t Want You to Know—and What to Do About Them
• Secrets to Winning at Office Politics: How to Achieve Your Goals and Increase Your Influence at Work
• Sun Tzu: The Art of War for Managers; 50 Strategic Rules
• The Hard Truth About Soft Skills: Workplace Lessons Smart People Wish They’d Learned Sooner
• Seducing the Boys Club: Uncensored Tactics from a Woman at the Top

I started elementary school one and half years later than my peers.

Although I finished all of the required classes in four years in college, I didn’t feel that I was ready for the real world. So, I stayed for one extra semester to take classes I enjoyed. (I paid for all of the expenses myself.) While my college friends were having a good time making money and enjoying their young professionals’ lives, I was still a poor but happy college student.

I didn’t have a girlfriend in college. After college, many friends started to get married, but I was still single for a long time. I didn’t get married until I finished graduate school and was in my 30′s.

I didn’t start business school until I was almost 30 years old, while the average age for my class was around 27.

I have made good career progress so far, but I haven’t become wealthy like some of my friends did during the internet boom.

In many areas of my life, I have been a little bit "behind" compared to my peers. When I was in my 20′s, I used to feel that I was in a "catch up"mode. I felt a strong urge to "get ahead".

Over the years, through introspection and experience, I’ve learned to understand why I tend to be a little bit "behind". I learn to appreciate the journey I’ve taken.

I’m an INFJ. It takes time for me to figure out how to balance my idealistic goals and pragmatic considerations. Being the only child, I was taught to approach things with caution and care. Over the years, I have to challenge myself to get out of my own comfort zones and take risks.

I keep searching, reading, writing, introspecting, reflecting, questioning, experimenting, and experiencing.

I didn’t rush; I’ve taken my time. I appreciate what I’ve learned from the journey.

Do you feel that you’re falling behind? Life is a journey, not a race. Sometime it takes time to figure things out. Everyone has his/her own pace. Don’t rush. But, keep searching, questioning, experiencing, and challenging yourself.

And keep trying and taking actions; don’t just sit still.

Recommended reading:

• What Should I Do with My Life?: The True Story of People Who Answered the Ultimate Question
• I Don’t Know What I Want, But I Know It’s Not This: A Step-by-Step Guide to Finding Gratifying Work
• Making a Living Without a Job: Winning Ways For Creating Work That You Love
• From Entrepreneur to Infopreneur: Make Money with books, E-Books and Information Products

I had a chat with a friend yesterday. His company has suspended salary increase and bonus for 2009. But, the company would still conducted its annual performance review by the end of April.

My friend was telling me that he wouldn’t spend much time on his review — "If I have a great review, I won’t get any rewards. If I have a crappy review, I won’t be fired."

I disagree with him. He should approach this year’s performance review with extra caution and care. A lot of companies have already had layoffs. Given the severity of our financial crisis, I think we’ll start seeing second or third round of layoffs. For the companies who haven’t laid off anyone, I have no doubt that most of them have "contingency plan" in case they need to reduce cost. To justify layoffs and not get into any legal trouble, employers need to find "legitimate" ways to rank employees and decide whom to lay off. I wouldn’t be surprised that employers will use annual reviews to rank their employees, and come up with their "headcount contingency plan".

So, be careful about this year’s performance review.

Related books and posts:

• Corporate Confidential: 50 Secrets Your Company Doesn’t Want You to Know—and What to Do About Them
• Joe Shmoe: a sad layoff story
• HR is NOT your counselor, and you need to understand the role of HR