I am a 7th year in a new role. My on boarding has been spotty due to workload/covid and I’ve made peace with the fact that I’m going to have to learn my new role independently and sink or swim. In the meantime, how do I know if my performance is acceptable when my supervising partner has no time for me, is always annoyed at everyone, and is a generally snippy? I know I shouldn’t rely so much on supervisor feedback, but I had a horrible blindsiding experience early in my career...

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Following. While I am only a first year, I am having a similar problem. I am doing the best I can but I genuinely have no clue if I’m doing a good or bad job. It’s not that my supervisors are disengaged with me; they are simply too busy to provide regular and useful feedback. Covid and working from home has obviously exacerbated this.

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Same but 2nd year

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Schedule a recurring meeting (daily, weekly, monthly, whatever) to discuss performance and development. Block it out on your calendar and your supervisor’s calendar.

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Just because you’ve gotten something out of it, it doesn’t make it any less respectful of your supervisors time.

In my previous role, I trained a young associate who barged into my office constantly, sent me loooooong unedited work, texted me all hours for questions that were not urgent. I never told them how much it pissed me off that they treated my time like garbage, but I would not be able to give that associate a recommendation, or would even be very likely to take their calls.

If you were messing up badly, you would know about it.

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Makes sense, thank you. I guess it’s just a lot harder to gauge with working from home and being alone all day. Just harder to connect with teammates and get a read on how they perceive you and your work.

Why not put the onus on him or her? Send an email indicating that you are new to the role and would appreciate any feedback he or she would have to help you be as effective as possible. Then indicate that without feedback, you can only assume that you have been doing a adequate or better job. And then repeat that you would welcome any feedback he or she might have.

This way if you are blindsided, you can genuinely say that you are surprised and that if you had known this when it happened, you would have corrected it immediately.

likehelpful

This is the truth.

Currently in similar spot, 1 year in. I was doing great I was told until about 4 months in and then suddenly I wasn’t.

Honestly ready to quit. I think then big change is that for a while everyone was sympathetic “in these trying times” and now it’s worn off and just lip service.

I also have 3 young kids. All the dissatisfied partners are childless or empty nesters and get annoyed when they hear Spongebob in the background.

likehelpful

I’m sorry to hear that. Three ones is a handful and compassion is really important these days. How did the feedback evolve?

Feedback went from “you’re making phenomenal progress, ahead of the game” in July to a “sit down” twice in 4Q. I came from public sector.

Blindsided me honestly.

Lack of on boarding hurt. They’ve been trying to help me as of this month with “oh we probably should have told you x, y, z”

Examples: “write an article for linked in!” Me: ok how do I structure that? “Just do it!” Ok “your article cites to too many cases”

“How many hours should this take?” “Just get it done” then “you’re not efficient”

“Is this answer complete or should we bring in the court?” “I’ve never seen an answer before” “read the court rule” to “what do you mean the answer was a bunch of nothing? Didn’t you read it?”

I still think an answer is just an excuse to bill for nothing

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