On Wed, 13 Nov 2013 22:49:36 +0000, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

>>> *mumble something about the company not actually having any defined
>>> direction*
>>
>> Certainly someone must have an idea what the company does.
> 
> Remember that "the company" consists of less than 10 humans [decimal].
> When a company is that tiny, they don't necessarily have a grand
> "corporate vision" laid out in meticulous detail.

Well, I'm assuming it's not a lawnmowing business, or a garden centre, or 
an aircraft manufacturer.

So the product must do *something* specific.

>  From what I can gather, the business owner's plan is to make a product
> that does everything for everybody. Every time a customer mentions
> something the product doesn't do, we must immediately implement that
> feature.

So, I take it that the product is an accounting product that does asset 
tracking, maintenance management planning, fleet management, building 
security access, general spreadsheet/word processing/presentation tools, 
car diagnostics, virus scanning, automated teller machine management, 
city planning, scheduling of police department rosters, web hosting, 
Linux kernel tuning, ... - all of that?

> I presume I don't need to explain why this is a flawed approach?

I presume I don't need to go on with my previous paragraph, no?  There is 
*some* sort of scope.  I've worked with companies that don't have a 
"grand corporate vision laid out in meticulous detail" but it was still 
possible to say "here's what we do" or "here's what our goals are".

So that's the starting point.  You know you don't mow lawns for pay.  You 
know you write software that does *something*.  Within the scope of that 
"something," it may be broadly defined, but the scope isn't going to be 
"do everything software could possibly do for anyone anywhere".

>> You're very secretive about even where you work, so it's kinda
>> difficult to provide specific information.
>>
>> What market does the company serve?  Who are its competitors?
> 
> Put simply, we make stuff used by several foreign governments, and if
> you want to know exactly what it does, you're going to need security
> clearance.
> 
> Not joking.

So, I'm going to assume it's not lawn mower scheduling. :)

> That probably makes it sound *far* more exciting than it actually is.
> But obviously I'm not going to sit here and talk about it on some random
> Internet forum that anybody can read.
> 
> What I can tell you is this: There are only so many governments in the
> world. So our market is small, and competing products number dozens
> rather than thousands or something.

That's a fair thing to say.  So, you know that you compete in a certain 
market.  That defines the scope of what you are working on.  You probably 
don't work on it all, so limit what you include in your self-assessment 
to what the specific code you wrote does for the product and what it 
brings to the product.  Don't say things like "if I didn't do it, someone 
else would" because the point of the self-assessment is that /you did 
it/.  It wasn't someone else.

>>> Thing is, if I say "I wrote some code", that's too short. And if I
>>> describe everything I implemented - even just the noteworthy stuff -
>>> that's *way* too long.
>>
>> There's a middle ground.  "I wrote code that does 'x'" - as a summary,
>> not a detailed description.
> 
> Well, this year I wrote code for about 25 different small tasks. A list
> of 25 items seems a little excessive though...

Start with the list of 25 items, then work with your manager to classify 
the items in more broad categories if necessary.

I had performance reviews/self assessments/goals that included maybe 4 or 
5 main categories, each with a half dozen items under them.  That's not 
unusual.

Jim

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