Ask HN: Why do companies ask employees to set goals?

Re:Ask HN: Why do companies ask employees to set goals? by ghaff on Friday March 26, 2021 @12:04PM (#26593701)

"Take a relevant MOOC course" actually seems like the perfect sort of thing to put in a 90-day (or whatever) work plan. It communicates to your manager that you want to spend some time on professional development and your manager may even that, if you like, they're happy to pay for a course somewhere.

In general, I sort of like having a somewhat informal workplan like that. And it's perfectly fine if, over the course of the quarter unplanned projects come in, you just document that. It's useful documentation, not much work, and you should probably have at least a vague mental plan anyway.

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Re:Ask HN: Why do companies ask employees to set goals? by dwhitney on Friday March 26, 2021 @12:22PM (#26593928)

The issue I'd take with "take a relevant MOOC course" is, what if actual work picks up and you need to drop the course to meet some deadlines? You've failed to meet your "goals" by focusing on the company's "goals", and that red mark may stand in the way of you getting that raise/promotion. The incentives are misaligned.

As I've said, I totally get OPs frustration. We were hired to achieve a "goal". Why are we inventing other "goals" that are often misaligned?

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Re:Ask HN: Why do companies ask employees to set goals? by loopz on Friday March 26, 2021 @05:26PM (#26597151)

Useful to whom? Who reads that fluff?

Sorry, but unless there's a larger multi-year strategy, which would be ill-suited for ICs, this is just HR incompetence at work.

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