I recently sidestepped into a new area of my industry. I have several years’ experience but not in this exact field. I joined a small company and was told initially that it would take 6 months to pick up the work if I was very good and a year on average.
I had a several month probationary period which has literally just run out. No feedback given before or after and nothing to mark it. So assuming I passed!
I had some brief bits of feedback in between work. The company boss said they had heard good things about me and things were all going well from their perspective.
however I have since seen some feedback which was shared with me from my direct manager who then followed up with, let’s discuss properly at your appraisal. We all have summer appraisals booked in shortly. As I say, no heed has been paid to the fact I have presumably passed my probationary period, but ok.
The feedback was in note format and from my direct manager and is, well, well underwhelming and borderline patronising.
My positives are apparently I’m easy to work with, my skills in a particular area are developing / improving and again another basic skill is listed as “good but…” - my areas for improvement are apparently pretty fundamental. I once asked if I could juggle a piece of client work around as I had a more pressing piece (ended up meeting both deadlines and no issue from the clients) but the fact I asked my boss if I could do so resulted in an area of improvement around “delivering client outcomes”… Apparently I needed to manage this better. I was also told I needed to improve presenting skills(be calmer and rush less - ok) and general technicals.
some of the points made are fair but I take slight issue with the fact that it seems HIGHLY critical, none of this was mentioned during my probation and similarly I feel I have made significant progress learning our product suite and client deliverables ans absolutely nothing has been said about this. I received some feedback from same critical boss saying they wanted to get me on the path to promotion a few weeks ago and this feels completely at odds with the feedback I have received.
am I being too sensitive? I don’t know if it’s the company culture or me or both. I will obviously discuss these points in the formal appraisal but feel completely winded and like I’ve been damned with faint praise a bit. I’m not a new graduate and have several years experience in the wider industry!