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Your Past Successes Guarantee... It has only been three years of my professional career and so much has changed since I started. I have gained as well as lost. I had the opportunity to live in three different cities but consequently had to leave some amazing and beautiful people behind. My career demanded to switch two employers serving 1 year to each. These employers didn’t just pay me well but appreciated and recognized my work. I learnt a lot, I had great colleagues who helped and encouraged me in hard times. I made some great friends and I’ll never forget them and I hope they don’t forget me as well.
I introspected the past 2-3 years several times and every time I found different results. But all these times I felt bad for doing whatever I did and whatever happened to me. I was a hard working employee, I used to take my laptop back home and spend hours figuring out work related issues in my free time at home. My efforts and dedication towards my work pushed me ahead of most of my colleagues. Soon I became a star performer. And what followed after that are all the VIP treatments given to stars. Some important one’s I would like to mention:
- Flexible working hours
- Merciful and tolerant mistakes
- Easy leave approvals
- More attention
- In public appreciations
And it came along with perks like: my leads and managers started inviting me in their parties, I was once invited for a dinner at my Team Lead’s home to eat delicious food his mother cooked. Free home made Food for a bachelor in his work life is a huge prize; having those pretty girls around and clicking selfies with them, wow; I even have selfies with our CEO and CTO; our CEO never missed a chance to highlight me, after completing his All-Hands meeting he expected questions from me and whenever I was quiet, he would look at me and ask in front of everyone: No questions today Vinay?. At that moment I was representing the entire company. Everyone was so happy with my performance, work was smooth, easy and interesting. Ohh it was a great life, I was doing so well.
Even after all these benefits and all my happiness, why did I leave my employers?
“Change! the only thing constant is change.”
I was not a star performer for ever. My happiness and my super performance continued for 7-8 months and gradually due to the monotonous tasks my work started boring me. I ignored and delayed delivering the work assigned to me. I complaint and requested to assign some interesting and challenging work to me which might make me happy and I might be able to bring the awesomeness back, but nothing happened. I became a Reluctant Contributor for my company. I was no longer a star performer and its effect on me were rough and it had saddened me. All my goods were forgotten and shadowed, all my previous mistakes were enlightened. For the next months my performance was poorly rated and I was not happy with it at all.
Every company has a period when they rate the yearly performance of employees. The time had come and I was expecting good performance reviews for the past year, yes because I was a star performer for a long time and I only missed 2-3 deadlines in the recent past. And to my surprise, my overall ratings were extremely low. Even lower than those who consistently performed worse than me, always. I was disappointed and from then I could not find an answer to the question Why did they do this to me? until February 5, 2017!
I heard a motivational corporate trainer say this:
“Your Past Successes Guarantee you Nothing!”
This one single line answered all my questions and hate for employers had vanished. I realized I was the one who was not a consistent performer, my employers rated me low because I was performing low. It’s the same way I would have behaved and rated my juniors because
“You’re only as good as your last quarter.”
It has only been three years of my professional career and so much has changed since I started. I have gained as well as lost. I had the opportunity to live in three different cities but consequently had to leave some amazing and beautiful people behind. My career demanded to switch two employers serving 1 year to each. These employers didn’t just pay me well but appreciated and recognized my work. I learnt a lot, I had great colleagues who helped and encouraged me in hard times. I made some great friends and I’ll never forget them and I hope they don’t forget me as well.
I introspected the past 2-3 years several times and every time I found different results. But all these times I felt bad for doing whatever I did and whatever happened to me. I was a hard working employee, I used to take my laptop back home and spend hours figuring out work related issues in my free time at home. My efforts and dedication towards my work pushed me ahead of most of my colleagues. Soon I became a star performer. And what followed after that are all the VIP treatments given to stars. Some important one’s I would like to mention:
- Flexible working hours
- Merciful and tolerant mistakes
- Easy leave approvals
- More attention
- In public appreciations
And it came along with perks like: my leads and managers started inviting me in their parties, I was once invited for a dinner at my Team Lead’s home to eat delicious food his mother cooked. Free home made Food for a bachelor in his work life is a huge prize; having those pretty girls around and clicking selfies with them, wow; I even have selfies with our CEO and CTO; our CEO never missed a chance to highlight me, after completing his All-Hands meeting he expected questions from me and whenever I was quiet, he would look at me and ask in front of everyone: No questions today Vinay?. At that moment I was representing the entire company. Everyone was so happy with my performance, work was smooth, easy and interesting. Ohh it was a great life, I was doing so well.
Even after all these benefits and all my happiness, why did I leave my employers?
“Change! the only thing constant is change.”
I was not a star performer for ever. My happiness and my super performance continued for 7-8 months and gradually due to the monotonous tasks my work started boring me. I ignored and delayed delivering the work assigned to me. I complaint and requested to assign some interesting and challenging work to me which might make me happy and I might be able to bring the awesomeness back, but nothing happened. I became a Reluctant Contributor for my company. I was no longer a star performer and its effect on me were rough and it had saddened me. All my goods were forgotten and shadowed, all my previous mistakes were enlightened. For the next months my performance was poorly rated and I was not happy with it at all.
Every company has a period when they rate the yearly performance of employees. The time had come and I was expecting good performance reviews for the past year, yes because I was a star performer for a long time and I only missed 2-3 deadlines in the recent past. And to my surprise, my overall ratings were extremely low. Even lower than those who consistently performed worse than me, always. I was disappointed and from then I could not find an answer to the question Why did they do this to me? until February 5, 2017!
I heard a motivational corporate trainer say this:
“Your Past Successes Guarantee you Nothing!”
This one single line answered all my questions and hate for employers had vanished. I realized I was the one who was not a consistent performer, my employers rated me low because I was performing low. It’s the same way I would have behaved and rated my juniors because
“You’re only as good as your last quarter.”