No good at my job
June 22, 2017 3:00 PM Subscribe
I've been in my role as Policy Officer in a Government department for several years now but I feel like I'm no good at it. I do my best but there is nothing I seem to be good at or improving on very much. My work gets changed a lot but I can't see any logic behind the changes to learn from. Others seem to get promoted and progress a lot more easily than me. I've had other roles within the same organisation with mostly the same problem. I'm hunting for a better fit but I'm not sure what else would suit me. I was considered able at school and at university so this struggle is new for me. My performance reviews are always average - not terrible but not great either. What should I do? How can I cope with always feeling like the dull kid?
What are you getting out of your performance reviews besides a rating? Do you ask for feedback on your actual work?
Could you sit down with a supervisor or with a teammate who does the same work as you and talk through one of your recent deliverables, why you made the choices you did, what different choices they would have made, etc. There might actually not be any logic to the changes, but there's no point in trying to discover on your own if there is or isn't.
posted by jacquilynne at 3:31 PM on June 22, 2017 [3 favorites]
Could you sit down with a supervisor or with a teammate who does the same work as you and talk through one of your recent deliverables, why you made the choices you did, what different choices they would have made, etc. There might actually not be any logic to the changes, but there's no point in trying to discover on your own if there is or isn't.
posted by jacquilynne at 3:31 PM on June 22, 2017 [3 favorites]
Good for you for acknowledging that your current job is not the best fit. It takes a very honest no ego person to admit they are not the best at their job. I'm self employed and work on many different jobs. Recently a regular client hired me for a job that it turned out wasn't the best fit for me. As a result the job was really unpleasant because I just wasn't able to deliver the best product for my client. No matter what I tried it just fell short. I was lucky enough to make it through the job but it was stressful for sure. I'm guessing your job is extra stressful because it's not the best fit. So the good news here...there's a job out there that you'll be great at. The challenge of course is finding that job. And that is up to you. My advice would be to take some time to think about what you're passionate about. I'm talking really passionate. Then find a way to get a job involving your passion. It may sound like a pipe dream but it's not. You just have to figure what you really wanna do and then do everything you can to get there. It may take time but it'll be worth it. They say if you love your job you'll never work a day in your life.
posted by ljs30 at 3:40 PM on June 22, 2017
posted by ljs30 at 3:40 PM on June 22, 2017
I hear that! What do you actually do as a policy officer? What got you into this job? Where in particular do you feel that you don't really shine?
Being in a job you're not good at absolutely eats away at your self worth. I've both experienced and observed people close to me going from jobs where I/they were meh and felt bad to jobs where I/they could really succeed, and it's huge.
It is likely that there is a job which uses a similar skill set where you can succeed. For instance, I know someone who went from being miserable as an arts financial administrator to being much more successful and happier in a business finance role. The new position is more challenging with numbers and policies, which this person is good at, and less challenging in terms of personalities and last-minute changes, which were major sources of unhappiness before. It could well be that there's a job for you which is just a slight shift from your current one where you will excel.
posted by Frowner at 3:43 PM on June 22, 2017 [2 favorites]
Being in a job you're not good at absolutely eats away at your self worth. I've both experienced and observed people close to me going from jobs where I/they were meh and felt bad to jobs where I/they could really succeed, and it's huge.
It is likely that there is a job which uses a similar skill set where you can succeed. For instance, I know someone who went from being miserable as an arts financial administrator to being much more successful and happier in a business finance role. The new position is more challenging with numbers and policies, which this person is good at, and less challenging in terms of personalities and last-minute changes, which were major sources of unhappiness before. It could well be that there's a job for you which is just a slight shift from your current one where you will excel.
posted by Frowner at 3:43 PM on June 22, 2017 [2 favorites]
"My work gets changed a lot but I can't see any logic behind the changes to learn from."
maybe there isn't any.
"Others seem to get promoted and progress a lot more easily than me."
why are you assuming this is happening because of their merit, or your lack of merit?
the things you wrote about in your post are generally functions of working for government. speaking as a former government employee (both city and federal), government is a setting where micromanaging and bureaucratic delay are expected, if not outright encouraged, and financial goals are not as explicit as "if we fuck up enough we go out of business," so they're less of a motivating factor.
nepotism, favoritism, corruption, and ass-kissing are largely how people get promoted in government. of course this happens in the private sector as well, but it happens much less than in the public sector. in the private sector if your work is getting changed and you don't understand why, all you have to do is sit the person changing it down and ask them to point out how their changes are going to increase the bottom line. you can't do that in government even as a starting point.
look at the private sector industries that are adjacent to the work you are doing now. if you are working in policy that deals with healthcare, maybe you'd be a good hospital administrator. if you're working in policy that deals with education, maybe you'd be a good administrator for a school or a university. if you're doing environmental policy, maybe you want to project manage for an energy company or a large agriculture company or something like that.
think about what skills you have and what aspects of your current work are the best fitted to you, and go from there. i don't think you are really the dull kid if you are self aware to have this conversation here on metafilter.
posted by zdravo at 4:32 PM on June 22, 2017 [2 favorites]
maybe there isn't any.
"Others seem to get promoted and progress a lot more easily than me."
why are you assuming this is happening because of their merit, or your lack of merit?
the things you wrote about in your post are generally functions of working for government. speaking as a former government employee (both city and federal), government is a setting where micromanaging and bureaucratic delay are expected, if not outright encouraged, and financial goals are not as explicit as "if we fuck up enough we go out of business," so they're less of a motivating factor.
nepotism, favoritism, corruption, and ass-kissing are largely how people get promoted in government. of course this happens in the private sector as well, but it happens much less than in the public sector. in the private sector if your work is getting changed and you don't understand why, all you have to do is sit the person changing it down and ask them to point out how their changes are going to increase the bottom line. you can't do that in government even as a starting point.
look at the private sector industries that are adjacent to the work you are doing now. if you are working in policy that deals with healthcare, maybe you'd be a good hospital administrator. if you're working in policy that deals with education, maybe you'd be a good administrator for a school or a university. if you're doing environmental policy, maybe you want to project manage for an energy company or a large agriculture company or something like that.
think about what skills you have and what aspects of your current work are the best fitted to you, and go from there. i don't think you are really the dull kid if you are self aware to have this conversation here on metafilter.
posted by zdravo at 4:32 PM on June 22, 2017 [2 favorites]
This sounds like pretty straightforward "working for government" to me. Things get changed because other people need to be seen to be doing stuff. People get middling performance reviews because their managers a) don't care enough to think about it properly and b) are too busy chasing their own ladders. I know loads of policy officers and to be honest they seem to mostly be cardboard people, and I've read a lot of policy and the majority of it is empty garbage that does nothing.
By and large government is pretty good to work for, but you need to find somewhere that you can, as they say, "add value". What are you yourself interested in, and where do you think you can apply that enthusiasm? I don't know which government you're with, or where, but most of them have some kind of "mentoring" and internal development program that is either free or minimal cost to your division/group. Get stuck in to a bunch of those.
posted by turbid dahlia at 4:38 PM on June 22, 2017 [1 favorite]
By and large government is pretty good to work for, but you need to find somewhere that you can, as they say, "add value". What are you yourself interested in, and where do you think you can apply that enthusiasm? I don't know which government you're with, or where, but most of them have some kind of "mentoring" and internal development program that is either free or minimal cost to your division/group. Get stuck in to a bunch of those.
posted by turbid dahlia at 4:38 PM on June 22, 2017 [1 favorite]
I work in policy but it's really impossible to answer your question without knowing the kind of deliverables you're producing and the kinds of changes that are being made. For example, some analysts are good at summarizing facts, but terrible at putting them together to form a narrative. Others have trouble expressing ideas concisely in briefing materials. Some have a hard time maintaining accuracy and precision when they try to be concise. And lots aren't very good at making decks that are nice to look at. All of these are things that can be practiced.
posted by sevenyearlurk at 8:49 PM on June 22, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by sevenyearlurk at 8:49 PM on June 22, 2017 [2 favorites]
This thread is closed to new comments.
I don't have any advice for your overall situation, but I want to reassure you that this particular issue may not have anything at all to do with the quality of your work. In one of my favorite passages from Stranger in a Strange Land, Jubal dictates a poem for submission to a publisher. (This is back in the olden days when people could get paid for writing poetry.) His secretary points out that one of the lines doesn't scan. Jubal replies, Of course not. The editor will change it, and then after he's pissed in it, he'll like the flavor better and he'll buy it.
There's a very good chance that whoever is changing your work just likes the flavor better after they've pissed in it.
posted by Bruce H. at 3:24 PM on June 22, 2017 [3 favorites]