Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Not the news I wanted...

... but not unexpected, either. Once again I'm not getting promoted to the next GS grade. Sigh. The demographics are absolutely killing me; those of us stuck in the bottleneck have to do at least twice as much as anyone at other grades to break outta that logjam. Frustrating, discouraging, demoralizing (fill in other adjectives here)... I can't help but think of what the Red Queen told Alice (chapter 2, Through the Looking Glass): "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

At least this year all of my managers seemed concerned about helping me break out of the logjam for next year. My first-line manager has a pretty specific plan and the next level up offered to help me work on my package to play up the things I've done that make me stand out. This is the first year I've ever gotten any feedback that would actually be helpful, though of course I won't know just how helpful until we go through this exercise again next year.

OK, enough whining. Now I can quit wondering "is this the year?" and get back to work.

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