Me during my last performance review: So I did this, and that, which has this impact, and that impact
Some dude from the higher echelon: what you achieved is nice, but you need to contribute outside of your team too. No promotion for you!

Me during this performance review: ok, so here's what I did and its impact, and also here's my contribution to the company outside of my team
Some dude from the higher echelon: wow why are you doing all that? You need to delegate more. No promotion for you!

I love corporate life!

I haven't had issues with promotions really, but in my performance evaluations they always have me just under exceeds expectations (even the year they later promoted me to Sr. Software Engineer...).

It's ALWAYS you need to expand your influence more.... but when I explain that I do have influence in every area we interact with... it changes to "yes, all of the managers under our Sr. Director know that, but we need the influence more visible..."

Me just thinking "isn't selling me to your peers during calibration your job....."

For anyone else reading this, make sure you know your teams objectives and goals. Ensure that the team lead is documenting everything and meeting those targets. At the start of every meeting, those targets should be the first page of the deck. Update the part where you track the progress of each project. It will give you an idea who’s doing their part or they’re just dead right. At evaluation time, bitch slap those achievements to the person evaluating you. Now go get that promotion you little corporate zombie!

@fruitfcker what if the team doesn’t have defined goals?

@nanobot it tells me that team doesn't have direction. If that's your team, get out!

@fruitfcker working on it. The challenge is that my skills are very very specific, and these folks pay be almost double of what others are willing to pay me for now.

Freelancing is tough with hyperspecialised (is that a word?) skills.