millennials – Danielle R. Simon

Unfortunately, her story is similar to that of a lot of us college and graduate degree holders in terms of struggling with crappy hourly wages, low-salary pay and struggling to even find low-salary pay after graduation. It kills a lot of dreams of freelancing and entrepreneurship while significantly delaying others. Some of her statements about how much she was making don’t add up, i.e. she says she was making as much from her side hustle as from her day job, which I’d think put her at around $60,000/yr before becoming self-employed, but then she basically says she had never made $60,000/yr before. But that doesn’t change the point(s) and value of the story.

Gems:

I thought that if I could free up hours in my day, my side hustle could certainly out-earn my day job. But I still had $40,000 in debt at the time and I worked so hard to finally get stable employment.

My rent was $400 a month for a studio I split with my partner at the time and I didn’t have a car or health insurance. Maintaining that lifestyle — keeping my low cost of living even though I was making more money — and avoiding lifestyle inflation helped my payments go further https://impotenzastop.it/.

I quit my 9-to-5 in July 2014 and ended up paying my debt off in December 2015. Earning more helped me shorten my repayment period and save money on interest. It also gave me so much peace of mind to finally have my student loans off my back.

I paid off $81,000 of student loan debt, and quitting my 9-to-5 to take my side hustle full-time was a crucial step

Common sense strikes again. I concur with all of this, except one part–the word “feedback.”

I believe employers should have monthly “check-ins” with employees, if not check-ins that occur more often. And words such as “feedback” and “reviews” make it seem one-sided when it shouldn’t be. The “feedback” should go both ways. Really, it should be a discussion or a conversation, so that you, as an employer, can gather a lot of valuable information from an employee about problems that need to be addressed, needs that need to be met, etc.

Gems:

>50% reacted to an annual performance review by looking for a new job.

64% of employees that quit their jobs say they did it because they didn’t feel recognized for their job. – U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Companies that set quarterly performance goals to generate 31% greater returns than those that review goals annually, and those that do it monthly get even better results.

I do have to note one thing about “performance goals”–I have worked at a company where quarterly performance goals was a thing, and I perceived them as somewhat arbitrary and meaningless…at least at this company. If you’re going to require performance goals–which I think is kind of ridiculous–make sure they’re tied to necessities. It shouldn’t be coming up with 3 or 4 goals just to have 3 or 4 goals, especially if you’re tying these pointless goals to bonuses and/or raises. This leads to wasted time for employees on pointless goals when there are more important–even critical–places to focus attention, time and effort. If there’s one big thing that it’d be truly helpful or necessary to have completed within 3 or so months, then that one thing should be the performance goal–not 1 semi-important thing (i.e https://osterreichische-apotheke.com/k../. important but not critical in the next 3 months), 1-2 impossible as fuck things and 1-2 totally unimportant things, as was the case where I worked.

Annual Performance Reviews Vs Continuous Feedback Infographic