A few of my bosses in the past have said “just think about what you did the last 6 months and then put that as your goal.”

True, it may help justify a 5% annual increase vs a 3% increase. But let’s be honest, the fast-track people pushing to climb the corporate ladder have already been pegged by management and those conversations are happening with or without the 3 bullet points of goals that are written down on the internal tool the company is using.

My most recent boss took over our division and got super excited about us spending multiple days thinking through goals and how we could measurably show our success. I respectfully but very directly asked if, in the next 6 months, he or his boss was truly going to look at what we were doing as it relates to these goals. He unsurprisingly said it was very important, and we would check in on these and his boss would want to know.

It’s been 8 or 9 months and we’ve never been asked about them, none of it was mentioned in our annual reviews. I’m not against goals - I’m just against unnecessary, additional work that doesn’t actually improve our output.