It’s that time of year again: we have to fill out the annual career development plans to pretend the company gives a shit. As you can no doubt tell, I hate it.

It’s a complete waste of time as far as I’m concerned. The plan ends up with a few ‘goals’ I already knew I was going to accomplish, and has no useful bearing on anything I do for the rest of the year. It’s another document to keep track of for no real purpose. Woo.

This year they’ve been changing it up what with the career framework crap. I have to list some ‘short term’ and ‘long term’ goals, and for each goal a ‘competency’ as relates to the company, as well as a ‘support resource’ or ‘activity’ I could use to help get it done.

I find that bit funny, actually. My manager, when sending it out, said that one of the lesser goals we might have is to read a particular book as relates to the job. I haven’t decided on a book yet, but I will. The competency will be ‘literacy’, and the support resources will be Hooked On Phonics and Adderall.

But the whole process aggravates the hell out of me. Nothing I want to do, nowhere I want to go with my career has anything to do with this company, or even this role at any company. It’s a job. It’s a job I do well, and a job I’m proud of doing well, but it’s just a job. My interests and hobbies and the skills I like to spend my free time developing have almost nothing to do with this place, and those skills that do relate are related only in the absolute loosest sense. What drives me, the hobbies that energize and excite me, don’t relate to this job at all. I’m cool with that: I just wish they’d stop pretending that when we all go home at night all we think about is how awesome it is to work unpaid overtime because we love this shit so much.

I’ve said it before and I’ll probably never stop saying it: IT pays the bills well, but nobody has ever found it ‘fulfilling’. As well-paying careers go, it has to be the most soul-crushing of the lot.