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Yesterday was a little bit rough. I'd like to blame a bit of a sleepless night, so I will. :) I still managed to finish up my post on the Noble Eightfold Path, though, and I did get a good 30 minutes of SQL study in. Learned about basic statements like SELECT, and picked up a couple of modifiers like ORDER BY and LIMIT. One of the reasons I like SQL is the syntax, honestly. There's just something clean about the accepted way commands are written.
At work I tried to create a workflow using Zapier and that took up a good bit of the afternoon. Zapier is a tool that automates messages across a wide variety of apps; here, we typically use it to target a specific segment of scholars for certain communications. For example, if we see that a high number of scholars haven't completed a project by its due date and we have a project walkthrough video or support session coming up, we can send them a direct message in Slack letting them know about it! It can be *quite* handy to get information to the right people at the right time.
I'm still new at it, though. One of the things we have to do is cross-reference the students who haven't submitted their project against the list of students in Slack, since Zapier needs the Slack user ID in order to DM them. This requires using the VLOOKUP function in Excel to match the user ID from one sheet to the email addresses on another.
It took me two hours to figure out how to properly form a VLOOKUP function. I'm not sure if the explanations I found online (from MS Office, no less) were pretty confusing or if I'm going to be slow at picking up this kind of thing, but it took me forever to figure it out! Once I did, I found out that the shared Zapier account we have on file doesn't work anymore because the colleague who created it left the company two days ago. That could be viewed as a giant waste of time, but hey -- I learned the nuts and bolts of creating the workflow! Once I've finished with a few other things, I'm going to try writing a guide for other Community Managers. It will help to really cement the knowledge and give me good practice with creating these tutorials.
I had an "informal" meeting with my manager earlier this morning about my progress with my competency tracker for my job level. We're graded on a 4-point scale where 2 is "just doing your job," 3 is "goes the extra mile", and 4 is "sets a new standard". There are four major categories to consider: expertise (3.0), results (2.6), communication (3.7), and collaboration/leadership (2.8). Above-average marks for everything, with no single criteria below a 2. Not bad! Overall I received a 2.9 for my job level (IC2), which I hope will make a good case for being bumped up to IC3. I don't think it'll happen this year, but it's definitely my goal next year.
This is all part of the annual review cycle. Self-reviews are due by the end of next week, with managers reviewing their direct reports by the end of the month. Calibration across departments (to make sure a 3 in Community Management and a 3 in Marketing are roughly the same) and compensation reviews will take most of February, with actual performance review meetings happening at the end of that month. Raises and promotions are announced at the beginning of March and take effect at the end of the month -- presumably to roll costs for payroll into Q2. It's all pretty straightforward, even if I'm never actually prepared to evaluate my last year's performance. This year, I'm hoping to keep better track of my accomplishments.
I think I'm in reasonably good shape, but there's also a lot of room for growth. I'm nowhere near as punctual with deadlines as I should be, and beyond contributing to team culture (which basically means I throw good vibes) I haven't found a good niche of consistent contributions to the team. Some folks are really good with coming up with community activities, or graphic design, or serving as a knowledge base. I'm...still the new guy.
That's one of the big reasons I'd like to learn SQL and become an Excel power user this year. Data gathering and analysis have been consistent skills in demand at the company, and after three years it feels like time to knuckle down and develop them. I think I have a good eye for setting up systems that make data actionable, and if I can find a way to make it easier to get and analyze data -- then come up with ways to identify issues and move the needle -- that would be the mark I could make for the team.
Had an excellent conversation about Buddhism with an unexpected friend; I'm really happy to have discovered this shared interest, and I'm looking forward to continuing the thread.
At work I tried to create a workflow using Zapier and that took up a good bit of the afternoon. Zapier is a tool that automates messages across a wide variety of apps; here, we typically use it to target a specific segment of scholars for certain communications. For example, if we see that a high number of scholars haven't completed a project by its due date and we have a project walkthrough video or support session coming up, we can send them a direct message in Slack letting them know about it! It can be *quite* handy to get information to the right people at the right time.
I'm still new at it, though. One of the things we have to do is cross-reference the students who haven't submitted their project against the list of students in Slack, since Zapier needs the Slack user ID in order to DM them. This requires using the VLOOKUP function in Excel to match the user ID from one sheet to the email addresses on another.
It took me two hours to figure out how to properly form a VLOOKUP function. I'm not sure if the explanations I found online (from MS Office, no less) were pretty confusing or if I'm going to be slow at picking up this kind of thing, but it took me forever to figure it out! Once I did, I found out that the shared Zapier account we have on file doesn't work anymore because the colleague who created it left the company two days ago. That could be viewed as a giant waste of time, but hey -- I learned the nuts and bolts of creating the workflow! Once I've finished with a few other things, I'm going to try writing a guide for other Community Managers. It will help to really cement the knowledge and give me good practice with creating these tutorials.
I had an "informal" meeting with my manager earlier this morning about my progress with my competency tracker for my job level. We're graded on a 4-point scale where 2 is "just doing your job," 3 is "goes the extra mile", and 4 is "sets a new standard". There are four major categories to consider: expertise (3.0), results (2.6), communication (3.7), and collaboration/leadership (2.8). Above-average marks for everything, with no single criteria below a 2. Not bad! Overall I received a 2.9 for my job level (IC2), which I hope will make a good case for being bumped up to IC3. I don't think it'll happen this year, but it's definitely my goal next year.
This is all part of the annual review cycle. Self-reviews are due by the end of next week, with managers reviewing their direct reports by the end of the month. Calibration across departments (to make sure a 3 in Community Management and a 3 in Marketing are roughly the same) and compensation reviews will take most of February, with actual performance review meetings happening at the end of that month. Raises and promotions are announced at the beginning of March and take effect at the end of the month -- presumably to roll costs for payroll into Q2. It's all pretty straightforward, even if I'm never actually prepared to evaluate my last year's performance. This year, I'm hoping to keep better track of my accomplishments.
I think I'm in reasonably good shape, but there's also a lot of room for growth. I'm nowhere near as punctual with deadlines as I should be, and beyond contributing to team culture (which basically means I throw good vibes) I haven't found a good niche of consistent contributions to the team. Some folks are really good with coming up with community activities, or graphic design, or serving as a knowledge base. I'm...still the new guy.
That's one of the big reasons I'd like to learn SQL and become an Excel power user this year. Data gathering and analysis have been consistent skills in demand at the company, and after three years it feels like time to knuckle down and develop them. I think I have a good eye for setting up systems that make data actionable, and if I can find a way to make it easier to get and analyze data -- then come up with ways to identify issues and move the needle -- that would be the mark I could make for the team.
Had an excellent conversation about Buddhism with an unexpected friend; I'm really happy to have discovered this shared interest, and I'm looking forward to continuing the thread.
