Something right
I guess it’s about time I brought this word up again. Considering it was one of the top drivers to my previous blog. Dang, I’d thought that I’d put it behind me.
Billability
Evil little fucker of word that it is, it’s not such a hard thing to understand. Given an x hour workweek, what percentage of that time is directly billable to a client? That, is billability. Start tacking on vacation time, holidays, staff meetings, that number goes down.
Add those things to a 24 hour work week, and you’ve got crappy billability.
I had my review today. It was glorious. Really, all of my reviews have been remarkable. Remarkable on their own two feet, but even more incredible considering I know for a fact that each of my reviews have been at the top of the heap year after year. Case in point, this years review discussed the high quality and reliability of my work, my superior writing skills (don’t laugh), my incredible attitude (I said stop), my easy to work with persona, and other over the top compliments that really had me blushing. In the “things to be improved” section I literally got two sentences: “Keep doing what you’re doing. Attend training when possible.” That, after paragraphs of well thought out, deeply personal, incredibly flattering praise.
And then it came time to discuss billability. The reviewer made it clear that she had been prepared to recommend a promotion, but as she looked at my billability she realized she couldn’t do it. That’s fine. I don’t need a promotion if it means working through the holidays, not taking trips to Maui, and avoiding all deaths and illnesses all day everyday. I’ll stay right where I am, thank you.
But, it means that I’m YET AGAIN passing up what the company sees as potential for growth. I was reassured and patted that they’re still cool with me being part-time, and they understand that at part-time it’s impossible to meet the billability targets, but at the same time she printed these graphs to highlight just how off I am. And reminded me that there are certain higher-ups who are gunning for me to come back full time.
Sigh. Nothing is ever just Good.
Add to this, the company may be merging with another, larger company. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon. There have been a lot of meetings between one company in particular, a rather cool company actually, very involved in social and environmental causes. I’m worried that the two pages of glorious, drippy praise is going to be over-looked for the nice sheet of pretty graphs. People ALWAYS focus on the damn graphs. And I’m always very nervous about what people are going to think about my meager AA degree and brief industry work history.
Just more things to make me nervous.
Ugh, I really shouldn’t worry about it. I’ve gone three years without being found out for the ignorant, barely staying afloat, newbie that I am. Quite the opposite. I must be doing Something right.
whenever i see “billability”, i think of like a cartoon. maybe because it sounds like kim possible?
now i’ll think of it as one of those educational saturday morning tv funhouse shorts they used to run back in the day, like “how a bill becomes a law”.
hmm, i think that’s actually where my mental image is coming from.