I got a bad rating but doubt it is fair /u/kirmiziio CSCQ protests reddit

I was hired as a generalist, although actually I had a specialization in an area my team is not really working. I had manager changes multiple times and had to switch projects a lot (5-10 times in a year). Whenever there was a fire, for some reason, i was asked to support that for a couple of weeks. In the end, those helps are reflected as small scope, low impact works that contributed to my bad grade. More than that, there were a couple of incidents which took “long,” and I needed help, which is the main reason for the rating.

The thing is, one case was about a problem I discovered in a different platform I have never worked in my life. The owners of the code did not care, they silenced the test which fails some years ago they were happy pretending it does not exist. Anyway, I was expected to solve it by myself and find people for help if necessary. I did not even have the device of that platform, I was trying to debug it using a test which runs in the cloud. Then whenever I made some progress, I would reach out to people from sister teams to try the fix using their device and work environment. For some reason, the code would not work exactly the same as there were problems with the pragma-like pre compilation directives. Anyway, I solved the problem in the end in 20 days I think by working overtime as well.

The second problem is also related to debugging. I was trying to debug a problem but there were no errors. Logs are fine, no crash etc, it is just the component that we use to detect something would not detect our input. I told my TL multiple times there are not errors in the log, it should be something else, I need help. I think they though I was just being lazy and they just let me suffer and reported to our manager that I am not delivering. In the end, the TL added me to a chat group which includes the owners of the infra we depend on. When I wrote our problem, they immediately suggested a solution. They said they changed their model so our input is not actually supposed be detected anymore. We modified our input and it worked. None of the people in our team could know that, and the only thing I could have done better is to reach out to the infra owners earlier. However, I was led to believe I could solve it myself thanks to my TL and I did not even know there was such a group that would help me.

Anyway, in the end, after lots of overtime, saying yes to many things and trying my best and here i am.

Also, the managers believe I should be able to do everything and fast. E.g., today I should be able to work as a front-end, next month ad back-end, then maybe as embedded engineer. Changing projects, technology etc, having to work on stacks I have 0 experience should not decrease my productivity. We have a stack-ranking system and the ones who become successful are the ones who were able to work on a project and stack consistently.

Is there something I am missing? How can I perform better compared to people with stable project/tech stack? How could i have done better in the two problems I mentioned above? Is this attitude and expectation normal?

I was hired as a generalist, although actually I had a specialization in an area my team is not really working. I had manager changes multiple times and had to switch projects a lot (5-10 times in a year). Whenever there was a fire, for some reason, i was asked to support that for a couple of weeks. In the end, those helps are reflected as small scope, low impact works that contributed to my bad grade. More than that, there were a couple of incidents which took “long,” and I needed help, which is the main reason for the rating.

The thing is, one case was about a problem I discovered in a different platform I have never worked in my life. The owners of the code did not care, they silenced the test which fails some years ago they were happy pretending it does not exist. Anyway, I was expected to solve it by myself and find people for help if necessary. I did not even have the device of that platform, I was trying to debug it using a test which runs in the cloud. Then whenever I made some progress, I would reach out to people from sister teams to try the fix using their device and work environment. For some reason, the code would not work exactly the same as there were problems with the pragma-like pre compilation directives. Anyway, I solved the problem in the end in 20 days I think by working overtime as well.

The second problem is also related to debugging. I was trying to debug a problem but there were no errors. Logs are fine, no crash etc, it is just the component that we use to detect something would not detect our input. I told my TL multiple times there are not errors in the log, it should be something else, I need help. I think they though I was just being lazy and they just let me suffer and reported to our manager that I am not delivering. In the end, the TL added me to a chat group which includes the owners of the infra we depend on. When I wrote our problem, they immediately suggested a solution. They said they changed their model so our input is not actually supposed be detected anymore. We modified our input and it worked. None of the people in our team could know that, and the only thing I could have done better is to reach out to the infra owners earlier. However, I was led to believe I could solve it myself thanks to my TL and I did not even know there was such a group that would help me.

Anyway, in the end, after lots of overtime, saying yes to many things and trying my best and here i am.

Also, the managers believe I should be able to do everything and fast. E.g., today I should be able to work as a front-end, next month ad back-end, then maybe as embedded engineer. Changing projects, technology etc, having to work on stacks I have 0 experience should not decrease my productivity. We have a stack-ranking system and the ones who become successful are the ones who were able to work on a project and stack consistently.

Is there something I am missing? How can I perform better compared to people with stable project/tech stack? How could i have done better in the two problems I mentioned above? Is this attitude and expectation normal?