At Microsoft, I was sitting through my annual performance review in my manager Ryan’s office. The walls plastered with technical documents that would make Matt Damon’s Will Hunting scratch his head. I’d spent weeks over-preparing. Metrics memorized. Every possible question and answer rehearsed.
Ryan was working through my achievements with his usual mix of brilliance, directness, care, and unintended intimidation. “Consistently received top evaluations for presentations. Led the collaborative editing initiative across all of Office. Over 50 million downloads of the compatibility pack.” He was describing someone that sounded distantly familiar but wasn’t me.
I could feel goosebumps start to emerge under my shirt. Ryan’s voice became Charlie Brown’s teacher.
“Great year, Jonathan. So…” he leaned forward, “what are your goals for next year?”
More excessive blinking. Brain blue screen. I knew the script. Had practiced it in my ’98 Camry with no driver’s side door handle: Cross division collaboration. Increased scope. More leadership roles. The words that came so easy during rehearsal, but my mouth wouldn’t open.
I stared at the top button of his collar. I looked behind him. The eagle on the poster seemed to be screaming rather than soaring. I noticed his desk phone blinking red, red, red.
Say something, my brain commanded. Anything.
But my body had made a different decision. Some essential switch had flipped to OFF.
Ryan’s smile shrunk slightly. “Setting the bar high for next year, huh?”
I might have nodded. Or maybe I continued my over blinking. I gave him nothing. Sat there. I was watching myself from far away, curious about this person who’d forgotten how to want things. A quiet refusal to generate one more goal for a life it couldn’t survive.
I finally snapped out of it, re-buckled my person-suit, and told him how I planned to do more with less, faster, better, and with an even more positive attitude and lots of synergy and cross-team collaboration. He seemed pleased.
Walking to my car afterwards, I faintly understood: My nervous system had tried to be more subtle. This was its nuclear option. Full stop. And that was the beginning of the end of my decade at Microsoft.