I think it's a mistake to think of these kinds of goals as an extra burden. Instead, they're a way to enlist your employer in the work of advancing your career. When you're writing down your goals, you're opening a negotiation about what you will do and what you will learn in the next few months.
If your basic idea of work is "you rent yourself, your time and energy to the employer, the employer pays you, and you're even" then asking you to set goals for yourself makes little sense. "Clean the coffee machine before you lock up" isn't really a negotiable goal.
But if you work to create intellectual and social capital for both yourself and your company, then it makes all the sense in the world to negotiate goals.
If you have the goal of learning new tech things, by all means tell your supervisor. They have the responsibility to help you with that. (Obviously they also have the responsibility to get the work done.)
"I want to get to the point where I am the go-to person on zumbiwidgets" is music to the ears of a supervisor. They can help you do that, with training, assignments, conferences, mentoring and the like. Or, they can say, "wait, wait, we're phasing out zumbiwidgets. How about working with acmewidgets instead?" In either case it's a way to get your supervisor on your side.
Exactly. The lenders don't have enough skin in the game to make it worth negotiating with the colleges / universities to keep tuition down. The article mentions "loose student loan underwriting standards". That means the underwriters don't call the colleges on the carpet about grossly overpriced degree programs. So tuition spirals.
The article mentions "loose student loan underwriting standards." Here's what's going on:
The people originating the loans have no skin in the game. So, they don't call NYU or even Northern Essex Community College and say, "look, here's a student who wants to be a social worker, asking for 100K in loans to get the degree. We don't think they'll be able to repay that debt on a social worker's wages. So, no loan."
If the lenders WERE calling the colleges saying that, the colleges would not be escalating tuition as radically as they are.
It's not realistic to expect the kid who just got in to NYU or a community college to play that kind of hardball in negotiating tuition rates. But when the lenders don't play that hardball, it leaves higher-education executives trucking to the bank on the proceeds of those loans.
I deleted my Facebook account completely last fall. It was interesting to see what happened over the period of about a month. Two weeks in my spouse's status changed from "Married to Ollie" to "Married." About three weeks in I got a notice saying my account to pay for "boosting" posts was cancelled.
My FB fanboy brother is annoyed, because if he wants to tell me something he has to make an effort.
People don't "tag" me in pictures any more. I don't have to cope with the little burst of emotional juice when somebody pushes the little thumb button on something from me or about me.
If your basic idea of work is "you rent yourself, your time and energy to the employer, the employer pays you, and you're even" then asking you to set goals for yourself makes little sense. "Clean the coffee machine before you lock up" isn't really a negotiable goal.
But if you work to create intellectual and social capital for both yourself and your company, then it makes all the sense in the world to negotiate goals.
If you have the goal of learning new tech things, by all means tell your supervisor. They have the responsibility to help you with that. (Obviously they also have the responsibility to get the work done.)
"I want to get to the point where I am the go-to person on zumbiwidgets" is music to the ears of a supervisor. They can help you do that, with training, assignments, conferences, mentoring and the like. Or, they can say, "wait, wait, we're phasing out zumbiwidgets. How about working with acmewidgets instead?" In either case it's a way to get your supervisor on your side.