It hit me today that I’ve been at IBM for five years now; and when I looked at my performance reviews I see three years in a row with the top rating, and 2 years with the second highest rating. Despite all this my career hasn’t exactly progressed very much. I guess it’s my own fault though, I foolishly thought that if I excel at my job I’d be rewarded with increased pay, bonuses & eventually promotions. As it turns out, I haven’t done too bad on the first two, but when it comes to promotions it’s most definitely a case of “you don’t get what you don’t ask for”, and as much as I hate blowing my own trumpet, it appears that if I want to get anywhere in this business I’m going to have to do just that.