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.memo "Sidney Burkhart, Assistant Dean, School of Humanities and Sciences",
.  "John McCarthy, Director, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory",
.  "Staff Performance Evaluations","10 October 1974";
.fac
Some time ago, we were asked to prepare detailed performance evaluations
for our exempt staff members, to be forwarded through your office to
Personnel.  I subsequently decided that this would be a waste of time
and communicated this opinion to you by telephone.  This memo is to confirm
my reasons for taking that position.

I believe that the best way to run a research organization of the type
that we have here is to give our staff a great deal of freedom in
choosing day-to-day activities, but to require substantial accomplishments
over long periods -- on the order of a year.  The performance evaluation
is primarily a technical one and it is we who have the information and
knowledge to make it, not the Personnel Department.

There are enough people in each kind of exempt position in our laboratory
to make internal competitive evaluations meaningful, with the exception
of one or two positions.  Thus I see no point in preparing detailed
written evaluations for the "normal" situation in which satisfactory,
but not outstanding, performance is observed.  A more complete evaluation
is in order where abnormally high or low salary adjustments are called
for.  Consequently, I propose to continue our evaluation procedures as
they stand.

The increasing paperwork load of the University is bringing us perilously
close to having to augment our administrative staff.  We hope to avoid this.
Thank you for your consideration.

LDE/pdp-10

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cc:\Les Earnest, A. I. Lab.
\Jerry Jobe, A. I. Lab.
\Robert Floyd, CSD
\Betty Scott, CSD