God damn, being proactive in terms of my career makes me fucking panicky-nervous. Sometimes, it seems to be worth it.
Case in point, an email sent by me to my big boss late this afternoon:
"Big Boss --
I was hoping you had a few minutes to discuss a few questions I have regarding my position at Company.
I have been working here for over a year, and in that time, I received an excellent Performance Review, and took on a number of additional tasks. Most notably, I think that the product documentation alone is a significant leap beyond my original responsibilities, particularly when you consider that corporations often hire an external FrameMaker specialist just to create the sort of document templates we're using. I am also engaged in a lot of technical writing for this documentation, and starting at version 2.1, I developed UI specs for several new features of the product. These new duties are in addition to my initial ones: anything from coding rough HTML for all of the developers, to creating a clean looking, cleanly coded, and visually consistent top layer for every page of the entire product.
To be honest, I am not certain how or when our compensation increases are determined, but given how long I have been with the company, what I hope you see as the quality of my work, and the sudden influx of clients, it seems a propitious time to ask. Let me know what you think, or when you'd like to discuss this in person.
Thanks a lot!
--Fulminous"
Within minutes, he had replied:
"Fulminous,
This is an absolutely appropriate topic for us and I was about to suggest this discussion myself, you beat me to it.
Let's make some time tomorrow and chat..."
Holy hot god diggety damn! The bluster, the bravado, the cool, calculated smoothness, the 50-cent words, the big sneaky gamble that other people notice that sometimes I do some really cool things around here?? It fucking worked!!!!