Job Performance barely increasing

[Sindocat]

My Sim Riley is in the Chef branch of the base-game Culinary Career.  He has Cooking mastered, and Gourmet Cooking mastered as well. He is at least Friends with all of his coworkers.  He has purchased the Entrepreneurial Trait with Satisfaction Points. I am sending him to work solidly in the green on all motives, in a strong positive mood (usually Inspired), with his daily tasks complete.

Once he's at work, I hit J to observe his performance. I can shop among Work Tones, and generally hit on one that shows it's acting to improve performance - the white arrow at the deep green end of the performance bar blinks at me, and the meter creeps slightly to the right. Then, after maybe 20-40 Sim minutes, the arrow disappears, and I have to change tones again to get it back, and get the meter to creep s-l-o-w-l-y to the right a tiny amount.  Then it stops, the arrow vanishes, and I need to find a productive tone.

Riley has been at Level 9 Culinary for at least 4 Sim weeks, and is only just edging into Excellent on the Job Performance meter. His spouse has long since maxed the Style Influencer career in the Trend Setter track, and receives pay raises almost daily.

Is there a hidden skill requirement for Culinary 10 Celebrity Chef? I can't believe that performance increase is intentionally this slow, when all listed requirements are met. Has anyone else run into this or, better, found a good solution? I very much prefer not to cheat up career levels. Earning them through play is what I especially enjoy.

[Sindocat]

Well, thanks to a handful of Chance Cards over the past 2 work weeks, and eking out performance by changing tones every time I could find one that moved the meter at all, Riley is, in fact, finally a Celebrity Chef. He's been taking paid family leave since, because his husband had a new baby immediately before the shift that put him over the top, but at least he's there.

I'll see if his performance gain improves at all. His husband, Avery, gets raises just by meeting daily responsibilities and publishing Style Columns - for which he also gets paid. It is absurdly easy to move his performance meter, and the contrast is striking.

[Nindigo]

Well, aside from the possibility of a bug/glitch, the different types of occupations do seem to work quite differently. The original job are a real grind in the end, whereas the City Living work-from-home types are rather quickly gone through. Then there are the join-them-at-work career types. I find they can be quite a grind in the end as well.

With Sims 4 there is always a good chance that something is buggy

I don't know what to suggest other than the usual - remove mods, update, repair, and perhaps rename the game folder and let the game create a fresh one which the old saves, library and whatever else you want to keep, are moved to.

*There are no hidden skills required, by the way

[Sindocat]

Thanks, Nindigo.  He got there. I think it was just incrementally slower progress, as he got promotions.  I mostly just wanted to see what his final work schedule would be (Friday - Monday, Noon - 6 PM) so I knew when to have his husband work from home (I don't trust this game's services enough to hire a nanny).

If he weren't progressing AT ALL, I'd suspect a glitch. This was just a tough grind for those last few bars.

[Nindigo]

Congratulations on finally getting there! And I don't trust the services either, particularly not the nanny service. It's funny how one learns to plan ahead with this game in order to avoid certain things (that just don't work) at all costs

[reggikko]

I'm not sure which work tones you were using, but some can really slow down progress. Whenever you switch, you'll initially see the white arrow move, but that doesn't mean it will continue to progress quickly. The only thing that really accelerates job performance is "work hard," but sometimes switching between that and "normal" seems to work best for me, especially if they are close to the bar being filled. For example, if my Sim has been working hard and toward the end of the shift I see that the bar is almost full, I'll switch to "normal" and frequently that's enough to get the checkmark and promotion. If it doesn't work the first time, I switch back to work hard for a few minutes and try it again.

If you have Parenthood, the responsibility trait really helps job performance. A child who grows up responsible can progress nearly twice as fast in their career as a Sim without that trait.

[Sindocat]

Not every tone shows a progress arrow. In fact, following a Chance Card last night, I had a work tone available that, when selected, showed a red regress arrow for diminishing performance.

Tones that, at various times, have progressed performance are "Normal", "Schmooze With Boss", "Socialize With Coworkers", "Slack Off", "Work Hard" and "Create Fancier Dishes".

The only time I have seen the red arrow was for "Hide From Coworkers", a tone available because embarrassed at work.

I know that what you describe is how work tone is intended to function. It simply seems that, for some Sims, it isn't for me.  I did get Riley to Celebrity Chef, and have since purchased the Professional Slacker trait to protect him from demotion/being fired, but wanted to continue this discussion here in case others were encountering similar oddities.