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Ask HN: What does performance management look like at your company?

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Re: Ask HN: What does performance management look like at your company?

#151

Post by SergeAx »

We are a team of ~50 software engineers and about the same amount of non-engineering staff. We have a quarterly performance review. It starts from setting goals at the beginning of the quarter. Then we have a home-brewed CRM-like system to enter accomplishments, nominate peers, giving reviews and feedback and finally grading.

Then managers talking to their reports, discussing results, giving and receiving feedback.

Grades are from 2 to 5, greater is better. Normal grade is 4, it gives a bonus of 1/2 of monthly salary. 5 is 1 monthly salary and 3 is 1/4 of monthly salary. Our compensations are on market, so we ended up better compensated even after grade "3".

Two 5's in a row is an occasion to talk about promotion. Two 3's is a reason to talk about leaving the company.

That's about it, the whole process takes about two weeks, most of the time in a grade calibration process.

Re: Ask HN: What does performance management look like at your company?

#153

Post by howmayiannoyyou »

forgotthepasswd wrote: post #82
howmayiannoyyou wrote: post #6

Slightly off center from your question, but: 1. Every Wednesday I Google Meet with my salespeople. We review the prior week's priority prospects, this week's, and then I ask them about clients not on the list that our BI system has identified as promising. An integration of internal systems, Slack & Zapier alerts me each day to anomalies (good and bad) with clients, inventory and systems. MixMax (shout out to Brad!)…

OT: Hello howmayiannoyyou, can I by any chance interview you for 10 min for feedback on a product I'm building? It looks to me that it fits part of the workflow you mentioned, and it would be useful to hear your perspective. My email is on my profile. Thanks!

Possibly. Email in my profile.

Re: Ask HN: What does performance management look like at your company?

#154

Post by howmayiannoyyou »

statictype wrote: post #144
howmayiannoyyou wrote: post #6

Slightly off center from your question, but: 1. Every Wednesday I Google Meet with my salespeople. We review the prior week's priority prospects, this week's, and then I ask them about clients not on the list that our BI system has identified as promising. An integration of internal systems, Slack & Zapier alerts me each day to anomalies (good and bad) with clients, inventory and systems. MixMax (shout out to Brad!)…

Are you the owner of the company? I'm curious about how you effectively context-switch between sales and code reviews and marketing. Do all of them report to you?

Yes. All report to me.

Rapid context switching is taxing and something I try to avoid. Some folks are better at switching than others and I guess I am one of those people. I do try to separate contexts by day or portion of day. I also have many years of experience with all this, so decision-making carries a low cognitive load for most problems.

Re: Ask HN: What does performance management look like at your company?

#155

Post by Aeolun »

Frankly, our personal performance goals are just copied straight from the department goals. Any attempt to make them a little sensible is met with a ‘just do what everyone else does’.

That said, when performance review time comes around, that also means that it doesn’t really mean anything. The important thing is how your manager feels about you, and the rest is a formality.

Re: Ask HN: What does performance management look like at your company?

#156

Post by forgotthepasswd »

howmayiannoyyou wrote: post #153
forgotthepasswd wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OT: Hello howmayiannoyyou, can I by any chance interview you for 10 min for feedback on a product I'm building? It looks to me that it fits part of the workflow you mentioned, and it would be useful to hear your perspective. My email is on my profile. Thanks!

Possibly. Email in my profile.

Thanks! I couldn't find it on your profile. Here's mine: forgot.hn@outlook.com

Some anonymous email exchanges would do, if you'd prefer that way.

Re: Ask HN: What does performance management look like at your company?

#157

Post by ghettoimp »

edgefield0 wrote: post #138
ghettoimp wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure -- once per year: - Write up self review. 1-2 pages to highlight what you worked on and accomplished, who you helped, why it matters. Score yourself on various dimensions of how good of a job you are doing (working with others, getting stuff done, etc.) - Nominate 3-4 people to give you peer reviews. Best to pick people who can speak to your work, ideally with some folks from outside your particular group, and i…

Thanks for this detail. Was there any goal setting at the start of the review period so you understood what you were going to be evaluated against?

The dimensions that you are scored on are fixed ahead of time and haven't changed in years.

The individual goals are set in this year's review, evaluated in next year's review.

Re: Ask HN: What does performance management look like at your company?

#158

Post by howmayiannoyyou »

forgotthepasswd wrote: post #156
howmayiannoyyou wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly. Email in my profile.

Thanks! I couldn't find it on your profile. Here's mine: forgot.hn@outlook.com Some anonymous email exchanges would do, if you'd prefer that way.

director@industrialintel.co

Re: Ask HN: What does performance management look like at your company?

#159

Post by brightball »

sharken wrote: post #148
chris11 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But companies doing SAFe can use developer velocity to help judge individual dev productivity. That can be surprising if you aren't aware of what story points are used for.

As someone who is again at a company doing SAFe, I am genuinely curious as to the relevance of story points. For estimation, hours is a good measure, even more so when there are external consultants that get paid by the hour. Developer velocity can be measured by tasks/features completed compared to the estimate. Could you elaborate on why story points are useful or perhaps point to some resources on the topic ?

This is a hot button for me also. Story points are a solid measure of complexity, but when it comes to estimates on a planned timeline over the next few weeks I want it in hours or days.

Otherwise, somebody ends up trying to convert story points into hours and that's not what it's there to measure.

I wrote extensively about this a couple of years ago before I found out about SAFe itself.

https://www.brightball.com/articles/reality-driven-developme...

Re: Ask HN: What does performance management look like at your company?

#160

Post by dimitar »

spaetzleesser wrote: post #133
edgefield0 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are your thoughts on 360 reviews? I've heard the process can be very devisive?

I want to do 360s on the managers two level up and higher. Because they are the real problem in my view. I hate snitching on my direct team members not knowing how the the feedback is used so I usually just praise them without much detail.

We are not a big shop so there are not many levels up but the managers, including myself also got 360 reviews.
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