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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?

#91

Post by nickff »

nilkn wrote: post #89
cbanek wrote: post #24

It's all honestly completely useless. I've never had a useful performance review at any company ever. It's either I'm doing bad, and know it, and that is either my fault or due to reasons outside of my control. Or I'm doing well, and know it. Honestly, sometimes at places things were so bad that I felt I was doing terrible, but I was actually keeping the team going by pushing past a lot of tricky issues. Really I thi…

Here's my slightly unusual take on performance management as a manager. If I'm doing my job well, reviews should mostly feel like a formality. They shouldn't take much time from me or from my reports. If I'm doing my job poorly, one signal of that is that a review takes a lot of effort. If a performance review takes a lot of my time or that of the report receiving the review, it suggests there's been some considerabl…

Thank you for sharing your insight.

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

#92

Post by httpsterio »

cbanek wrote: post #24

It's all honestly completely useless. I've never had a useful performance review at any company ever. It's either I'm doing bad, and know it, and that is either my fault or due to reasons outside of my control. Or I'm doing well, and know it. Honestly, sometimes at places things were so bad that I felt I was doing terrible, but I was actually keeping the team going by pushing past a lot of tricky issues. Really I thi…

I don't think that my performance reviews have been a question of whether I'm doing a good job or not, it's always been more about if the employer agrees that I've spent my time wisely and do they appreciate what I'm doing.

In Finnish performance reviews roughly translate to "Development discussion" and in my experience that's exactly the case as well. I've spent most of the time in my reviews talking about my boss about how the company can support me better and how I can achieve personal goals (raise, titles etc) and what I'd need to do.

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

#93

Post by ghettoimp »

cbanek wrote: post #24

It's all honestly completely useless. I've never had a useful performance review at any company ever. It's either I'm doing bad, and know it, and that is either my fault or due to reasons outside of my control. Or I'm doing well, and know it. Honestly, sometimes at places things were so bad that I felt I was doing terrible, but I was actually keeping the team going by pushing past a lot of tricky issues. Really I thi…

I've been at $megacorp for a few years. We just completed yet another formal, annual review. It would be easy for me to look at the process and say it is needlessly structured, time consuming, and has never had any surprises.

That said, I once worked for many years at a small company with no formal review process at all. At this place, there was practically no communication from upper management about how they thought you were doing, whether they understood or valued your work, what they wanted you to focus on, etc. After years of this, I left feeling rather bitter and unappreciated.

For all its flaws, the review process at forces a conversation where you get to summarize to higher management what you have accomplished and why it is important. Peer-review at least gives you a chance to call out outstanding work from your co-workers. And the review itself at least gives you a venue to hear what management thinks of what you have done.

Anyway, I'd do a lot differently now, if I were back at the old place. But on the whole, I think the review process is actually a good thing.

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

#94

Post by jimnotgym »

HR people in the UK use 'performance management' as a euphemism for a kind of legal constructive dismissal.

1) Their attitude stinks but nothing specific that can be picked up in a disciplinary on its own

2) They have been in the job for a few years, and their old manager never recorded the behaviour problems

3) Their role is not redundant

So to get them out you meet regularly, set short term goals, and be really picky about not meeting them. The whole thing is designed to make the staff miserable so they leave or get sacked for missing the goals, whilst building up a substantial volume of paperwork supporting a legal defence at tribunal.

Or less cynically it allows the staff to understand what is expected of them, so they perform better. This never works IMHO

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

#95

Post by edgefield0 »

ghettoimp wrote: post #93
cbanek wrote: post #24

It's all honestly completely useless. I've never had a useful performance review at any company ever. It's either I'm doing bad, and know it, and that is either my fault or due to reasons outside of my control. Or I'm doing well, and know it. Honestly, sometimes at places things were so bad that I felt I was doing terrible, but I was actually keeping the team going by pushing past a lot of tricky issues. Really I thi…

I've been at $megacorp for a few years. We just completed yet another formal, annual review. It would be easy for me to look at the process and say it is needlessly structured, time consuming, and has never had any surprises. That said, I once worked for many years at a small company with no formal review process at all. At this place, there was practically no communication from upper management about how they though…

Thanks for this comment. Can you please share more details on how the process is structured at your company?

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

#96

Post by Decker87 »

nilkn wrote: post #89
cbanek wrote: post #24

It's all honestly completely useless. I've never had a useful performance review at any company ever. It's either I'm doing bad, and know it, and that is either my fault or due to reasons outside of my control. Or I'm doing well, and know it. Honestly, sometimes at places things were so bad that I felt I was doing terrible, but I was actually keeping the team going by pushing past a lot of tricky issues. Really I thi…

Here's my slightly unusual take on performance management as a manager. If I'm doing my job well, reviews should mostly feel like a formality. They shouldn't take much time from me or from my reports. If I'm doing my job poorly, one signal of that is that a review takes a lot of effort. If a performance review takes a lot of my time or that of the report receiving the review, it suggests there's been some considerabl…

Wow, how very unusual.

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

#98

Post by egberts1 »

funnybeam wrote: post #76
monkeydust wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have short 15min weeklies with my team members and then other frequent check-in points. By doing this the official review process becomes redundant i.e. no surprises in expectation mismatches - from my side and team this is a good thing but we waste time doing the official stuff.

Good work. This is called management - performance reviews are a sop to try and make up for poor management but are utterly useless and often counter productive (there’s no better incentive to start job hunting than having to prepare for a performance review) Competent managers don’t need to do performance reviews and bad managers are not helped by them

Yet the corporate legal eagles will insist on documentation as to bolster their case of such dismissal, if any.

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

#99

Post by edgefield0 »

vosper wrote: post #88

I've never worked anywhere that OKRs are actually taken seriously or followed through. They'll get rolled out with a big hype, people will fill them out with varying degrees of diligence and understanding of how OKRs are supposed to work. 3 months later they're already forgotten and out of date. Some managers will try to keep it going for their teams, because that's what they were told to do, but that'll peter out on…

I've had a similar experience with OKRs. The issue becomes how often to review and update? On the surface, OKRs seems like it would be a helpful tool but in practice it seems pretty cumbersome and only moderately useful to guide goal directed action.

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

#100

Post by edgefield0 »

dimitar wrote: post #68

I manage 30 people, but I review only 10 of them and the rest are reviewed by my team-leads. We use KPIs and 360 feedback. These are not perfect measures, and I acknowledge that often, but are good enough for some purposes. Performance reviews are easy for all sides if there is nothing new in them. If you either side is surprised during a performance review they are not talk to each other nearly enough during the rev…

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