On being the employee who “needs improvement”

the best is to send them written by email. In that way, it is clear and evident that the status updates were always sent.

If occasionally you have to do something for your family during hours you have to work, you at least owe your coworkers/manager a quick "I'll be offline for a few hours". He didn't do that.

There was no indication from the article that the company demanded unreasonable hours.

I wrote this on a thread off of the original blog post from Coraline. I mentioned the content of a book called "Corporate Confidential" in which a former HR professional talks about how corporations uses performance reviews as a means to legally fire someone because they cannot fire someone for the real reason. I said it was cynical though others viewed it otherwise.

This past week, our small team had brought in an executive coach that works with the material from Crucial Conversations. A wiki summary was circulated around. When I read it, I knew it applied to what was going on with our team as well as personal relationships. Crucial conversations are moments when opinions vary, the stakes are high, and emotions run strong. Being able to have crucial conversations and handle them well allows someone to be effective, influential, and helps out the team and community tremendously. The follow-on book is called Crucial Accountability, which teaches how to deal with people who breaks promises and violates expectations.

So I stand by what I said about the cynical view of "Corporate Confidential". Using performance reviews to legally fire someone might sound like a case of corporate greed and that is true to some extent. In addition, I think people are -not- having those crucial conversations. It is easier to plot a way to ease someone out than to have the crucial conversation about what is really going on. Taking that frame with Coraline's story: if seems to me neither Corolaine, nor the github manager was able to have crucial conversations. In some ways, Coraline admitted to it in her blog post.

On a larger scale: Github had had various controversies. I wonder how much of that came from not handling crucial conversations? People hold their silence until they can't take it any more and it goes from silence to violence. Very pubilcly.

These crucial conversations isn't just about managers being able to take to employees and holding them accountable. It is also about employees being able to talk to managers and holding them accountable too. It is about speaking your truth -- adding meaning into the shared pool -- while still having mutual respect and keeping a friend.

It is something I am deep diving now. I'm tired of the merry-go-rounds where nothing seems to move forward, both in my professional and personal relationships. The little bit I am grasping from this seems to be working.

>Also, if you have a smartphone and your company uses slack, there is no reason to be unreachable.

This is a silly attitude if you meant it very generally. Workplaces should set expectations - remote or otherwise. And people should be judged by them - remote or otherwise.

As an example, for my last job (non-remote), I told them during the interview that:

1. I will not be on any IM software.

2. I will check email only 3 times during the work day.

"Is that a problem?"

They said "No".

Just set clear expectations. If you have a remote worker who is often unavailable, but you did not have this conversation when he/she was hired, you are part of the problem.

(I had to loosen 1 above once we hired remote workers - it was unfair to them).

>But it would take a severe communications breakdown for that to get to the point where a weekly performance review was needed. Normally, you'd talk about how this all works before the person is even hired.

Frankly, I'm not surprised. Often these expectations are not explicitly set. And often (probably more often than not), managers will let it get to the point of "exploding" and suddenly you find yourself in such a meeting. Many managers are uncomfortable with these conversations. They are often feeling defensive going in, and to counter that they will wait until they have enough "data" to have the conversation. But by that point, the damage is done.

Severe communications breakdown? Perhaps. Rare? Not at all.