How was it? Did you get what you were expecting? Did you regret anything? What would you advise to first timers?
Ask HN: How was your first performance review?
1–10 of 43 posts
Re: Ask HN: How was your first performance review?
#2Most people are too nice in reviews. You probably won’t get better as a result.
Respect people who give it to you straight, even if it costs you the ego stroke of a promotion. Your career is a marathon, so your first performance review is like the first half mile - focus on your process, and getting better, rather than being ahead of the competition.
The only good performance reviews I’ve gotten are when I evaluated myself. But of course, those are laden with bias.
Re: Ask HN: How was your first performance review?
#3My favorite part was that the only negative marks I got was on leadership. My manager admit that I was not given any power or opportunity to demonstrate my leadership skills.
I got a raise, but ended up leaving 6 months later.
Re: Ask HN: How was your first performance review?
#4It takes me about 3 years of working closely with someone before I can give them useful feedback. And when I want to give someone feedback, I take them out for a walk or go get coffee with them and ask them if they're willing to take some feedback from me.
Don't expect too much from your official performance reviews, especially in terms of actionable feedback. However, sometimes reviews can teach you that the way others perceive your value to the team/company might be very different from your own beliefs of what you think you're good at.
Re: Ask HN: How was your first performance review?
#5Somehow I ended up getting a perfect score in every category, which in my company is not typical and I was given pretty much no feedback.
I'm confident my manager was scolded for the score he gave me by his boss or hr.
Ever since he's given me the most middle of the road scores . The only take away I've gotten from this experience is that performance reviews in my company are more political then actually reflective of your performance.
Re: Ask HN: How was your first performance review?
#6My favorite part was that the only negative marks I got was on leadership. My manager admit that I was not given any power or opportunity to demonstrate my leadership skills. I got a raise, but ended up leaving 6 months later.
> My manager admit that I was not given any power or opportunity to demonstrate my leadership skills.
You don't have to be given a leadership role to demonstrate leadership skills. Were you not involved in any conversations the entire time?
Re: Ask HN: How was your first performance review?
#7My company had just started doing performance reviews, as they had been growing a lot (generic small startup with unlimited vacation and all that) and it was That Time. So this was a quarterly performance review, but was my first after having worked there 1-2 years.
The system had six levels resembling standard deviations in a normal distribution, so ~2% at the extreme high and extreme low. In parallel, you pick one for yourself and describe why in text, and your manager picks one for you and describes why in text. Then some software simultaneously shares them between you, and you have a 1:1 to discuss things you didn't agree on, or that one of you brought up but not the other.
I rated myself as the highest level, because I thought I was the second-highest level and had learned that my opinions about myself are generally lower than others' opinions of me, so I decided to purposefully account for imposter syndrome. My manager rated me as the second-highest level and said that the only thing keeping me from the highest level was the amount of vacation I'd taken that quarter.
I'd taken 5 weeks off that quarter. It's a lot for a quarter, but it was also the only time I'd taken off the whole year, and 5 weeks was the "recommended" yearly amount. So I wasn't sure how to feel, and second-highest level didn't seem like something to complain about.
Still not sure how I feel five years later because I do see both sides and it's a hard problem to fairly solve. But I live a happy life and don't have any complaints, so I don't let it get to me. It's just a performance review, and you will look back in 10 years from a different job, city, and/or life situation wondering why you cared so much.
Re: Ask HN: How was your first performance review?
#8My company had just started doing performance reviews, as they had been growing a lot (generic small startup with unlimited vacation and all that) and it was That Time. So this was a quarterly performance review, but was my first after having worked there 1-2 years. The system had six levels resembling standard deviations in a normal distribution, so ~2% at the extreme high and extreme low. In parallel, you pick one…
If a company has an “unlimited” vacation policy, it’s totally off-limits to bring that up against you in a review. They could say that you didn’t get X work done or something, but with that kind of vacation policy — it’s what they specifically signed up for.
Re: Ask HN: How was your first performance review?
#9As a general rule it should be transparent to you what is evaluated how. Is it subjective feedback ("I have the feeling you could benefit from looking through your code before submitting to review."), is it some kind of arbitrary metric ("Your change requests take way more iterations than the average before being merged.") or is it some kind of pre-arranged evaluation scheme ("You scored only 3 out of 10 on the code quality.").
With that knowledge you can prepare a defense or proactive suggestions for improvement if you feel the need. It could also give you something to use as an argument for a raise.
Re: Ask HN: How was your first performance review?
#10My overall grade was 'Outstanding', but I joined in Feb, so had a good -5 months before I was reviewed. Apparently it's difficult to get this where I work.