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Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

blog.bradfieldcs.com

31–40 of 342 posts

Re: Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

#31
post #22

I was a young employee during a recession, and finding work was difficult. When I landed my first job I was I was grateful and focused on ways I might make my work contribute to the company's bottom line, by pushing the limits of my job description and tasks to ensure my role impacted revenue and value creation. I appreciated training and feedback, but forced myself to deliver results autonomously through self-teachi…

you essentially want someone who can read your mind

Re: Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

#33
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You still need some way to tell people whether they are promoted or how big a bonus they get and why it happened that way. If you've been giving them actionable feedback throughout the year, then it should be as simple as "here is your new salary and your new title" and no one should be surprised about anything.

When that works, it works well. When that fails (e.g. people disagree as to how they performed relative to their peers), it fails badly. Performance reviews (if done well) lower the risk of system breakdown. (Not to defend performance reviews explicitly--there may be a much better approach that accomplishes the same goal)

That's not necessarily true. When managers are doing a good job of regularly communicating with an employee and having critical conversations in regular 1:1s, nothing in a performance review should come as a surprise. If you've ever been surprised in a performance review, your manager failed in their responsibility--and you probably also failed yourself in that you didn't push for regular conversations.

Sure, those disagreements still happen. But, when things are transparent, there's very little risk of a "system breakdown" and a very high chance that a dissatisfied employee (who doesn't seem to be performing well in our scenario) will leave to make room for someone with more potential.

Edit: I just noticed the GP was jedberg; we both spent enough time at Netflix to see what each of us is describing work well in practice. :)

Re: Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

#35
post #22

I was a young employee during a recession, and finding work was difficult. When I landed my first job I was I was grateful and focused on ways I might make my work contribute to the company's bottom line, by pushing the limits of my job description and tasks to ensure my role impacted revenue and value creation. I appreciated training and feedback, but forced myself to deliver results autonomously through self-teachi…

How do you distinguish those people during interviews?

Are there any specific questions you ask?

Re: Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

#37
post #22

I was a young employee during a recession, and finding work was difficult. When I landed my first job I was I was grateful and focused on ways I might make my work contribute to the company's bottom line, by pushing the limits of my job description and tasks to ensure my role impacted revenue and value creation. I appreciated training and feedback, but forced myself to deliver results autonomously through self-teachi…

> I try to hire the same type of person. It is a profile increasingly hard to find.

Anyone with your profile should run their own business. It's unrealistic to expect somebody to work long hours, over-deliver for "maybe someday"-promises. People aren't as idealistic as they used to be because they were taken advantage of and learned from it.

Re: Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

#38

I disagree with this dudes blog. I love my reviews. I seek criticism so that I can improve and like the positive feedback because it helps motivate. But maybe I am an outlier. And as a person who has to give reviews, I want to tell people where they need to work on and praise their strengths. I tend to work with people from East Coast finance world, and they not too keen on the touchy feely story telling stuff. Its s…

Yes, it's good if it's done right. When it's done poorly it's not. Let's say you've independently identified a systemic problem, report it, fight to fix it, and fix it all with quantitative numbers to show a large, direct benefit to the bottom line. You'd think that would be a pretty big deal to a company. If you got an average review because, "well that's your job, isn't it?" it's fairly demotivating.

Re: Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

#39
You can talk to your managers about how you're doing any time you want. Almost any manager will give you feedback if you ask for it. But you won't know what they really think until you see your raise/bonus allocation.

A simple rule for employees: If your raise/bonus is bad, then they want you to quit. If it's good, then they want you to stay.

Re: Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

#40

I disagree with this dudes blog. I love my reviews. I seek criticism so that I can improve and like the positive feedback because it helps motivate. But maybe I am an outlier. And as a person who has to give reviews, I want to tell people where they need to work on and praise their strengths. I tend to work with people from East Coast finance world, and they not too keen on the touchy feely story telling stuff. Its s…

My concern (which I think is at least partially shared by this blogger) is the rigidness of formal annual reviews. A formal review should contain no surprises—if a formal review is the first time you've heard a certain piece of feedback (especially negative), then your management is shirking one of their primary responsibilities. Given an environment where feedback is frequent and useful, the formal annual review becomes a tool that only satisfies the larger enterprise machine—it's of little value to the manager or the employee.
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