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Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

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Re: Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

#311

Post by Melchizedek »

lskadf93idk wrote: post #262
adrianmonk wrote: post #129

Paraphrasing what a manager told me once: "If anything in your performance review is a surprise, then I have failed as a manager." Coaching is not a purpose of a performance review. The coaching and communication should be an ongoing process that happens before the review. Problems should be brought up early enough that you have a chance to change or improve before it gets to the point of being written in a review. I…

We have performance reviews not annually, but every few years. My last review, the head of our division got really angry with me and gave me a very negative, punitive review. What I am infuriated about is that never in that few years did I receive any negative feedback, and I tried to do exactly what our subdivision had decided as a group to do, and what the immediate superior had wanted. My last review was glowing,…

"Review" sounds official and somehow based on a methodology, but in reality it's just the subjective feelings of some dude. A dude that often has to pretend that he/she understands the technology, what is difficult or not, and who is doing good work.

As you have noticed, you can output the same quality of work and it can be seen as very good or not so good at different times, or with different people, because feelings.

Re: Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

#312

Post by tvanantwerp »

lskadf93idk wrote: post #262
adrianmonk wrote: post #129

Paraphrasing what a manager told me once: "If anything in your performance review is a surprise, then I have failed as a manager." Coaching is not a purpose of a performance review. The coaching and communication should be an ongoing process that happens before the review. Problems should be brought up early enough that you have a chance to change or improve before it gets to the point of being written in a review. I…

We have performance reviews not annually, but every few years. My last review, the head of our division got really angry with me and gave me a very negative, punitive review. What I am infuriated about is that never in that few years did I receive any negative feedback, and I tried to do exactly what our subdivision had decided as a group to do, and what the immediate superior had wanted. My last review was glowing,…

Same thing has happened to me before. I was in a funk about it for a while, but it gets easier--especially if you polish the 'ole resume and start looking for alternatives.

Re: Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

#313

Post by qz3 »

rrggrr wrote: 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…

It may be increasingly hard to find because employees see things differently now. It's a job market. My employer wants me to put in overtime and go out of my way to improve the company? Great, let's go. But I demand appropriate compensation.

I think that's a reasonable position. My company treats me as a human resource, I treat my company like my client who writes checks for the work I put in.

Re: Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

#314

Post by tootie »

slededit wrote: post #87
tootie wrote: post #58

I sorta agree. A lot of place do these very wrongly. I think goal-setting is a waste of time because project work usually sucks up all your bandwidth no matter what. Anonymous peer feedback can be very helpful. Really, you and your manager (or reports) should know what's going on pretty constantly and never been surprised by a year-end review. I think the formal processes are less about getting new information and mo…

I you don't make time for your long term goals your career is going to stall. If project work is really taking all your time then you need to push back.

Yeah, but if you have a personal goal of something like "implement some machine learning" and a year goes by where there's no applicable use case for machine learning, then you're SOL. It can be worthwhile to mention this as a personal goal, but if you make it a goal post for career advancement, you're likely to fail.

Re: Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

#315

Post by kamaal »

mythrwy wrote: post #290
scarface74 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Robert Greene's 48 Laws of Power. There are one or two that I feel are unethical (Law #7 in particular).

They should rename this "48 Laws Of Getting By In Mediocre to Poor Organizations". Poor managers are threatened by underlings smarter than themselves. Good managers seek people smarter than themselves then try to get the best out of them. Poor organizations are those where everyone tip toes around afraid to mention reality lest it offend someone. These are organizations on the path of decline. Growing organizations a…

>>Poor managers are threatened by underlings smarter than themselves.

That's law #1, "Never outshine the master."

>>Good managers seek people smarter than themselves then try to get the best out of them.

Fundamental laws of power say, Never hire anyone that could be become your boss.

>>Great organizations and teams don't have time or tolerance for much of the stuff in this doc, they are too busy doing.

No such organization exist. Power structures are an axiom of the very groups existence.

Re: Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

#316

Post by scarface74 »

mdip wrote: post #286
scarface74 wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I specified a bad environment - for you. Some people like large companies others like small companies where they can wear a lot of hats. Some people like structure others don’t. Some people like the “bro culture”. Sometimes it just the commute...

Completely agree - I hope my phrasing didn't come off as otherwise in my prior reply. :) The commute situation used to be pretty awful for me -- my first "real job" involved a 62 mile round-trip (for 7 of the 17 or so years I was there). My current job is "in the office" and involves a 35-40 minute one-way commute and it's really my only environment-related complaint. It was easily solved, though, through two things.…

I like to distinguish between a toxic environment - one where you are being constantly harrassed, bullied, demean, forced into doing things that are illegal or unethical, etc. and a "bad fit for you".

I would never suggest someone suck it up and deal with sexual harassment for the chance to learn new technology and build thier resume. But if you have to deal with a long commute, long hours, or the red tape of a large company for a little while to build your resume, that's a different story.

Having the one large well known company I worked at for 2.5 years opened a lot of doors for me. But now that I have choices, I wouldn't go near a large company unless I was desperate.

Re: Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

#317

Post by nojvek »

Melchizedek wrote: post #311
lskadf93idk wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have performance reviews not annually, but every few years. My last review, the head of our division got really angry with me and gave me a very negative, punitive review. What I am infuriated about is that never in that few years did I receive any negative feedback, and I tried to do exactly what our subdivision had decided as a group to do, and what the immediate superior had wanted. My last review was glowing,…

"Review" sounds official and somehow based on a methodology, but in reality it's just the subjective feelings of some dude. A dude that often has to pretend that he/she understands the technology, what is difficult or not, and who is doing good work. As you have noticed, you can output the same quality of work and it can be seen as very good or not so good at different times, or with different people, because feeling…

> because feelings

That is so true. Probably why people leave every couple of years. I hate performance reviews. They try to be objective and yet so many personal feelings involved.

Finding a good manager is hard. Someone who understands tech and gives frequent objective feedback. That’s really really hard.

Most managers I’ve seen go into Management because they don’t like coding. They then want to be far away from it. That creates problems because they don’t understand why things are constantly regressing. They blame it on their engineers and start handing out shitty reviews when the actual problem was there is just a metric ton of code debt that they don’t want to hear about.

The other thing is they like being people managers. All the way up to Group managers (managers of managers). They truly enjoy re-orging people around. I guess that’s how they feel important. But they forget it’s the product that matters. As the org gets bigger, less and less people actually give a shit about the product as a whole.

I have yet to find a manager that takes code debt and product seriously. I’m on my Manager #10.

If you are a manager, I kindly urge you to listen both to your customers and your engineers. Get a reverse performance review. The world will be happier.

Re: Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

#318

Post by mythrwy »

kamaal wrote: post #315
mythrwy wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should rename this "48 Laws Of Getting By In Mediocre to Poor Organizations". Poor managers are threatened by underlings smarter than themselves. Good managers seek people smarter than themselves then try to get the best out of them. Poor organizations are those where everyone tip toes around afraid to mention reality lest it offend someone. These are organizations on the path of decline. Growing organizations a…

>>Poor managers are threatened by underlings smarter than themselves. That's law #1, "Never outshine the master." >>Good managers seek people smarter than themselves then try to get the best out of them. Fundamental laws of power say, Never hire anyone that could be become your boss. >>Great organizations and teams don't have time or tolerance for much of the stuff in this doc, they are too busy doing. No such organi…

Sadly, not many organizations of this type do exist, you are correct, particularly I'd imagine, in some parts of the globe.

But on occasion, temporarily, teams and organizations like this do exist. I've worked in them. It's how stuff gets built initially before the game players take over.

Because these power structures are _not_ axioms of groups but rather symptoms of productive decay.

Re: Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

#319

Post by kamaal »

mdip wrote: post #285
GFischer wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any tips you can share on how you improved your political game?

My tip: Don't. I stick with three general rules: Don't ever complain. Don't complain about coworkers, the quality of work they do, their attitudes. That guy/gal who complains to you about everyone you work with is complaining about you to everyone else. When you do complain about others, people assume you're complaining about them, too. The only way to be a "safe person" is to avoid this reputation. Don't complain ab…

The redux version of your comment is "Don't show your emotions in front of others, but actively plan your moves in silence"

Re: Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

#320

Post by eropple »

robocat wrote: post #306
Mandatum wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even when someone came back with logical counterpoints I'd stick up for my opinion very aggressively. I hate this so much. I hate it even more, because it's mostly true that it works. YMMV, and I'm talking of non-technical organisations or organisation where tech is a cost-centre rather than value-add. Those who don't fully understand it (it being whatever technical disagreement or choice made), which is usually th…

Do you tell your clients before taking on work about your requirements, or is it first strike you're out?

I alternately contract and consult, and I wouldn't think it necessary to tell a client that, if they endorse yelling as interaction, I'm not sticking around. That's normal-people stuff--they should already know Because healthy environments don't do that.
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