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Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

blog.bradfieldcs.com

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Re: Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

#41

Post by organsnyder »

daveslash wrote: post #12

I've been working professionally for over a decade, and it never occurred to me that performance reviews were meant to provide career advice. I thought they were meant to help you understand if your are meeting the expectations for your current capacity. For example, as an engineer at company X, is my development-time vs customer-support-time supposed to be 50/50, 80/20, 20/80, etc.. and how well am I aligning with t…

Ideally, that should be tracked in near-real-time—either through reporting from a time tracking or project management system, or maintained manually by management. If you're only getting that feedback on an annual basis, it's going to be tough for you to adapt.

Re: Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

#42

Post by kyriakos »

bitL wrote: post #37
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…

> 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.

Not everyone has the skills to run their own business. Some people prefer to be part of a team and not at the top of the pyramid. They get satisfaction by contributing.

Re: Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

#43

Post by Avshalom »

lacker wrote: post #18

What's the alternative, exactly? 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. Whether you call that communication a "performance review" or not seems like an irrelevant detail.

As an alternative to jedberg's "you know why not trying talking to them more than once a year/quarter". A fixed pay schedule: transparent, easy to plan around, easy to know if you should stay or go if you get an offer somewhere else.

If the company is giving individual bonuses they can and should be tied to tangible outcomes anyway or it's just going to be a source of even more office politicking (i mean it's inescapable either way but it's a more vs less thing).

Re: Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

#44

Post by bitL »

lacker wrote: post #18

What's the alternative, exactly? 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. Whether you call that communication a "performance review" or not seems like an irrelevant detail.

Most performance reviews are basically convoluted ways to say: "Do I like you?". Actual performance has miniscule effect on the rating, maybe only in a decision if one should be let go or not, but even excellent results won't save one if they aren't liked. I have seen many top performers single-handedly building branches of business being let go when they finished and somebody wanted to claim credit or push their friends once profit foundation was laid.

Re: Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

#45

Post by organsnyder »

retrac98 wrote: post #2

I’ve always found my performance reviews to be very useful, and people’s feedback extremely insightful. I think they can be brilliant, and they can be awful. It depends on the approach of the manager and their subordinate.

I rarely receive useful, actionable advice during the formal annual review. Critical feedback, especially, is lacking (the past two years, I've gotten "exceeds expectations" with no identified areas for improvement—really!?). The best feedback has come from colleagues, in the moment.

Re: Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

#46

Post by dfxm12 »

jmartrican wrote: post #25

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…

I seek criticism so that I can improve and like the positive feedback because it helps motivate.

Why do you need a formal, periodic review process for this? If you seek feedback, you're asking for it regularly, right? If you have feedback for someone, you just tell them, no?

This is what the dude was saying: We have teams of creative people who crave feedback, of people who want to learn and grow. Let’s not stifle them with bureaucracy.

Re: Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

#47

Post by bitL »

kyriakos wrote: post #42
bitL wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Not everyone has the skills to run their own business. Some people prefer to be part of a team and not at the top of the pyramid. They get satisfaction by contributing.

It's in their best interest to acquire those skills, or keep being taken advantage of. A binary choice - that's the world we are living in right now.

Re: Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

#50

Post by bretthellman »

To paraphrase from Google...

A "Shadow Belief" is an assumption we make without even knowing it's an assumption.

Thinking you can only hear peer feedback from your boss or during an annual formal review is a shadow belief.

You don't need your boss or some stupid process! Ask the people who work with who you respect and do it often.

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