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Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

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Re: Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

#71

Post by emodendroket »

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.

I'd say that, in the professional world, most want to be part of a team because they want to trade the upside potential for stability and shorter, more predictable hours and a smaller, more defined scope of responsibility. You can't expect "change the world" passion from these people when they've traded that away as part of the bargain.

Re: Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

#72

Post by StaticRedux »

make3 wrote: post #31
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…

you essentially want someone who can read your mind

It's not about reading minds, it's about taking the initiative to make things better or get things done without specifically being told what to do.

And there is a big difference between people that can and people that can't.

If your significant other reminded you to go to the grocery store, would you get a general idea of what she wanted and go get a bunch of stuff you know y'all need, even if it isn't on the list? Or would you only get the exact things she wrote on the list and nothing else, even though if you applied some initiative you'd realize that she wanted to make pancakes and she forgot to put milk on the list so you go ahead and grab the milk also.

It seems obvious, but you'd be surprised how many people stick exactly to the list and don't take that initiative.

Re: Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

#73

Post by chc »

skj wrote: post #69
bitL wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> or keep being taken advantage of Presumably they're getting paid for their work.

That doesn't really make any difference. Literal indentured servants got paid for their work.

Re: Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

#75

Post by chatmasta »

typomatic wrote: post #52
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…

In fact, they're mostly meant as a way for HR to have a paper trail to fire people. That's the only real reason for them to exist, and any good that managers do with them is incidental.

Such a paper trail can be useful in more situations than just firing someone. For example, consider the values of performance reviews in aggregate.

I can think of many reasons why upper management may want to analyze aggregate trends of performance reviews throughout the company, broken down by team, department, manager etc. They can use those trends as data-driven feedback on policy and personnel changes. That is, they can answer questions like “how has our re-org affected overall performance YTD?” Or, “has changing our interviewing methods resulted in higher quality performance reviews of newer employee cohorts?”

Re: Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

#76

Post by ocdtrekkie »

I have yet to find a self-evaluation form that doesn't make me cringe and wait until the last possible minute to fill it out. I've said, entirely seriously, I would strongly consider waiving salary increases to avoid this process.

My boss generally has a pretty good idea how my work is going, the position I'm in means no word is good word anyways. A lot of times its hard to figure out how to answer a question in a way that doesn't read pointless or express my utter disdain for performance reviews.

Re: Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

#77

Post by exelius »

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…

No offense, but this is the kind of thinking that leads to workplace bias. Working styles like this tend to reinforce hiring single, young men who are otherwise unencumbered so they can work long hours and push the envelope of the job description. That leads to a lot of group think, and products that are built for a very small subset of users — so there is real business value in diversity.

Reviews are important for someone with whom you don’t share a lot of built in cultural cues. Your experience with this working style has been positive, because you were born and raised speaking the jargon. If they come from a different background, they may not actually know what is important for the company because they haven’t spent their whole life interpreting these cultural cues.

This is what we call a “blind spot” — you have had success with your working style, and start to assume it’s the only effective way to do the work. I promise you it is not, and as a manager you should be doing more to communicate needs/value opportunities to your direct reports. Your view of what those are may be different from theirs.

Re: Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

#78

Post by weliketocode »

bitL wrote: post #44
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 fri…

Yes, being liked is hugely important.

Performance reviews, in my experience, have been very heavily weighted towards politics over underlying performance.

Re: Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

#79

Post by john_moscow »

skj wrote: post #69
bitL wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> or keep being taken advantage of Presumably they're getting paid for their work.

Yes and no. Although you are getting your paycheck, it's extremely demotivating be the only person in a team who gives a damn about getting things done. It gets more demotivating with passive aggression from your coworkers that are afraid that your performance raises the bar for everyone. It gets even more demotivating to see others promoted behind your back because they were going to the bar with the boss while you were figuring out how to deliver that critical thing to the customers.

I have personally been in those shoes and had to learn the business skills the hard way. And I don't think I had any other choice aside from giving up and becoming just another employee who doesn't care.

Re: Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time

#80

Post by no_one_ever »

mattmanser wrote: post #10

One of my friends hated when they cancelled performance reviews at his company. Some people like getting told what they're doing right and wrong.

It is so frustrating to ask a manager "what could I be doing better or differently?" and they respond with "nothing...".
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