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Can anyone summarize what the performance reviews will be replaced with? I admire the intentions, but I'm a little cautious about what comes after. Tried to re

Can anyone summarize what the performance reviews will be replaced with? I admire the intentions, but I'm a little cautious about what comes after. Tried to read the article, but got tired of the words/marketing slant, and the hbr link posted in a different comments wasn't working when I tried it.

HelloMcFly 11y ago
I can confidently say this: I'm highly knowledgeable of what several big-name companies are doing, and it's not as big of a difference as they market it to be. For one, there are still ratings behind the scenes so it's actually just making the process less transparent than before. For the other (one of which is named in the title of this post), they haven't figured out what they'll be doing instead, which means it may just be lipstick on a pig.
- hardwaresofton 11y ago
  This is precisely what I was afraid of -- and kind of expected, with the roster of companies that are touting this shift. Nothing against the companies mentioned (I wouldn't mind it if they bought my time/effort some day), but they're not necessarily known for moving fast/doing crazy HR innovation/etc. Replacing performance reviews is a huge endeavor, I didn't really get the feel from this article of the definitive thing they found that enabled them to do it without making everything worse
- steve-howard 11y ago
  Here's another company that overhauled its reviews not so long ago: http://blogs.seattletimes.com/microsoftpri0/2013/11/12/microsoft-gets-rid-of-stacking-ranking-review-system/ http://blogs.seattletimes.com/microsoftpri0/2013/11/12/micro... I have as little insight into the process as before. We get to do performance paperwork more often, but the process that turns that into money is as opaque as it ever was.
js8 11y ago
Remember that in corporate world, the change is always for the worse. That may seem like a wisecrack, but it's actually based on engineering maxim "don't change what works". Since in corporations most things work somehow, any change is bad. Except, of course, when it isn't. However, one should always understand the rationale for the original solution before making some change. This is actually impossible for mere mortals (with their limited brains, even if they have MBA) to do properly on company-wide scale for largish companies. From this follows that best course of action to be taken by upper management is to never initiate any change, lest the problem is not well understood. Unfortunately, such philosophy doesn't really lend much credence to upper management's existence, therefore it's unlikely to be adopted.
corpdrone86 11y ago
deloitte manager here. when appraising my underlings, im given a couple of statements, such as "I would always want this person on my projects" and, no joke, "If it were my own money, I would choose to give this person a bonus" and i rate the degree to which I agree with those statements. to the extent that they existed in the first place, objective performance ratings are out the door (other than hitting billables); now it's mostly about your personal feelings towards a given employee
- hardwaresofton 11y ago
  Yeah I'm not sure objective performance ratings ever really existed, mostly because there just isn't really a good way to measure performance on a personal level for programming/software engineering/most mind-driven tasks. Even still, in larger companies, when you have two employees that have gone above and beyond, but only have "funding" to move one of them up a "grade level" , it becomes a political decision very quickly, as usually the manager with the most power gets to promote their empmloyee of choice. I put quotes on those words because I find they're usually just corporate excuses to not pay someone what they could be worth elsewhere. That's totally the company's right by the way, not complaining about that, it is in their best interest to pay you as little as is necessary just as it is in your best interest to be paid as much as necessary. But what it did do was enable you to at least have something as a sticking point when it came to review time -- "My performance this year has definitely been not-bad, as demonstrated by my contributions to x, y, and z projects, when is my raise coming" is something I feel like you can at least say if there is a formal performance review process in place. Once there is no performance review process, it's not clear when you would even say that? Worst case I can only imagine a world where the yearly review (and with it the yearly expectation for higher pay) was no longer a thing, and the mentality that talking about pay/asking for more of it became/stayed somewhat taboo.
lmkg 11y ago
From what I read when Adobe changed their process, when they say "performance reviews" they mean "the traditional bureaucratic 12-month employee review cycle." Employees are still being reviewed. The big change is continuous (or at minimum monthly) feedback between boss and report on what the company expects from the employee, what the employee expects from the company, and how reality is meeting expectations for both parties.

HelloMcFly 11y ago

I can confidently say this: I'm highly knowledgeable of what several big-name companies are doing, and it's not as big of a difference as they market it to be. For one, there are still ratings behind the scenes so it's actually just making the process less transparent than before. For the other (one of which is named in the title of this post), they haven't figured out what they'll be doing instead, which means it may just be lipstick on a pig.

hardwaresofton 11y ago
This is precisely what I was afraid of -- and kind of expected, with the roster of companies that are touting this shift. Nothing against the companies mentioned (I wouldn't mind it if they bought my time/effort some day), but they're not necessarily known for moving fast/doing crazy HR innovation/etc. Replacing performance reviews is a huge endeavor, I didn't really get the feel from this article of the definitive thing they found that enabled them to do it without making everything worse
steve-howard 11y ago
Here's another company that overhauled its reviews not so long ago: http://blogs.seattletimes.com/microsoftpri0/2013/11/12/microsoft-gets-rid-of-stacking-ranking-review-system/ http://blogs.seattletimes.com/microsoftpri0/2013/11/12/micro... I have as little insight into the process as before. We get to do performance paperwork more often, but the process that turns that into money is as opaque as it ever was.

js8 11y ago

Remember that in corporate world, the change is always for the worse. That may seem like a wisecrack, but it's actually based on engineering maxim "don't change what works". Since in corporations most things work somehow, any change is bad. Except, of course, when it isn't. However, one should always understand the rationale for the original solution before making some change. This is actually impossible for mere mortals (with their limited brains, even if they have MBA) to do properly on company-wide scale for largish companies. From this follows that best course of action to be taken by upper management is to never initiate any change, lest the problem is not well understood. Unfortunately, such philosophy doesn't really lend much credence to upper management's existence, therefore it's unlikely to be adopted.

corpdrone86 11y ago

deloitte manager here. when appraising my underlings, im given a couple of statements, such as "I would always want this person on my projects" and, no joke, "If it were my own money, I would choose to give this person a bonus" and i rate the degree to which I agree with those statements. to the extent that they existed in the first place, objective performance ratings are out the door (other than hitting billables); now it's mostly about your personal feelings towards a given employee

hardwaresofton 11y ago
Yeah I'm not sure objective performance ratings ever really existed, mostly because there just isn't really a good way to measure performance on a personal level for programming/software engineering/most mind-driven tasks. Even still, in larger companies, when you have two employees that have gone above and beyond, but only have "funding" to move one of them up a "grade level" , it becomes a political decision very quickly, as usually the manager with the most power gets to promote their empmloyee of choice. I put quotes on those words because I find they're usually just corporate excuses to not pay someone what they could be worth elsewhere. That's totally the company's right by the way, not complaining about that, it is in their best interest to pay you as little as is necessary just as it is in your best interest to be paid as much as necessary. But what it did do was enable you to at least have something as a sticking point when it came to review time -- "My performance this year has definitely been not-bad, as demonstrated by my contributions to x, y, and z projects, when is my raise coming" is something I feel like you can at least say if there is a formal performance review process in place. Once there is no performance review process, it's not clear when you would even say that? Worst case I can only imagine a world where the yearly review (and with it the yearly expectation for higher pay) was no longer a thing, and the mentality that talking about pay/asking for more of it became/stayed somewhat taboo.

lmkg 11y ago

From what I read when Adobe changed their process, when they say "performance reviews" they mean "the traditional bureaucratic 12-month employee review cycle." Employees are still being reviewed. The big change is continuous (or at minimum monthly) feedback between boss and report on what the company expects from the employee, what the employee expects from the company, and how reality is meeting expectations for both parties.