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Just reading this brought back memories of working at LinkedIn, and why I'll never again work for a company who has institutional performance review processes.

Just reading this brought back memories of working at LinkedIn, and why I'll never again work for a company who has institutional performance review processes. That pretty much excludes all big tech companies and I'm perfectly fine with that. The cookie-cutter performance review process is impersonal and has absolutely nothing to do with helping people do their best work. In my case, I had a manager who simply didn't like me because I'm gay and used the performance review process, and eventually put me on an action plan and forced me to quit. Most of the big tech companies will put you on something called a PIP, which is a "Performance Improvement Plan". It basically means they are preparing to fire you, but they give you an option: quit now, and you can have some severance, or you could try and stay and complete the PIP, but still run the risk of being fired for any reason, and in that case, you get no severance. It's exactly what happened to me, and I decided it wasn't worth the stress to try and stay and fight it so I just quit. It was the most demoralizing experience ever, and really showed me that these processes are in place so managers can just get rid of people they don't want or like.

tomerv 10y ago
What's the alternative? I assume that you expect companies to promote/fire based on performance. How can you do that without a performance review process? My experience has been that the biggest factor is your direct manager. If your manager hates you, then you have a serious problem, because no matter what kind of process (or lack of process) your company has, they can get you fired. On the other hand, a good manager can help you do your best despite any existing "cookie-cutter" process.
- awesomerobot 10y ago
  From what I've seen the performance review process in large companies allows you to mask a personal vendetta as a performance issue (and you'll get away with it). Your manager can say "based on feedback everyone says you suck" and you can't really do a whole lot to look into it. You don't know where the feedback is coming from, or if it's even valid. At a smaller company a manager seems more responsible to look at performance democratically. So if they have a personal vendetta and they fired someone for it, it's much easier for other employees and other managers to see what's going on and call it out (so they might not act on it to begin with). Of course that's not universal, sometimes at a small company you might have one person with consolidated power so it doesn't really matter (and can be much worse). And of course, at a smaller company peer pressure can keep issues under wraps because you're worried about everyone knowing that you're the one bringing it up. So yeah, a performance review process needs to exist at larger companies because it makes sense logistically... but criticism of that process doesn't mean it should be thrown out entirely, it just welcomes the discussion about how it can be improved. There are middle grounds between strict performance reviews and small-company democracy.
  - jfoster 10y ago
    I don't know how common it is, but some companies have a process whereby your peers supply the feedback, and a management team reviews it. Surely this must address the issue of a manager who doesn't like you, right?
    - junon 10y ago
      When you have 11,000+ employees, it's hard to have an objective team investigate every single review. Plus, how can this objective team, with little to no context of daily interactions, assess whether or not feedback is "legitimate" or dripping in disdain?
    - __derek__ 10y ago
      Yes, that's called 360 feedback. It suffers from some intrinsic drawbacks, though. First, nobody has an incentive to provide negative feedback except for serious cases (i.e. you cannot work with this person) or for political reasons. It's a prisoners dilemma with indefinite iterations, so each player's incentive is to provide positive feedback. Second, in my experience, it's only reviewed by one person rather than by a management team, which opens it up to an array of biases on the manager's part. If a manager thinks that someone is a great team-player, and a reviewer says that that person is a petty tyrant, they're likely to doubt the reviewer's motives rather than updating their beliefs.
    - awesomerobot 10y ago
      Yes, and there are some problems with that system as outlined by others — I've also seen instances where the system was really only half-implemented: Peers supply the feedback, but one manager has the time/resources to review it... so basically they can interpret it however they decide.
- bitL 10y ago
  The biggest problem for companies IMO is that the better but not much visible a person is, the bigger competitor to their own boss they become. If they produce top results and already got visibility, they are safe. If they produce top results but aren't visible, they are the prime target of their own managers, as they are just a little luck away from ascending over them.
- yuhong 10y ago
  I think the idea is just fundamentally flawed.
- int_19h 10y ago
  You do it by letting managers decide based on perceived performance, and trusting in their assessments. If the biggest factor is your direct manager in either system (which I agree with), we might as well stop pretending otherwise. This has the same result as the formal review system, but with a lot less overhead. More importantly, if you're denied promotion out of spite, you know that - they can't just say "well, it's not my fault, it's just how the process worked out". Yes, good managers can definitely help cut through the BS even with a process in place, it takes time and effort for them - time and effort that could be used on something more valuable. And sometimes, no amount of effort is sufficient to buck the process. From my experience, by the way, a formal competitive review system (buckets etc) makes it more important to have a good manager, because you absolutely need your manager to play the game well against other managers to yield good results for you, no matter how hard you work. If your manager is indifferent, or can't play the game well, they'll take away whatever was left on the table after the rest, and that's what you'll be stuck with.
hibikir 10y ago
That's not really about the review process, but about making one of the biggest mistakes you can make: After you know your manager doesn't like you, you didn't do everything in your power to either switch teams or change companies. Nothing good will come out of working for a manager that doesn't like you. You'll get worse reviews than you deserve and worse raises. You'll get less exposure to other parts of the company: Every second you spend in that situation is a second wasted. That said, I am absolutely not putting the blame on you here. A manager that doesn't like one of their reports should either get over it or do their best to ship them to a place where they'll be better appreciated. The tech industry is full of terrible managers though, and you are probably not going to make yours better. So the real rule when looking for new jobs is to avoid places where they hire first and do allocations later, as your picture of what the company is at interview time might be completely different than what you'll find on day one.
- deleted 10y ago
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- IndianAstronaut 10y ago
  >So the real rule when looking for new jobs is to avoid places where they hire first and do allocations later This is an issue with big banks like Capital One. The management culture is absolutely awful there and they hold a tremendous amount of power and of course abuse that power as well as abuse the workers.
  - del82 10y ago
    Just to add another view here: I'm currently a Data Scientist at Capital One and enjoy it quite a bit. I've found management to be open, supportive, and invested in my and my coworkers' success and development. They also allow and encourage people to change teams within the company, so if you find yourself in a situation that's not working out, you can move to another team. I've also not seen anybody leave the company on bad terms. Of course I'm sure that happens, and I'm sure there are bad managers here as everywhere. I'm sorry that you had such a negative experience.
zby 10y ago
Your problem was a manager that did not like you not the performance review process. In a small company without impersonal processes that can be only worse (or maybe better because you'd be fired earlier - fail fast after all - but in the big company you could leave once you learned the fact about your manager on your own).
twblalock 10y ago
If your manager does not like you, he does not need a formal review process to screw you over. In fact, without a formal review process, it would be even easier to screw you over, because there won't be any paper trail at all.
- shepardrtc 10y ago
  You're absolutely right. In fact, the formal review process - even though it seems terrible - is actually giving you plenty of time to find another job.
- pyrophane 10y ago
  A formal review just covers the company's ass if you come back and claim that your firing was due to illegal discrimination. That is, afaik, 100% of the reason why PIPs even exist. They've decided they wan't fire you and now they need to assemble some compelling documentation that it's you, not them.
  - amyjess 10y ago
    A much bigger reason is to demoralize you and convince you that you deserve to be fired, so you won't even think about a lawsuit. PIPs aren't really good documentation of bad performance; in fact, a badly-written PIP can actually backfire on the company because the wording is usually full of holes a good lawyer can drive a truck through. Basically instead of the company having proof you were a poor performer, you now have proof the company is lying to get you out the door. A PIP is a lawsuit deterrent, not an actual legal defense.
    - yuhong 10y ago
      Not that I like anti-discrimination or wrongful termination laws anyway, though I am willing to compromise. I suggest a compromise to only include certain kinds of jobs like manual labor under employment anti-discrimination laws, where workers are actually commodities that are measureable and interchangeable.
anotherhacker 10y ago
"I'll never again work for a company who has institutional performance review processes." Deming's 3rd deadly disease: Annual rating of performance. “It is purely a lottery” https://youtu.be/ehMAwIHGN0Y?t=298 https://youtu.be/ehMAwIHGN0Y?t=298
- koolba 10y ago
  > Deming's 3rd deadly disease: Annual rating of performance. “It is purely a lottery” More of a popularity contest than a lottery.
  - Asooka 10y ago
    From the perspective of someone who can't play the popularity contest, it's effectively a lottery and the odds are stacked against you.
pauleastlund 10y ago
Assuming your interpretation of your manager's motivations are correct, that's horrible and I'm sorry you had to go through it. With that said, would you have had any more protections at a smaller company? The process at those bigger companies, while excruciating for all companies, makes it harder for managers to fire, not easier.
arethuza 10y ago
I had one large company where performance was really one bit - ranking was on a scale of 1 to 5 and, as I was told, "nobody is a 5 and if you were a 1 or 2 you'd already have been sacked". So everyone was either a 3 (meeting expectations) or 4 (exceeding expectations in some areas). I did manage to persuade my line manager (the CIO) to give me a 5 on something but he then felt the need to mark me down somewhere else so I remained a 4 overall. Utterly pointless exercise.
- carlmcqueen 10y ago
  Very common system, I've worked for two companies and both has this exact system.
- pavel_lishin 10y ago
  Sounds like high school teachers who refuse to give a perfect 100 because "nobody is perfect".
- talmand 10y ago
  I worked at a company that was purchased and the new management switched us to this type of system. During my time previous the buyout I had practically doubled my salary through reviews. With the new system I was one of two who got the highest rating the system offered. My raise was less than the previous cost-of-living increase I received. Then they insisted I move to keep my job. Since the move meant going to a better job market I went along with it and then quit after a decent amount of time.
- exoromeo 10y ago
  I worked for a company with this same process. When I became middle management there, I was told I couldn't give all 5s even if I felt they were earned because "there's always room for improvement".
- r_smart 10y ago
  Ahh, the old 'Force reality to conform to my imperfect understanding of statistics' method. Never mind that in a small, unrepresentative sample it's entirely possible to have a team of people be all 5-star or all 1-star. Indeed, the goal is to build teams of 5-star people! Off-topic mini rant: This is something that pissed me off about college too. Grading on a curve just serves to mask flaws. Either the professor is shit, the course is shit, the test is shit or the students are shit. Shifting the goal posts so that the top score of 54 / 100 is now an A is just dishonest.
ArkyBeagle 10y ago
I got run through a PIP ( at a unnamed company full of Jack Welch devotees - srsly, ex GE ) because I was twice old enough to vote and wanted to stay technical. They were basically lining up a layoff. This worked out long term but it was inconvenient for several months. I'd gotten a LOT of work done; multiple high value contract awards, all on time and under budget, all that. No, our way was to overrun and do Difficulty Kabuki Theater. Why demoralization? It ain't you, it's them. There will be more people you don't want to work for than that you do want to work for anyway. I thin you'll find that the good people are bright lights in an ocean of darkness. Also and seriously - there are still people in tech who allow homophobia to affect their behavior to that extent? Yeesh.
electriclove 10y ago
If your manager pushed you out because you are gay, that is discriminatory. I'm truly sorry to hear that and I hope something is done at LinkedIn so that environment is changed. However, there are usually two sides to a story. I hope you are also considering the possibility that it had to do with your work, your work ethic, your ability to work with others, your ability to take direction, etc. Speaking as someone on the other side, I hate PIPs too as well as the institutional performance review processes. I wish I could get rid of low performers easily but it is pain.
junon 10y ago
iamleppert, are you me? I went through literally the exact same situation (same problem with the manager, same outcome, etc.), though instead of quitting I finished the pip and switched to a new team (I was already on another team by the second or third day of the pip as I was taking it to HR, which doesn't always work out - it did in this case). New team thought it was absolutely ridiculous I was on it, as did many members of the original team. I finished the pip just fine. I work at Large Transportation Company. Same shit over here. Once I was working with a manager that loved the fact I'm gay, I do great work, stress levels are down (or at least, the stress incurred is the 'fun' kind of stress), etc. I do agree the review process is ridiculous - I've never been in a company where they had them prior to this. We were told to choose 2-5 coworkers that were really involved in our day to days within the review period (6 months), and after doing so my manager went in and added the rest of the team (including coworkers I barely saw that I had one or two interactions with over the course of months), including other coworkers that had made very brash comments about my boyfriend/age or about gays in general. Manager used that shitty feedback from three out of the nine total employees that reviewed me (that otherwise gave pretty glowing reviews) to initiate the pip. There was a whole bunch of other BS with the situation - e.g. a manager and another coworker joking about satanic rituals against us in our team HipChat room - that I really don't feel like going into detail about that just added insult to injury. What's worse, there has been no investigation into the matter much past asking the offending manager to "talk about things". Oh well.
amyjess 10y ago
I was once put on a PIP for political reasons by a vengeful boss. That day, I applied to what ended up being my next job, and I put in my notice the day before the PIP was set to end. It was a very small startup. Oddly enough, that boss and I get along really well outside of work, and I'd still gladly go out for drinks with him or something, but I will never work for him again.
- gnashville 10y ago
  > vengeful boss > that boss and I get along really well outside of work hm.
  - amyjess 10y ago
    When he's stressed, he gets very, very abusive and takes it out on his subordinates. He's screamed at me, and I've heard him screaming at my co-workers several offices over. He has no control over his temper. He's actually a better person drunk than he is sober. He's warm and friendly when he's drunk. Also, he gets irrationally angry when anyone calls out the terrible job done by his friend who he put in an architect position. One co-worker of mine at that company... he raised the issue and ended up being railroaded into quitting a couple of months later, and then I'd heard my boss slandering him behind his back a few times. It's been almost two years since I quit, and I still have painful flashbacks to the way he would yell at people. But he is fun to hang out with when there's no power differential involved and when he's wasted.
    - gnashville 10y ago
      brutal, glad you made it out when you did. The "bad as a human except when he's drunk" is pretty interesting, considering it usually works the other way around. Keep that shit at arm's length.
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tech_browser 10y ago
I had similar experience at VMware where my boss just didn't care enough about me. He never assigned me to any good projects, and prevented me from seeking opportunities in other teams, even if was a simple trial for a few months. Further, he was surrounded by his buddies from his previous work place and I always got the feeling that one needed to be in his clique to get any attention. Whenever I approached him for a different assignment he lectured me on how technology was just about sending data from point A to point B in the most efficient manner and he insisted that I focus on my current assignment. As time progressed, I noticed that engineers who hung out with him often and discussed interesting topics such as good school districts, real estate, investments, sales at frys electronics etc. were rewarded not just with better work but also promotions, some of them undeservedly. When I finally decided to quit there was not even a "thank you" from him or his minions for my hard work. There were several disgruntled employees in my org who never kissed his bottom and they were all treated with similar nonchalance.
yuhong 10y ago
I want to push to fix these problems.
st3v3r 10y ago
What companies have ever given you severance if you quit? I've never worked at a place where I'd get anything more than a "See ya!" if I quit.
- detaro 10y ago
  I think the argument was more "If they are likely going to fire me without severance, there is no gain in waiting it out, better quit first"
omouse 10y ago
I've been on a PIP before and they're 100% political. You're absolutely right that they're trying to fire you without immediately firing you. They'll probably also try and get you to sign extra legal documents. If you quit, you get shitty severance, if you are fired you get better severance.
pasbesoin 10y ago
Pay attention, if you are not familiar with this. A couple of decades in U.S. corporate life led me to conclude that such performance reviews are nothing more than paper/records generation to back up (legally, risk-reduction, etc.) whatever decision Management decides to make. They have little or nothing to do with actually performance management and improvement. Well, if you are "favored" by your management, maybe some productive training/coaching will be reflected in them. If you're lucking and have good immediate management. But this is stuff that would have happened, regardless. Performance reviews are an HR process. And any and all HR processes are about preserving the status quo. They have nothing to do with your personal well-being.

tomerv 10y ago

What's the alternative? I assume that you expect companies to promote/fire based on performance. How can you do that without a performance review process? My experience has been that the biggest factor is your direct manager. If your manager hates you, then you have a serious problem, because no matter what kind of process (or lack of process) your company has, they can get you fired. On the other hand, a good manager can help you do your best despite any existing "cookie-cutter" process.

awesomerobot 10y ago
From what I've seen the performance review process in large companies allows you to mask a personal vendetta as a performance issue (and you'll get away with it). Your manager can say "based on feedback everyone says you suck" and you can't really do a whole lot to look into it. You don't know where the feedback is coming from, or if it's even valid. At a smaller company a manager seems more responsible to look at performance democratically. So if they have a personal vendetta and they fired someone for it, it's much easier for other employees and other managers to see what's going on and call it out (so they might not act on it to begin with). Of course that's not universal, sometimes at a small company you might have one person with consolidated power so it doesn't really matter (and can be much worse). And of course, at a smaller company peer pressure can keep issues under wraps because you're worried about everyone knowing that you're the one bringing it up. So yeah, a performance review process needs to exist at larger companies because it makes sense logistically... but criticism of that process doesn't mean it should be thrown out entirely, it just welcomes the discussion about how it can be improved. There are middle grounds between strict performance reviews and small-company democracy.
- jfoster 10y ago
  I don't know how common it is, but some companies have a process whereby your peers supply the feedback, and a management team reviews it. Surely this must address the issue of a manager who doesn't like you, right?
  - junon 10y ago
    When you have 11,000+ employees, it's hard to have an objective team investigate every single review. Plus, how can this objective team, with little to no context of daily interactions, assess whether or not feedback is "legitimate" or dripping in disdain?
  - __derek__ 10y ago
    Yes, that's called 360 feedback. It suffers from some intrinsic drawbacks, though. First, nobody has an incentive to provide negative feedback except for serious cases (i.e. you cannot work with this person) or for political reasons. It's a prisoners dilemma with indefinite iterations, so each player's incentive is to provide positive feedback. Second, in my experience, it's only reviewed by one person rather than by a management team, which opens it up to an array of biases on the manager's part. If a manager thinks that someone is a great team-player, and a reviewer says that that person is a petty tyrant, they're likely to doubt the reviewer's motives rather than updating their beliefs.
  - awesomerobot 10y ago
    Yes, and there are some problems with that system as outlined by others — I've also seen instances where the system was really only half-implemented: Peers supply the feedback, but one manager has the time/resources to review it... so basically they can interpret it however they decide.
bitL 10y ago
The biggest problem for companies IMO is that the better but not much visible a person is, the bigger competitor to their own boss they become. If they produce top results and already got visibility, they are safe. If they produce top results but aren't visible, they are the prime target of their own managers, as they are just a little luck away from ascending over them.
yuhong 10y ago
I think the idea is just fundamentally flawed.
int_19h 10y ago
You do it by letting managers decide based on perceived performance, and trusting in their assessments. If the biggest factor is your direct manager in either system (which I agree with), we might as well stop pretending otherwise. This has the same result as the formal review system, but with a lot less overhead. More importantly, if you're denied promotion out of spite, you know that - they can't just say "well, it's not my fault, it's just how the process worked out". Yes, good managers can definitely help cut through the BS even with a process in place, it takes time and effort for them - time and effort that could be used on something more valuable. And sometimes, no amount of effort is sufficient to buck the process. From my experience, by the way, a formal competitive review system (buckets etc) makes it more important to have a good manager, because you absolutely need your manager to play the game well against other managers to yield good results for you, no matter how hard you work. If your manager is indifferent, or can't play the game well, they'll take away whatever was left on the table after the rest, and that's what you'll be stuck with.

hibikir 10y ago

That's not really about the review process, but about making one of the biggest mistakes you can make: After you know your manager doesn't like you, you didn't do everything in your power to either switch teams or change companies. Nothing good will come out of working for a manager that doesn't like you. You'll get worse reviews than you deserve and worse raises. You'll get less exposure to other parts of the company: Every second you spend in that situation is a second wasted. That said, I am absolutely not putting the blame on you here. A manager that doesn't like one of their reports should either get over it or do their best to ship them to a place where they'll be better appreciated. The tech industry is full of terrible managers though, and you are probably not going to make yours better. So the real rule when looking for new jobs is to avoid places where they hire first and do allocations later, as your picture of what the company is at interview time might be completely different than what you'll find on day one.

deleted 10y ago
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- deleted 10y ago
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IndianAstronaut 10y ago
>So the real rule when looking for new jobs is to avoid places where they hire first and do allocations later This is an issue with big banks like Capital One. The management culture is absolutely awful there and they hold a tremendous amount of power and of course abuse that power as well as abuse the workers.
- del82 10y ago
  Just to add another view here: I'm currently a Data Scientist at Capital One and enjoy it quite a bit. I've found management to be open, supportive, and invested in my and my coworkers' success and development. They also allow and encourage people to change teams within the company, so if you find yourself in a situation that's not working out, you can move to another team. I've also not seen anybody leave the company on bad terms. Of course I'm sure that happens, and I'm sure there are bad managers here as everywhere. I'm sorry that you had such a negative experience.

zby 10y ago

Your problem was a manager that did not like you not the performance review process. In a small company without impersonal processes that can be only worse (or maybe better because you'd be fired earlier - fail fast after all - but in the big company you could leave once you learned the fact about your manager on your own).

twblalock 10y ago

If your manager does not like you, he does not need a formal review process to screw you over. In fact, without a formal review process, it would be even easier to screw you over, because there won't be any paper trail at all.

shepardrtc 10y ago
You're absolutely right. In fact, the formal review process - even though it seems terrible - is actually giving you plenty of time to find another job.
pyrophane 10y ago
A formal review just covers the company's ass if you come back and claim that your firing was due to illegal discrimination. That is, afaik, 100% of the reason why PIPs even exist. They've decided they wan't fire you and now they need to assemble some compelling documentation that it's you, not them.
- amyjess 10y ago
  A much bigger reason is to demoralize you and convince you that you deserve to be fired, so you won't even think about a lawsuit. PIPs aren't really good documentation of bad performance; in fact, a badly-written PIP can actually backfire on the company because the wording is usually full of holes a good lawyer can drive a truck through. Basically instead of the company having proof you were a poor performer, you now have proof the company is lying to get you out the door. A PIP is a lawsuit deterrent, not an actual legal defense.
  - yuhong 10y ago
    Not that I like anti-discrimination or wrongful termination laws anyway, though I am willing to compromise. I suggest a compromise to only include certain kinds of jobs like manual labor under employment anti-discrimination laws, where workers are actually commodities that are measureable and interchangeable.

anotherhacker 10y ago

"I'll never again work for a company who has institutional performance review processes." Deming's 3rd deadly disease: Annual rating of performance. “It is purely a lottery” https://youtu.be/ehMAwIHGN0Y?t=298 https://youtu.be/ehMAwIHGN0Y?t=298

koolba 10y ago
> Deming's 3rd deadly disease: Annual rating of performance. “It is purely a lottery” More of a popularity contest than a lottery.
- Asooka 10y ago
  From the perspective of someone who can't play the popularity contest, it's effectively a lottery and the odds are stacked against you.

pauleastlund 10y ago

Assuming your interpretation of your manager's motivations are correct, that's horrible and I'm sorry you had to go through it. With that said, would you have had any more protections at a smaller company? The process at those bigger companies, while excruciating for all companies, makes it harder for managers to fire, not easier.

arethuza 10y ago

I had one large company where performance was really one bit - ranking was on a scale of 1 to 5 and, as I was told, "nobody is a 5 and if you were a 1 or 2 you'd already have been sacked". So everyone was either a 3 (meeting expectations) or 4 (exceeding expectations in some areas). I did manage to persuade my line manager (the CIO) to give me a 5 on something but he then felt the need to mark me down somewhere else so I remained a 4 overall. Utterly pointless exercise.

carlmcqueen 10y ago
Very common system, I've worked for two companies and both has this exact system.
pavel_lishin 10y ago
Sounds like high school teachers who refuse to give a perfect 100 because "nobody is perfect".
talmand 10y ago
I worked at a company that was purchased and the new management switched us to this type of system. During my time previous the buyout I had practically doubled my salary through reviews. With the new system I was one of two who got the highest rating the system offered. My raise was less than the previous cost-of-living increase I received. Then they insisted I move to keep my job. Since the move meant going to a better job market I went along with it and then quit after a decent amount of time.
exoromeo 10y ago
I worked for a company with this same process. When I became middle management there, I was told I couldn't give all 5s even if I felt they were earned because "there's always room for improvement".
r_smart 10y ago
Ahh, the old 'Force reality to conform to my imperfect understanding of statistics' method. Never mind that in a small, unrepresentative sample it's entirely possible to have a team of people be all 5-star or all 1-star. Indeed, the goal is to build teams of 5-star people! Off-topic mini rant: This is something that pissed me off about college too. Grading on a curve just serves to mask flaws. Either the professor is shit, the course is shit, the test is shit or the students are shit. Shifting the goal posts so that the top score of 54 / 100 is now an A is just dishonest.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago

I got run through a PIP ( at a unnamed company full of Jack Welch devotees - srsly, ex GE ) because I was twice old enough to vote and wanted to stay technical. They were basically lining up a layoff. This worked out long term but it was inconvenient for several months. I'd gotten a LOT of work done; multiple high value contract awards, all on time and under budget, all that. No, our way was to overrun and do Difficulty Kabuki Theater. Why demoralization? It ain't you, it's them. There will be more people you don't want to work for than that you do want to work for anyway. I thin you'll find that the good people are bright lights in an ocean of darkness. Also and seriously - there are still people in tech who allow homophobia to affect their behavior to that extent? Yeesh.

electriclove 10y ago

If your manager pushed you out because you are gay, that is discriminatory. I'm truly sorry to hear that and I hope something is done at LinkedIn so that environment is changed. However, there are usually two sides to a story. I hope you are also considering the possibility that it had to do with your work, your work ethic, your ability to work with others, your ability to take direction, etc. Speaking as someone on the other side, I hate PIPs too as well as the institutional performance review processes. I wish I could get rid of low performers easily but it is pain.

junon 10y ago

iamleppert, are you me? I went through literally the exact same situation (same problem with the manager, same outcome, etc.), though instead of quitting I finished the pip and switched to a new team (I was already on another team by the second or third day of the pip as I was taking it to HR, which doesn't always work out - it did in this case). New team thought it was absolutely ridiculous I was on it, as did many members of the original team. I finished the pip just fine. I work at Large Transportation Company. Same shit over here. Once I was working with a manager that loved the fact I'm gay, I do great work, stress levels are down (or at least, the stress incurred is the 'fun' kind of stress), etc. I do agree the review process is ridiculous - I've never been in a company where they had them prior to this. We were told to choose 2-5 coworkers that were really involved in our day to days within the review period (6 months), and after doing so my manager went in and added the rest of the team (including coworkers I barely saw that I had one or two interactions with over the course of months), including other coworkers that had made very brash comments about my boyfriend/age or about gays in general. Manager used that shitty feedback from three out of the nine total employees that reviewed me (that otherwise gave pretty glowing reviews) to initiate the pip. There was a whole bunch of other BS with the situation - e.g. a manager and another coworker joking about satanic rituals against us in our team HipChat room - that I really don't feel like going into detail about that just added insult to injury. What's worse, there has been no investigation into the matter much past asking the offending manager to "talk about things". Oh well.

amyjess 10y ago

I was once put on a PIP for political reasons by a vengeful boss. That day, I applied to what ended up being my next job, and I put in my notice the day before the PIP was set to end. It was a very small startup. Oddly enough, that boss and I get along really well outside of work, and I'd still gladly go out for drinks with him or something, but I will never work for him again.

gnashville 10y ago
> vengeful boss > that boss and I get along really well outside of work hm.
- amyjess 10y ago
  When he's stressed, he gets very, very abusive and takes it out on his subordinates. He's screamed at me, and I've heard him screaming at my co-workers several offices over. He has no control over his temper. He's actually a better person drunk than he is sober. He's warm and friendly when he's drunk. Also, he gets irrationally angry when anyone calls out the terrible job done by his friend who he put in an architect position. One co-worker of mine at that company... he raised the issue and ended up being railroaded into quitting a couple of months later, and then I'd heard my boss slandering him behind his back a few times. It's been almost two years since I quit, and I still have painful flashbacks to the way he would yell at people. But he is fun to hang out with when there's no power differential involved and when he's wasted.
  - gnashville 10y ago
    brutal, glad you made it out when you did. The "bad as a human except when he's drunk" is pretty interesting, considering it usually works the other way around. Keep that shit at arm's length.

deleted 10y ago

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tech_browser 10y ago

I had similar experience at VMware where my boss just didn't care enough about me. He never assigned me to any good projects, and prevented me from seeking opportunities in other teams, even if was a simple trial for a few months. Further, he was surrounded by his buddies from his previous work place and I always got the feeling that one needed to be in his clique to get any attention. Whenever I approached him for a different assignment he lectured me on how technology was just about sending data from point A to point B in the most efficient manner and he insisted that I focus on my current assignment. As time progressed, I noticed that engineers who hung out with him often and discussed interesting topics such as good school districts, real estate, investments, sales at frys electronics etc. were rewarded not just with better work but also promotions, some of them undeservedly. When I finally decided to quit there was not even a "thank you" from him or his minions for my hard work. There were several disgruntled employees in my org who never kissed his bottom and they were all treated with similar nonchalance.

yuhong 10y ago

I want to push to fix these problems.

st3v3r 10y ago

What companies have ever given you severance if you quit? I've never worked at a place where I'd get anything more than a "See ya!" if I quit.

detaro 10y ago
I think the argument was more "If they are likely going to fire me without severance, there is no gain in waiting it out, better quit first"

omouse 10y ago

I've been on a PIP before and they're 100% political. You're absolutely right that they're trying to fire you without immediately firing you. They'll probably also try and get you to sign extra legal documents. If you quit, you get shitty severance, if you are fired you get better severance.

pasbesoin 10y ago

Pay attention, if you are not familiar with this. A couple of decades in U.S. corporate life led me to conclude that such performance reviews are nothing more than paper/records generation to back up (legally, risk-reduction, etc.) whatever decision Management decides to make. They have little or nothing to do with actually performance management and improvement. Well, if you are "favored" by your management, maybe some productive training/coaching will be reflected in them. If you're lucking and have good immediate management. But this is stuff that would have happened, regardless. Performance reviews are an HR process. And any and all HR processes are about preserving the status quo. They have nothing to do with your personal well-being.