8 ms·
Ask HN: How are you doing performance appraisal at your startup?
Are you with a job at a startup or currently running a startup.
Do you do any form of employee performance appraisal? (either once a year or multiple times a year).
What format (top-down, 360 Peer Review) and tools do you use to facilitate that? Has it been effective?
- pg_is_a_butt 10y agohow about not wasting your time, and trusting your team to actually START something. no no no... all you idiots want to do is stop everything. you're all idiots.
- waseems 10y agoWe just did a round, very simple: both of the founders sit down with each and every employee individually and ask a couple of questions: - what was the thing you did last year you have been most proud of - what is the thing you did last year you have been the least proud off - what did we do as a company that you think was great - what did we do as a company that you think was bad We got great feedback and engagement on these sessions. Now obviously this wont work if you have a decently sized head count but in our case it worked just fine over the course of a week or so.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- hnhg 10y agoI think what you're doing is a great exercise, culturally, but I wouldn't use it to assess anyone's performance objectively. What happens if you have a great employee who finds it difficult to articulate on these points? Would you have to hear through the grapevine that they were doing great things? What if you have someone who is a poor employee but can talk the talk?
- arethuza 10y agoThat's a good point - what you'd be evaluating there is how good people are at talking about their performance rather than their actual performance. A lot of excellent developers I've known (in fact I might say particularly the excellent ones) were rather modest and often rather hard on themselves.
- saycheese 10y agoFormal appraisals are a waste of resources in a startup. Focus on addressing issues as they come up as a team or let them go.
- cmdrfred 10y agoI work for a company that doesn't do performance reviews. Thus, there is little incentive to perform well as nobody will even notice. Everyone just works hard enough to keep their jobs.
- hnhg 10y agoMaybe the lack of performance reviews and lack of motivation are probably causatively linked to a wider, underlying issue?
- cmdrfred 10y agoI think it's management that thinks an attaboy can pay a mortgage.
- sshrinivasan 10y agoWow, thats just sad. If the only way employees at your company can get their performance noticed is in a yearly performance review, you need a better job.
- cmdrfred 10y agoIt will be noticed (you might get a "good job") just not rewarded in any monetary way as there is no process for that to happen (outside of finding a new job and demanding a raise to stay). The person who has the authority to give me a raise (and I suspect even he'd need approval to do that) lives in another state and I've spoken to him twice. I'm getting married in a few months. I'm going to look at other jobs when I get back from my honeymoon.
- dingaling 10y agoIf everyone "working hard enough to keep their jobs" isn't sufficient to enable the company to succeed then there's something wrong with the company.
- erichurkman 10y agoOn timing, I like our approach: initially 9 months after joining, then yearly after. A year after joining for your first salary review is too long. Our strongest tool for performance "reviews" are 1:1s. Weekly/bi-weekly with your direct manager, typically monthly (or more) with your business unit's engineering lead, and about bi-monthly with the head of engineering, though newer engineers have 1:1s with me more often at first [0]. Some of this is covered in our manager's faq [1], specifically about performance reviews, score cards, ranking, etc, and why we think it's utlimately harmful, as it benefits the insitution more than the unique employee. [0] This is tough to do as engineering groups scale, but critically important. [1] https://blog.esharesinc.com/a-managers-faq-35858a229f84#.tqbgbn7ag https://blog.esharesinc.com/a-managers-faq-35858a229f84#.tqb...
- FLGMwt 10y ago+1 to "A year after joining for your first salary review is too long." We have tick-tock reviews at the end of the year then mid year and people who start in the fall aren't eligible for the end of year. If we didn't have the mid year, I can't imagine the restlessness.
- hellogoodbyeeee 10y agoI joined my company on June 1st. At the end of the year, I was told that I performed well and would be getting the typical 2.8% raise, but divided in two because I had only been there six months.
- notjustanymike 10y ago* 360 Peer Reviews in winter and summer * 1-1 with manager and peer twice a month * 15five once a week as a mental health check for the employee It's not a perfect system, and it's ever evolving, but it the best I've experienced so far. The 360 system is great for highlighting projects and contributions a top-down review might miss, and also gives the coworkers a chance to call out areas for improvement. Employees can game the system by exchanging positive reviews, but that is easy to spot. An honest review with proper critical feedback is valuable to an employee's progression. The 1-1's work for general sanity checks, but require preparation from the manager to have an impact. Too many managers show up with without preparing and expect the employee to do all the talking. I use 1-1's to discuss career progression, establish SMART goals, and ensure that my report is happy with the work they're doing. 15five is still a relatively new process for us, but the perceived anonymity of a form allows employee's to more direct with their feedback. A report is a great indicator for what to discuss in a 1-1.
- tmlee 10y ago> The 360 system is great for highlighting projects and contributions a top-down review might miss, and also gives the coworkers a chance to call out areas for improvement. Employees can game the system by exchanging positive reviews, but that is easy to spot. An honest review with proper critical feedback is valuable to an employee's progression The 360 review as i understand can be quite a complex flow ie. reviewer nomination, anonymity, ensure everybody answers the review, releasing the questions. Are you using a software for this or straight up google forms or paper? With these 3 different flows, do you tend to get push backs from teams? How did you overcome that?
- ryandrake 10y agoI've seen a bunch of performance assessment systems, most of them being pretty bad. The worst ones tend to boil down to: "As your manager, here is my subjective view of your performance over the last N months." which essentially rewards high visibility and self promotion rather than actual performance. Second worst is: "As your manager, here is my subjective view of your performance plus 360 input from peers" which rewards your ability to join cliques and alliances. Sadly in almost all jobs I've ever had, it was one of the above. Sometimes the company would throw in a "self assessment," purpose unknown to me, which is likely not even read. The ideal (in my view) performance assessment would be: "Here are the numeric metrics we agreed N months ago to measure your performance by. The data (collected neutrally and transparently throughout those months) show you met metric 1, 2, and 4, exceeded 3 and 5. Based on the transparent and mutually agreed upon formula, your raise and bonus this year are X and Y". Measurable and objective: Clear goal posts for you to aim for throughout the year. I've never seen this anywhere. I understand some sales roles get something like this. VCs and shareholders don't come to shareholder meetings and say things like "CEO, I subjectively feel in my heart you are not doing a good job!" No, they look at the company's measurable, numeric results and judge by that. Why should it be any different with employees? Obviously the hard part is coming up with those metrics so you're rewarding the right behavior and performance, but I'd much rather see companies put effort into coming up with those metrics rather than crafting the world's best self-assessment question or wasting everyone's time on 360s.
- jerkstate 10y agoLike CEO pay, purely metrics driven performance reviews lead to gaming the metrics. Maybe you wouldn't do it, but how would you feel if your peers were getting better raises and bonuses than you because they file and close more do-nothing bugs, or ship more features because they wrote fewer tests.
- ryandrake 10y agoThis would be a problem with the choice of metrics, and I've already conceded that coming up with the right "un-gameable" metrics is a tough problem indeed.
- rwieruch 10y agoTL;DR: If you decide you need a process, keep it very simple. If your company is small, trust that you likely already have a pretty good idea of how any one person is contributing. The faster and larger you grow the less likely this is. Either way, it can often help to make these thoughts and conversations accessible somewhere, especially when you want to recognize someone for their achievements. In a 20 person company we focus only on 360 Feedback as needed throughout the year and set quarterly Objectives, while having regular 1:1 meetings. Through our own personal experience, we've learned to keep it as simple as possible. Using only three questions during 360's (What did you do well? What could you improve on? and Is there anything else you would like to mention?) - we show the author of the feedback, but many also keep the author anonymous. It's personal preference, there are pros and cons to both. Objectives make it easier to align with others and observe your team's progress over time. Regularly updating these saves a lot of energy when providing feedback to others if/when they're asked to provide more formal feedback. If feedback is actionable it's more likely to be useful and the smaller the company the more informal you should make the process. Small teams often already know what needs to improve intuitively, but it can help to record this somewhere so you remain aware of what you're working towards. Most important though is recognizing and celebrating the successes of your team. It feels good to be appreciated for the work you do and encourages you to do more. Disclaimer: I'm a developer for Small Improvements, a feedback tool. We work specifically with startups and medium-size businesses.
- garysieling 10y agoI don't think 360 feedback is ever really anonymous. I worked for a place that did that, and it was always obvious from the writing style who wrote each comment, since you typically also get emails from the same people.
- batbomb 10y agoA possible fix for that is to hire a writing service that rewrites all feedback.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- hitekker 10y agoThe study below has an adequate analysis and conclusion about politics in performance appraisals: https://www.tamu.edu/faculty/payne/PA/Longenecker%20et%20al.%201987.pdf https://www.tamu.edu/faculty/payne/PA/Longenecker%20et%20al.... Politics being "My appraisal is more to achieve an outcome in the self-interest of the person reviewing me, than it is to accurately assess my performance."
- tytrin 10y agoThank you! This study was very informative! It would seem that the Performance Review is less a measurement to be taken accurately, and more a Tool to be used to subtly move people. The study you cited provides a useful enumeration of why. And if you read carefully you can begin to see that the perception of the tool is likely to be incorrect. (that of a measurement to be taken accurately). To quote the end of the study: " The goal then is not to arbitrarily and ruthlessly try to eliminate politics but, instead, to effectively manage the role politics plays in employee appraisal."
- mcheshier 10y agoI really like the 5-word review described here: https://www.fastcompany.com/3019036/dialed/simple-direct-honest-personal-and-blunt-how-the-5-word-performance-review-works-wonde https://www.fastcompany.com/3019036/dialed/simple-direct-hon... Having been on both sides of the review process, this form of review is not as time-sucking for the manager and can elicit good conversation.
- gentleteblor 10y agoI've been on both ends of the performance appraisal spectrum; from ultra formal annual appraisals to nada. Each and every time, the biggest predictor of a successful outcome was how well I was prepared. If i could articulate in a concrete, detailed way how much value I'd added. It's not easy to do this. It takes time and effort to prepare. I used to search old emails, IMs, run user metrics, check old Microsoft Project charts, ask coworkers, reread all appraisals. [Shameless plug incoming] That's one of the reasons i built JobRudder [1] to help me keep track of all that stuff. One other constant among the decades worth of performance appraisals. They're very messy. Feelings, first impressions, unconscious biases, stereotypes, cliques, politics etc etc etc. It's not particularly data driven or even objective. Be prepared. [1] https://jobrudder.com https://jobrudder.com
- mattm 10y agoI started keeping a daily list of my accomplishments. I read about this technique somewhere. I haven't seen how it has worked out yet but I think it will help a lot with preparation. Interesting site. I signed up and will give it a try. Very well done landing page.
- gentleteblor 10y agoThank you for giving JobRudder a try (and for the kind words). I'm (obviously) a big believer in achievement/accomplishment tracking. I think it's the best thing anyone can do for their career, outside of the work itself (and doing good work is not enough these days). I had a streak of bad performance appraisals/interviews going before I started tracking my achievements. It's made a world of difference. Even if you end up not using JobRudder long term, I'm excited for you. I hope it's as helpful for you as it was for me and others. PS. If there's anything I can do to make JobRudder work better for you. Please don't hesitate to reach out (email in profile).
- philipDS 10y agoWe use our own tool internally (https://www.intuo.io/ https://www.intuo.io/). It works pretty well I'd say. What we do is basically: * Continuously give each other 360 feedback * Each manager does a monthly one-on-one with all of their teammembers * We have quarterly objectives, on a personal, team and company level (using OKRs) * Apart from that, we do continuous pulse surveys, measuring the happiness and engagement of our people