4 ms·
Oh don't get me started. Fairly big (>1000 devs) company. Performance reviews are twice a year. In theory: before each cycle, an employee and a manager meet t
by throwaway9ac8 9y ago
Oh don't get me started.
Fairly big (>1000 devs) company. Performance reviews are twice a year.
In theory: before each cycle, an employee and a manager meet to discuss manager's expectations. If an employee "exceeds expectations" he or she gets a good rating. The rating is then approved and bonus and compensation is determined.
In practice: the rating is kind of determined by how employee's work contributed towards "important goals" of the company. This contributes to a deluge of half-assed work pushed into production just before the evaluation begins. Also it of course depends on performance of the other devs. The existence of the curve was never officially acknowledged but it is an open secret that it indeed exists.
The evaluation process is extremely opaque and shrouded in mystery. An employee (and his or her manager too) can never be certain that enough work was done for a particular rating as they are subject to correction at the highest levels of hierarchy (rumor has it that the CTO himself approves the final ratings of all developers above certain level). The process is also extremely long (easily exceeds 1.5 months) and taxing for line managers who have to defend their subordinates' ratings against cuts.
The meetings between an employee and a manager are very awkward. In theory the manager should discuss career prospects and deliver valuable feedback, but what is the point of delivering feedback on something that happened 5 months ago? Why would you wait for so long to do it? So everyone just goes through the motions during these meetings as quickly as possible.
The whole process is very inefficient. Frankly, it stinks. (Personally, I've fared fairly well so it is not an instance of sour grapes). My opinion it that the only reason it exists is because it provides the potential of almost authoritarian control and ample micromanagement opportunities.
I wonder, are my experience and feelings somehow special or is it a common thing in our industry?
- auxym 9y agoWow, I work in a big, non-software-focused, multinational company, in a mechanical engineer role. Your post describes our exact review process. What more, it seems managers always set the expectation high, or vague, that way everyone always get 3/5 (meets expectations). By now I'm almost 100% convinced that there is an official HR guideline that they are not allowed to give higher than 3/5 overall rating.
- jonnathanson 9y agoIn my experience at huge companies, getting a 4 or a 5 is largely a paper-trail formality that managers bestow on people they are grooming for promotion. It's a political gift and a retention mechanism. Everyone else always gets a 3, whether they've been kicking ass or competently coasting. Systems like these create strong disincentives to focus on job performance above and beyond a certain baseline, and strong incentives to focus on self-promotion, politics, and lobbying for sexy projects and allocations. Especially true when there is a forced curve or stack ranking involved. (Spoiler alert: there is almost always a curve, whether formally mandated by process, or informally expected by leadership.)
- humanrebar 9y ago"We only hire the best." "You can't all get 5's!"
- sage76 9y agoWow, this almost exactly like where I worked, except peer reviews were also there. People would put in little stuff like "he once made xyz mistake in coding" (on local machine mind you, not on staging and not at all on production). That would lead to the manager complaining about it 4 months after it happened and telling you your coding was not upto par. Result : does not meet expectations Promotions happened entirely on the visibility of your project. One team reported directly to the VP, so EVERYONE in the team got a raise/promotion. Among the rest, around 5 people were promoted. That team, for reference sake, had 7 people if I remember correctly.