10 ms·

Ask HN: What do you think of performance appraisal at your workplace?

88 points by amirathi 9y ago

What does the process looks like? What are the primary inputs? Do you use any tool to capture peer reviews? What's your take on the whole process?

pascalxus 9y ago
With the stack ranking system they got here, they make it unnecessarily stressfull. My boss and everyone else is so stressed out during appraisals week. And all this stress is sooo unnecessary.
- commandlinefan 9y ago
  I haven't been at the job I have long enough to have been through a performance appraisal yet, but every job I've had prior to this worked the same way: they demand that I set "goals" for myself early in the year and don't give me any specific guidance about what sort of goals they're looking for, so I put together a set of what I think are reasonable goals based on the priorities I'm aware of at the time (taking in to account that I know that new things will come up in the course of the year). Then my completely unqualified, self-serving, low-level middle manager looks at my goals, says, "these are bad goals", writes up a new, impossible set of goals based on the project-of-the-day (his goals, of course, are so vague that it would be impossible to ever say that he didn't reach them), requires that I agree to them, and then gives me a negative performance appraisal at the end of the period because I didn't achieve them (mostly because the priorities have completely changed in the last 12 months so that none of the ridiculous goals he made up for me make sense any more). But then, after my negative review, I get a standard cost of living increase, they keep me on, give me more responsibility, and then are genuinely shocked and disappointed when I leave for a better paying job.
cjg 9y ago
I'm all in favour of a regular informal discussion around what aspects of the job are being done well and what could be improved. But I suspect you are talking about something more formal, something tied to salary increases. I think such appraisals are damaging to the relationship between employer and employee. The only benefit is for the company in that they make it clear that you can't have maximum marks on everything (which is fair enough), but then tie that to salary increases. "Well, we would have given you a bigger pay rise, but you didn't get top marks on this particular skill." Or similarly, evidence to get rid of someone you wanted out.
- banned1 9y ago
  How could salary increases be determined then?
- stult 9y ago
  Yeah my firm really emphasizes the importance of feedback, but insists it happen via formal reviews which then drive compensation. Which is idiotic. You'll never get genuine feedback if you tie it to compensation because the feedback will be driven by how much the reviewer wants the reviewee to get a raise. So basically by how much they like the person. It's a stupid system that gets almost nothing right.
- 52-6F-62 9y ago
  This is how it works places where I've been in my career. Without getting into details, they have a few set scores and there isn't much of a range. Unless you get all top marks—no raise. If you receive less than average—no cost of living adjustment. Typically what you'll see is 2% increase a year if you're a moderate/good employee. It takes a special effort to not be, and it's basically impossible to be above that in their books, and especially in most roles. They also often tie specific job titles to salary grades, so there's a black box facing you in terms of what your manager is allowed to pay. Couple that with yearly culling of the fleet and you've got a pretty tough space to navigate if you just want to advance at your role. You either have to be promoted to receive a raise, or be hired in at a higher rate.
aesthetics1 9y ago
I work for the government (for now). We write our own performance evaluation annually (a simple Word document template), with a list of projects completed, and a list of systems that we maintain (and associated maintenance tasks). We also have a section for personal/professional development to keep track of training, education, and self-improvement. It is nice to reflect on what I have done over the past year. That being said, the performance review is basically a formality. We have 5 steps in each pay grade, and I have never seen someone miss a step after each year. Someone could be sitting at their desk reading their Kindle all day and still get their 5% jump every year. In addition to that, nearly 100% of promotions are based on tenure. You will probably go from a level 1 --> 2 --> 3 --> Senior every year, and supervisory/management positions are only opened upon the incumbent's retirement (to be filled typically by the most tenured person to apply, regardless of fit). It is not a good system. Lots of people stick around who should receive the boot, and the wrong people are placed in supervisory/management positions simply because they have been there for a while.
- wpasc 9y ago
  This story is the prototypical example of why I'm cynical about government and its ability to effectively use tax dollars. When people say that taxes should be raised, I would generally agree if the government agreed to match the the tax increase with an efficiency increase.
- T_D_K 9y ago
  Are you in a union? Your description sounds very similar to my father's experience in the USPS. If so, are the problems you describe related to the fact that it's a government job, or the fact that it's a union job?
- illegalsmile 9y ago
  I'm with a contractor to the government and it's much the same minus promotions. You write your review, you have a meeting with your manager, you are handed the standard COL raise that everyone receives and you repeat every year. I agree, it's not a good system. Those which should be promoted or fired aren't. Those which show initiative and intelligence are often worn down year after year eventually leading them to read their Kindle all day or finding a new job. There is little incentive to do anything other than the bare minimum here and I suspect that's the case for many of these types of workplaces.
handbanana 9y ago
Sadly, they don't exist where I work currently. There is just the occasional 1:1 which aren't very productive/helpful and are more shoot the shit vs performance appraisal in style
jfasi 9y ago
Downvote me if you want, but I work at Google and I can offer a counterpoint to the process presented in the article that blew up yesterday: https://mtlynch.io/why-i-quit-google/ https://mtlynch.io/why-i-quit-google/ As always, this is my single-sample personal view, so please don't mistake this for anything beyond that. It's true, we do place a lot of importance on complexity and impact, which are fuzzy metrics, potentially inconsistently defined, and can be subject to circumstance. Yes, engineers do suffer the temptation to game things by releasing their work prematurely and not committing themselves to supporting it. And yes, not all managers know how to set expectations appropriately, occasionally resulting in disappointment and confusion for their employees. However, that's the individual's perspective. Promotions serve the institution first, and the individual second, and I'd like to offer the institutional perspective. Promotion to senior engineer is a big freaking deal. Once you are Senior, you've effectively been given the keys to the kingdom. It's the industry equivalent of tenure. Want to transfer to a team? No problem, your manager knows they're going to get someone who's been through hell and is able to deliver. Want to join another company? Great, "Senior Engineer, Google" is an indisputable mark of quality, you'll at least get an interview. If there's one thing I've learned in my time here, it's that false positives are way more costly than false negatives. Hire someone who can't do the work? Enjoy six months of trying to grow them plus however long it takes to get them to leave and release their headcount. Promote someone who isn't indisputably good enough for the title? Enjoy watching them fail to meet expectations cycle after cycle, trying to grow them, only to watch them leave out of frustration a year later. Yeah, it kinda sucks as an individual contributor because proving yourself is difficult and subject to external forces. That's torture for the sort of ambitious overachievers that tend to be drawn to this company. However, the thing that makes your career growth difficult is the same thing that makes the work so challenging and the work environment so pleasant. Also, there are some recent developments the author didn't mention, and I presume he left after this was put into place. A lot of focus has been drawn away from the rank of Senior. On paper, things used to be "up or out" until Senior, even though that wasn't really applied in my experience. Now it's only "up or out" until L4, one promotion below Senior. Plus the Senior promotion process is getting streamlined somewhat, although time will tell how that plays out. EDIT: And then there's money. Managers have enough leeway that overachieving L4s can make almost as much as an L5, so it's not like the lack of a promotion is impoverishing you. EDIT EDIT: To give some more context on the process itself: For non-promo candidates, we do mutual reviews. You list the colleagues you'd like to review you and list the projects you've worked on and your contribution to them. Then everyone comments on their colleagues' assessments. Managers then get together and have a powwow in which they agree on who in their groups are giving exemplary performance at each level, and people are calibrated as above or below the models for their level. For promo candidates, the self-assessment is much more in-depth, and a committee of unrelated people get together and perform a similar assessment, except against a more abstract rubric describing expectations at each level.
ndh2 9y ago
There is none. Performance doesn't matter at all. It's weird.
delibes 9y ago
I'm the tech director/CTO/whatever in a team of 3 devs (me plus 2). We don't do 'performance appraisals'. We often do code reviews. I sometimes do pair programming. Once in a while I have a private chat about something specific that's not code related. And this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Abolishing-Performance-Appraisals-Backfire-Instead/dp/1576752003 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Abolishing-Performance-Appraisals-B...
- s73v3r_ 9y ago
  Code reviews are something that is completely separate, to me. They should not be considered in performance reviews, otherwise you lose a lot of their effectiveness (the one exception would be if someone was being toxic in their comments)
  - nojvek 9y ago
    Not doing code reviews I guess works for very small companies. Code reviews are more for blind spot checks. And everyone had blind spots in a large system.
    - UK-Al05 9y ago
      Everybody should do code review. But they should not be part of the performance review process.
sjg007 9y ago
360 (peer) reviews can be gamed so are pretty much useless or would be overly critical. Inputs are company goals and a self assessment of how your current work aligns with them. Your manager then provides review. Performance is a function of the business line. There is no carrot only stick. So I think promotions and good performance reviews are a function of how impactful your role is to some core business function. If you are not in a profit center then you have to justify how your work saves money overall. They also encourage maladaptive behavior among and across teams. Stack ranking is particularly bad and I don't think companies have found ways to measure performance without inducing competitiveness. Exceptions might be multi-functional teams but these are more akin to a sports team where the best players get playing time and they completely ignore the farm system.
maxk42 9y ago
The performance appraisal process at most workplaces, sadly, is nil. You have to be your own advocate. Been there a while? Time to take the boss aside and say something like "You know I've been here for " + time + " " + plural(time_units) + " now and I've learned a lot. I've accomplished " + " ".join(accomplishments) + " and I have a much greater understanding of the business' inner workings and the role I fill here. I think a raise of " + specific_amount_or_percentage + " would be appropriate." This triggers an in-depth review, which consists of the chain of command asking themselves "Do I like this guy?", "Can we afford it?", and "How much of a pain in the ass would it be if this person quit?" Repeat every 12 - 18 months.
matthewmacleod 9y ago
Each person with line-management responsibility seeks feedback about each of their reporting employees from three other people at the company who they work with – a cross-team mix. Typically three questions - what areas have they done well in, which areas do you feel they could develop further, and what is your overall experience working with them. This feedback is anonymised, reviewed in terms of personal goals identified at the previous review, and a new set of goals is generated for the next period during a review meeting with each team member. There are no objective metrics, and the focus is on helping employees to identify and improve any areas they want to work on, with peer feedback used as a tool to help identify those areas and understand if they are engaging in behaviour or practices that might be positive or negative without realising it. This works pretty well, tends to lead to constructive criticism that can be tied to actual steps to be taken to improve performance, and removes the pressure of having to work to an arbitrary metric.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
scarface74 9y ago
I've gotten to the point where I don't care. The difference between top performer and bottom performer has been usually around 3%. I appraise myself - have I learned new marketable skills? If so? I jump to another job that will pay the equivalent of 3 or 4 years of raises.
- wccrawford 9y ago
  Sadly, this is how our industry even if we're in the top employees. For a while, I was telling people that I worked at a place that didn't act like that... And then they started, too. Now, I just decide if I'm happy making what I'm making. If I'm ever not, I'll change jobs.
  - scarface74 9y ago
    I'm completely over working full time salaried jobs. I'm probably working my last full time job for awhile unless a company pays me way above market wages. I'm contract only. I get benefits through my wife's job so what's the point? Why shouldn't I get paid for every hour I work?
    - s73v3r_ 9y ago
      This is why I'm big in favor of Universal Health Care. I'd like to do that too, but I need the insurance. And I've not got a spouse that can help with that :(
    - maerF0x0 9y ago
      just to play devil's advocate. Why should you get paid for time at all? Why not only for value delivered? You dont pay the grocery store based on how long you're in the store or how long each item took to shelve. You pay for the value delivered (approximately the goods in your basket). So why should you get paid for hours that deliver no value? Or to make it a spectrum, why should you get paid a fixed rate for hours where you deliver less than the fixed rate of value?
      - 9y ago
lb1lf 9y ago
I am quite happy with the process at my current enployer, I just want to share the metric used at a former employer (only for a year, though, in fairness!) We were judged by the number of lines committed to our CVS. They realized that was probably not the best of ideas when a colleague and I checked in 1M lines of comments just prior to our review.
- ignoramous 9y ago
  Obligatory: http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Negative_2000_Lines_Of_Code.txt http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Negative_2000_Lin...
ahi 9y ago
I work in academia. Our performance review process is mostly a make-work scheme for HR. There are some forms for goal setting and reviewing how your goals/progress fit with organization goals (which are vague enough to be useless). In theory, HR reviews these forms, but that's doubtful because they don't have manpower or operational understanding to do it. It changes every couple years, but the outcome is basically a rating of below/meets/exceeds expectations. No one is ever fired, and no one is ever promoted based on these reviews (IT staff don't even have a career ladder to climb). The rating will determine if your annual raise is CPI or CPI +- 1% so it doesn't really affect salary either. The occasional market review which can bump you from lowest decile of market to lowest quartile of market dwarfs the effects of the review ratings. So it's basically pointless and most managers don't pretend otherwise.
badcodehere 9y ago
We just finished our first year of formal performance appraisals (self-review, review by manager, etc). The best thing I can say in favor of the current system is that the managers I know realize that it's a mess/work in progress. It seems like the poorly aligned official standards are being duly ignored for now. I'm not a fan of subjective evaluations, but they're better than completely random "objective" ones. We'll see how it goes in a year or two. How is it a mess? Line engineers and managers had opposing goals (maximizing bug counts fixed, minimizing bugs--and those are terrible metrics even without the mismatch), individuals had goals that had no relation to their work, or which they had no power to affect. Team leads had to give feedback, but there was zero structured discussion about standards: I had to ask a manager how to translate my evaluation of a developer into a numeric scale. My manager had to stack rank 5 people on a 1-5 scale. This was theoretically not just ranking "first" through "last", but ranking from "exceptional" through "unacceptable".
guilhas 9y ago
I like it. It is officially once a year, but reviewed quarterly. My dev manager never fail even if is to busy to say anything constructive. We both chose objectives, we scheduled the next appointment at the end of the current one. I basically have to talk about my performance and say what I think is good or bad with me, or managers.
shamzamblamb 9y ago
We've just moved from stack ranking to a coaching orientated "flag if there is an issue" system. Thank the gods. So much time is wasted in performance management; what counts is that people who are not contributing can be coached into success; or removed if they are really not suitable to the team (very rare - and the fault of the manager - me - who accepted them). Promotion is done competitively and on the basis of achievements, so high achievers have a chance to differentiate. What I think is : all employees must have goals for their year; those goals should lead to growth and development - project contribution is table stakes... just do your job! Issues that get in the way need to go to the goal register. Most (95%) people want to do their fair share and be good at their job. Some years they do a little worse because of health or family issues, some years they hit it out of the park. The 5% who don't want to do this are always a problem and need to be catered for separately. High performers can get promotions. Appraisals are to determine these two things and share information.
- inevitable2 9y ago
  "...all employees must have goals for their year..." In all seriousness, this type of appraisal process always confused me. What are some examples of measurable goals that a rank-and-file "Member of The Technical Staff" can come up with on their own, seeing as they likely don't have much choice re the projects they work on, the teams they are in, etc.?
bungie4 9y ago
Last month I was told I'd be docked a portion of my COLA because my time estimates were always longer than my actual work time. This was because management NEVER, EVER gives me anything close to a specification to estimate properly from. So, I tend over estimate. Looked at another way, I was docked because I consistently outperform estimated time to delivery, which means the company actually makes more money off my work because we charge our customers for development work. So, what do I think of performance appraisals at my work place? I'm actively looking for other work. I also believe that performance appraisals, for anything but bottom rung employees, are currently done one way only. They should be done from both perspectives. The managed employees reporting to the managers boss. This way, ineffectual middle managers can be disposed of.
- commandlinefan 9y ago
  Makes you wonder, too - why do we put up with this? I thought we were supposed to be hard to come by and "in demand". Why do we allow them to kick us in the teeth like they do?
  - bungie4 9y ago
    The issue in my case is that the opportunities are limited based on location. Workers in this town should be making MORE than average owing to lack of benefits that a big city has. Theirs a reason they pay as little as they do. The 'good' talent leaves for higher paying jobs elsewhere. It's a self perpetuating problem. I read an article just the other day about a group of IT workers who attempted to form a union - that didn't go well. I'd be all in.
- Manozco 9y ago
  What's the meaning of COLA ?
  - bungie4 9y ago
    Cost of Living Adjustment.
  - 9y ago
mbielski 9y ago
The entire process is a complete waste of time for all involved as it is not linked to anything. Not raises, not promotions... nothing. It's like the people in the adminisphere were told that they needed to do them to be considered a "real" company so last year we started having them shoved down our throats. This year the engineering team was told that we score too high and make the rest of the company look bad. Give me a bleeping break!
- commandlinefan 9y ago
  Joel Spolsky had an interesting (and, I think, accurate) take on the pointlessness of performance appraisals: the only possible outcomes are it can be neutral, or you can completely piss off the person you're appraising. If the appraisal is anything less than glowing, you're just going to demoralize the person you're reviewing: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/03/incentive-pay-considered-harmful/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/03/incentive-pay-cons...
  - mbielski 9y ago
    Yep, I completely agree about the accuracy. Last year it was neutral. This year it slipped down a notch.
gadders 9y ago
One of the best things about being a contractor in the UK is getting off the pointless appraisal treadmill.
nitwit005 9y ago
We are supposed to set annual goals/metrics, but don't know what we're doing 3 months out. This was also the case at previous company. Pointing out the task is impossible doesn't seem to bother management. Success Factors seems to make half its income from this sort of thing, so I assume it's trendy. There is a process managers are supposed to follow for promotions, which is good on paper, but it's pretty clear managers only do the paperwork steps of that and pick based on their own criteria. The one aspect of that that seems to function well is managers get nudged about people who haven't been promoted in a while. Usual funding issues with promotions, but I think that's true everywhere.
southphillyman 9y ago
Ultimately I think they are pointless at most companies since the raise/bonus pool is going to be defined by something out of your control. I have experienced mostly self defined objectives where the completion of those objectives are reviewed with a manger at EOY.
ashelmire 9y ago
We have some form that we and our direct supervisors fill out and discuss. Supposed to be quarterly, but we haven’t done it in a year. It has literally no effect on anything. There are no raises based on merit and you only get fired if you do something egregious or funding gets cut. We get cost of living increases. The perils of academia...
juanmirocks 9y ago
What about good-old just "you did awesome in last project, I want you to know this. Let's have a dinner/walk next time". Simple warm human communication beats all? systems
- commandlinefan 9y ago
  I think that, in most cases, the annual performance appraisal "dance" is a CYA for companies that might have to go back and justify the firing of a low performer. Unfortunately, some of the managers (especially the low-middle managers) haven't learned to read between the lines and recognize that the performance appraisal is actually just a formality and try to actually use it as a club to beat more performance out of people who are already overburdened.
- praneshp 9y ago
  I like to give my best on what I'm working on, but generally dislike "Let's have a dinner/walk next time". That's what I have family and friends for.
logfromblammo 9y ago
I have never gone through the same performance review process two years in a row. And despite all the tweaking and rejiggering, and employer changes, none have ever been able to capture a meaningful metric for performance. Nor have they ever resulted in a salary increase that meaningfully competes with moving on to another company. The only positive thing I can say about it is that it's less stressful than the interview process, which is my only reason for staying somewhere that I'm not particularly happy. The only meaningful self-appraisal is "can I make more money doing the same work for someone else?" And the only meaningful goals are "build my resume to make myself a more valuable employee for any company, not necessarily my current employer." It has always been a waste of time to require the employee's participation in the review process. We are perfectly capable of appraising ourselves, and when we do it, we are always doing it in the context of the whole job market, and not just one company. But no one is ever going to admit "my goal is to jump ship for your leading competitor within the next year and get 20% more pay for doing exactly the same work." We will happily tell the current employer "I plan to increase meaningless metric X by Y% of completely subjective measurement units this year." We might even put that on our resumes, and pretend it's not bullshit in an interview. It's pants-on-head stupid. Just hire managers that know how to assess the performance of their reports for whatever it is they specifically do, and trust them to do it to the best of their ability. The amount of cargo-culting used to prop up those who are completely incompetent to assemble a working team and keep it humming is ridiculous. Eventually, these companies are going to have to promote more tech workers into tech management, because they'll be the only ones that actually know what good tech work looks like. Slapping on the same performance appraisal process used by the sales department from the top-down just isn't going to get around that.
- commandlinefan 9y ago
  I worked for one company for 9 years, and had 13 different managers in that timeframe. Never once did the same person do my annual performance appraisal twice. The worst, though, and the one I'll never forget, was when they brought in a new guy in December to be my latest shiny new boss. Well, my daughter was born a month premature the next month, right during performance appraisal time. So I was in and out of the hospital dealing with the stress of a 3.5-pound baby in the neonatal intensive care unit when he insisted that I dial in, from the hospital, for my performance review. Of course, he didn't know anything about me (we'd met less than a month ago), but he gave me a scathingly critical appraisal anyway, just to make sure I knew who was calling the shots around here.
dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago
It's just a bureaucratic requirement few people care about. A kind of game: I need to pretend I care and my manager has to pretend likewise. We fill in the forms, shake hands, and repeat this each year.
purplezooey 9y ago
Part of the problem is that HR is a total afterthought at most tech companies. Just a few token people and the C-level who only cares about making the "100 best places to work" lists.

88 points by amirathi 9y ago

What does the process looks like? What are the primary inputs? Do you use any tool to capture peer reviews? What's your take on the whole process?

pascalxus 9y ago

With the stack ranking system they got here, they make it unnecessarily stressfull. My boss and everyone else is so stressed out during appraisals week. And all this stress is sooo unnecessary.

commandlinefan 9y ago
I haven't been at the job I have long enough to have been through a performance appraisal yet, but every job I've had prior to this worked the same way: they demand that I set "goals" for myself early in the year and don't give me any specific guidance about what sort of goals they're looking for, so I put together a set of what I think are reasonable goals based on the priorities I'm aware of at the time (taking in to account that I know that new things will come up in the course of the year). Then my completely unqualified, self-serving, low-level middle manager looks at my goals, says, "these are bad goals", writes up a new, impossible set of goals based on the project-of-the-day (his goals, of course, are so vague that it would be impossible to ever say that he didn't reach them), requires that I agree to them, and then gives me a negative performance appraisal at the end of the period because I didn't achieve them (mostly because the priorities have completely changed in the last 12 months so that none of the ridiculous goals he made up for me make sense any more). But then, after my negative review, I get a standard cost of living increase, they keep me on, give me more responsibility, and then are genuinely shocked and disappointed when I leave for a better paying job.

cjg 9y ago

I'm all in favour of a regular informal discussion around what aspects of the job are being done well and what could be improved. But I suspect you are talking about something more formal, something tied to salary increases. I think such appraisals are damaging to the relationship between employer and employee. The only benefit is for the company in that they make it clear that you can't have maximum marks on everything (which is fair enough), but then tie that to salary increases. "Well, we would have given you a bigger pay rise, but you didn't get top marks on this particular skill." Or similarly, evidence to get rid of someone you wanted out.

banned1 9y ago
How could salary increases be determined then?
stult 9y ago
Yeah my firm really emphasizes the importance of feedback, but insists it happen via formal reviews which then drive compensation. Which is idiotic. You'll never get genuine feedback if you tie it to compensation because the feedback will be driven by how much the reviewer wants the reviewee to get a raise. So basically by how much they like the person. It's a stupid system that gets almost nothing right.
52-6F-62 9y ago
This is how it works places where I've been in my career. Without getting into details, they have a few set scores and there isn't much of a range. Unless you get all top marks—no raise. If you receive less than average—no cost of living adjustment. Typically what you'll see is 2% increase a year if you're a moderate/good employee. It takes a special effort to not be, and it's basically impossible to be above that in their books, and especially in most roles. They also often tie specific job titles to salary grades, so there's a black box facing you in terms of what your manager is allowed to pay. Couple that with yearly culling of the fleet and you've got a pretty tough space to navigate if you just want to advance at your role. You either have to be promoted to receive a raise, or be hired in at a higher rate.

aesthetics1 9y ago

I work for the government (for now). We write our own performance evaluation annually (a simple Word document template), with a list of projects completed, and a list of systems that we maintain (and associated maintenance tasks). We also have a section for personal/professional development to keep track of training, education, and self-improvement. It is nice to reflect on what I have done over the past year. That being said, the performance review is basically a formality. We have 5 steps in each pay grade, and I have never seen someone miss a step after each year. Someone could be sitting at their desk reading their Kindle all day and still get their 5% jump every year. In addition to that, nearly 100% of promotions are based on tenure. You will probably go from a level 1 --> 2 --> 3 --> Senior every year, and supervisory/management positions are only opened upon the incumbent's retirement (to be filled typically by the most tenured person to apply, regardless of fit). It is not a good system. Lots of people stick around who should receive the boot, and the wrong people are placed in supervisory/management positions simply because they have been there for a while.

wpasc 9y ago
This story is the prototypical example of why I'm cynical about government and its ability to effectively use tax dollars. When people say that taxes should be raised, I would generally agree if the government agreed to match the the tax increase with an efficiency increase.
T_D_K 9y ago
Are you in a union? Your description sounds very similar to my father's experience in the USPS. If so, are the problems you describe related to the fact that it's a government job, or the fact that it's a union job?
illegalsmile 9y ago
I'm with a contractor to the government and it's much the same minus promotions. You write your review, you have a meeting with your manager, you are handed the standard COL raise that everyone receives and you repeat every year. I agree, it's not a good system. Those which should be promoted or fired aren't. Those which show initiative and intelligence are often worn down year after year eventually leading them to read their Kindle all day or finding a new job. There is little incentive to do anything other than the bare minimum here and I suspect that's the case for many of these types of workplaces.

handbanana 9y ago

Sadly, they don't exist where I work currently. There is just the occasional 1:1 which aren't very productive/helpful and are more shoot the shit vs performance appraisal in style

jfasi 9y ago

Downvote me if you want, but I work at Google and I can offer a counterpoint to the process presented in the article that blew up yesterday: https://mtlynch.io/why-i-quit-google/ https://mtlynch.io/why-i-quit-google/ As always, this is my single-sample personal view, so please don't mistake this for anything beyond that. It's true, we do place a lot of importance on complexity and impact, which are fuzzy metrics, potentially inconsistently defined, and can be subject to circumstance. Yes, engineers do suffer the temptation to game things by releasing their work prematurely and not committing themselves to supporting it. And yes, not all managers know how to set expectations appropriately, occasionally resulting in disappointment and confusion for their employees. However, that's the individual's perspective. Promotions serve the institution first, and the individual second, and I'd like to offer the institutional perspective. Promotion to senior engineer is a big freaking deal. Once you are Senior, you've effectively been given the keys to the kingdom. It's the industry equivalent of tenure. Want to transfer to a team? No problem, your manager knows they're going to get someone who's been through hell and is able to deliver. Want to join another company? Great, "Senior Engineer, Google" is an indisputable mark of quality, you'll at least get an interview. If there's one thing I've learned in my time here, it's that false positives are way more costly than false negatives. Hire someone who can't do the work? Enjoy six months of trying to grow them plus however long it takes to get them to leave and release their headcount. Promote someone who isn't indisputably good enough for the title? Enjoy watching them fail to meet expectations cycle after cycle, trying to grow them, only to watch them leave out of frustration a year later. Yeah, it kinda sucks as an individual contributor because proving yourself is difficult and subject to external forces. That's torture for the sort of ambitious overachievers that tend to be drawn to this company. However, the thing that makes your career growth difficult is the same thing that makes the work so challenging and the work environment so pleasant. Also, there are some recent developments the author didn't mention, and I presume he left after this was put into place. A lot of focus has been drawn away from the rank of Senior. On paper, things used to be "up or out" until Senior, even though that wasn't really applied in my experience. Now it's only "up or out" until L4, one promotion below Senior. Plus the Senior promotion process is getting streamlined somewhat, although time will tell how that plays out. EDIT: And then there's money. Managers have enough leeway that overachieving L4s can make almost as much as an L5, so it's not like the lack of a promotion is impoverishing you. EDIT EDIT: To give some more context on the process itself: For non-promo candidates, we do mutual reviews. You list the colleagues you'd like to review you and list the projects you've worked on and your contribution to them. Then everyone comments on their colleagues' assessments. Managers then get together and have a powwow in which they agree on who in their groups are giving exemplary performance at each level, and people are calibrated as above or below the models for their level. For promo candidates, the self-assessment is much more in-depth, and a committee of unrelated people get together and perform a similar assessment, except against a more abstract rubric describing expectations at each level.

ndh2 9y ago

There is none. Performance doesn't matter at all. It's weird.

delibes 9y ago

I'm the tech director/CTO/whatever in a team of 3 devs (me plus 2). We don't do 'performance appraisals'. We often do code reviews. I sometimes do pair programming. Once in a while I have a private chat about something specific that's not code related. And this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Abolishing-Performance-Appraisals-Backfire-Instead/dp/1576752003 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Abolishing-Performance-Appraisals-B...

s73v3r_ 9y ago
Code reviews are something that is completely separate, to me. They should not be considered in performance reviews, otherwise you lose a lot of their effectiveness (the one exception would be if someone was being toxic in their comments)
- nojvek 9y ago
  Not doing code reviews I guess works for very small companies. Code reviews are more for blind spot checks. And everyone had blind spots in a large system.
  - UK-Al05 9y ago
    Everybody should do code review. But they should not be part of the performance review process.

sjg007 9y ago

360 (peer) reviews can be gamed so are pretty much useless or would be overly critical. Inputs are company goals and a self assessment of how your current work aligns with them. Your manager then provides review. Performance is a function of the business line. There is no carrot only stick. So I think promotions and good performance reviews are a function of how impactful your role is to some core business function. If you are not in a profit center then you have to justify how your work saves money overall. They also encourage maladaptive behavior among and across teams. Stack ranking is particularly bad and I don't think companies have found ways to measure performance without inducing competitiveness. Exceptions might be multi-functional teams but these are more akin to a sports team where the best players get playing time and they completely ignore the farm system.

maxk42 9y ago

The performance appraisal process at most workplaces, sadly, is nil. You have to be your own advocate. Been there a while? Time to take the boss aside and say something like "You know I've been here for " + time + " " + plural(time_units) + " now and I've learned a lot. I've accomplished " + " ".join(accomplishments) + " and I have a much greater understanding of the business' inner workings and the role I fill here. I think a raise of " + specific_amount_or_percentage + " would be appropriate." This triggers an in-depth review, which consists of the chain of command asking themselves "Do I like this guy?", "Can we afford it?", and "How much of a pain in the ass would it be if this person quit?" Repeat every 12 - 18 months.

matthewmacleod 9y ago

Each person with line-management responsibility seeks feedback about each of their reporting employees from three other people at the company who they work with – a cross-team mix. Typically three questions - what areas have they done well in, which areas do you feel they could develop further, and what is your overall experience working with them. This feedback is anonymised, reviewed in terms of personal goals identified at the previous review, and a new set of goals is generated for the next period during a review meeting with each team member. There are no objective metrics, and the focus is on helping employees to identify and improve any areas they want to work on, with peer feedback used as a tool to help identify those areas and understand if they are engaging in behaviour or practices that might be positive or negative without realising it. This works pretty well, tends to lead to constructive criticism that can be tied to actual steps to be taken to improve performance, and removes the pressure of having to work to an arbitrary metric.

deleted 9y ago

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scarface74 9y ago

I've gotten to the point where I don't care. The difference between top performer and bottom performer has been usually around 3%. I appraise myself - have I learned new marketable skills? If so? I jump to another job that will pay the equivalent of 3 or 4 years of raises.

wccrawford 9y ago
Sadly, this is how our industry even if we're in the top employees. For a while, I was telling people that I worked at a place that didn't act like that... And then they started, too. Now, I just decide if I'm happy making what I'm making. If I'm ever not, I'll change jobs.
- scarface74 9y ago
  I'm completely over working full time salaried jobs. I'm probably working my last full time job for awhile unless a company pays me way above market wages. I'm contract only. I get benefits through my wife's job so what's the point? Why shouldn't I get paid for every hour I work?
  - s73v3r_ 9y ago
    This is why I'm big in favor of Universal Health Care. I'd like to do that too, but I need the insurance. And I've not got a spouse that can help with that :(
  - maerF0x0 9y ago
    just to play devil's advocate. Why should you get paid for time at all? Why not only for value delivered? You dont pay the grocery store based on how long you're in the store or how long each item took to shelve. You pay for the value delivered (approximately the goods in your basket). So why should you get paid for hours that deliver no value? Or to make it a spectrum, why should you get paid a fixed rate for hours where you deliver less than the fixed rate of value?
    - 9y ago

lb1lf 9y ago

I am quite happy with the process at my current enployer, I just want to share the metric used at a former employer (only for a year, though, in fairness!) We were judged by the number of lines committed to our CVS. They realized that was probably not the best of ideas when a colleague and I checked in 1M lines of comments just prior to our review.

ignoramous 9y ago
Obligatory: http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Negative_2000_Lines_Of_Code.txt http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Negative_2000_Lin...

ahi 9y ago

I work in academia. Our performance review process is mostly a make-work scheme for HR. There are some forms for goal setting and reviewing how your goals/progress fit with organization goals (which are vague enough to be useless). In theory, HR reviews these forms, but that's doubtful because they don't have manpower or operational understanding to do it. It changes every couple years, but the outcome is basically a rating of below/meets/exceeds expectations. No one is ever fired, and no one is ever promoted based on these reviews (IT staff don't even have a career ladder to climb). The rating will determine if your annual raise is CPI or CPI +- 1% so it doesn't really affect salary either. The occasional market review which can bump you from lowest decile of market to lowest quartile of market dwarfs the effects of the review ratings. So it's basically pointless and most managers don't pretend otherwise.

badcodehere 9y ago

We just finished our first year of formal performance appraisals (self-review, review by manager, etc). The best thing I can say in favor of the current system is that the managers I know realize that it's a mess/work in progress. It seems like the poorly aligned official standards are being duly ignored for now. I'm not a fan of subjective evaluations, but they're better than completely random "objective" ones. We'll see how it goes in a year or two. How is it a mess? Line engineers and managers had opposing goals (maximizing bug counts fixed, minimizing bugs--and those are terrible metrics even without the mismatch), individuals had goals that had no relation to their work, or which they had no power to affect. Team leads had to give feedback, but there was zero structured discussion about standards: I had to ask a manager how to translate my evaluation of a developer into a numeric scale. My manager had to stack rank 5 people on a 1-5 scale. This was theoretically not just ranking "first" through "last", but ranking from "exceptional" through "unacceptable".

guilhas 9y ago

I like it. It is officially once a year, but reviewed quarterly. My dev manager never fail even if is to busy to say anything constructive. We both chose objectives, we scheduled the next appointment at the end of the current one. I basically have to talk about my performance and say what I think is good or bad with me, or managers.

shamzamblamb 9y ago

We've just moved from stack ranking to a coaching orientated "flag if there is an issue" system. Thank the gods. So much time is wasted in performance management; what counts is that people who are not contributing can be coached into success; or removed if they are really not suitable to the team (very rare - and the fault of the manager - me - who accepted them). Promotion is done competitively and on the basis of achievements, so high achievers have a chance to differentiate. What I think is : all employees must have goals for their year; those goals should lead to growth and development - project contribution is table stakes... just do your job! Issues that get in the way need to go to the goal register. Most (95%) people want to do their fair share and be good at their job. Some years they do a little worse because of health or family issues, some years they hit it out of the park. The 5% who don't want to do this are always a problem and need to be catered for separately. High performers can get promotions. Appraisals are to determine these two things and share information.

inevitable2 9y ago
"...all employees must have goals for their year..." In all seriousness, this type of appraisal process always confused me. What are some examples of measurable goals that a rank-and-file "Member of The Technical Staff" can come up with on their own, seeing as they likely don't have much choice re the projects they work on, the teams they are in, etc.?

bungie4 9y ago

Last month I was told I'd be docked a portion of my COLA because my time estimates were always longer than my actual work time. This was because management NEVER, EVER gives me anything close to a specification to estimate properly from. So, I tend over estimate. Looked at another way, I was docked because I consistently outperform estimated time to delivery, which means the company actually makes more money off my work because we charge our customers for development work. So, what do I think of performance appraisals at my work place? I'm actively looking for other work. I also believe that performance appraisals, for anything but bottom rung employees, are currently done one way only. They should be done from both perspectives. The managed employees reporting to the managers boss. This way, ineffectual middle managers can be disposed of.

commandlinefan 9y ago
Makes you wonder, too - why do we put up with this? I thought we were supposed to be hard to come by and "in demand". Why do we allow them to kick us in the teeth like they do?
- bungie4 9y ago
  The issue in my case is that the opportunities are limited based on location. Workers in this town should be making MORE than average owing to lack of benefits that a big city has. Theirs a reason they pay as little as they do. The 'good' talent leaves for higher paying jobs elsewhere. It's a self perpetuating problem. I read an article just the other day about a group of IT workers who attempted to form a union - that didn't go well. I'd be all in.
Manozco 9y ago
What's the meaning of COLA ?
- bungie4 9y ago
  Cost of Living Adjustment.
- 9y ago

mbielski 9y ago

The entire process is a complete waste of time for all involved as it is not linked to anything. Not raises, not promotions... nothing. It's like the people in the adminisphere were told that they needed to do them to be considered a "real" company so last year we started having them shoved down our throats. This year the engineering team was told that we score too high and make the rest of the company look bad. Give me a bleeping break!

commandlinefan 9y ago
Joel Spolsky had an interesting (and, I think, accurate) take on the pointlessness of performance appraisals: the only possible outcomes are it can be neutral, or you can completely piss off the person you're appraising. If the appraisal is anything less than glowing, you're just going to demoralize the person you're reviewing: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/03/incentive-pay-considered-harmful/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/03/incentive-pay-cons...
- mbielski 9y ago
  Yep, I completely agree about the accuracy. Last year it was neutral. This year it slipped down a notch.

gadders 9y ago

One of the best things about being a contractor in the UK is getting off the pointless appraisal treadmill.

nitwit005 9y ago

We are supposed to set annual goals/metrics, but don't know what we're doing 3 months out. This was also the case at previous company. Pointing out the task is impossible doesn't seem to bother management. Success Factors seems to make half its income from this sort of thing, so I assume it's trendy. There is a process managers are supposed to follow for promotions, which is good on paper, but it's pretty clear managers only do the paperwork steps of that and pick based on their own criteria. The one aspect of that that seems to function well is managers get nudged about people who haven't been promoted in a while. Usual funding issues with promotions, but I think that's true everywhere.

southphillyman 9y ago

Ultimately I think they are pointless at most companies since the raise/bonus pool is going to be defined by something out of your control. I have experienced mostly self defined objectives where the completion of those objectives are reviewed with a manger at EOY.

ashelmire 9y ago

We have some form that we and our direct supervisors fill out and discuss. Supposed to be quarterly, but we haven’t done it in a year. It has literally no effect on anything. There are no raises based on merit and you only get fired if you do something egregious or funding gets cut. We get cost of living increases. The perils of academia...

juanmirocks 9y ago

What about good-old just "you did awesome in last project, I want you to know this. Let's have a dinner/walk next time". Simple warm human communication beats all? systems

commandlinefan 9y ago
I think that, in most cases, the annual performance appraisal "dance" is a CYA for companies that might have to go back and justify the firing of a low performer. Unfortunately, some of the managers (especially the low-middle managers) haven't learned to read between the lines and recognize that the performance appraisal is actually just a formality and try to actually use it as a club to beat more performance out of people who are already overburdened.
praneshp 9y ago
I like to give my best on what I'm working on, but generally dislike "Let's have a dinner/walk next time". That's what I have family and friends for.

logfromblammo 9y ago

I have never gone through the same performance review process two years in a row. And despite all the tweaking and rejiggering, and employer changes, none have ever been able to capture a meaningful metric for performance. Nor have they ever resulted in a salary increase that meaningfully competes with moving on to another company. The only positive thing I can say about it is that it's less stressful than the interview process, which is my only reason for staying somewhere that I'm not particularly happy. The only meaningful self-appraisal is "can I make more money doing the same work for someone else?" And the only meaningful goals are "build my resume to make myself a more valuable employee for any company, not necessarily my current employer." It has always been a waste of time to require the employee's participation in the review process. We are perfectly capable of appraising ourselves, and when we do it, we are always doing it in the context of the whole job market, and not just one company. But no one is ever going to admit "my goal is to jump ship for your leading competitor within the next year and get 20% more pay for doing exactly the same work." We will happily tell the current employer "I plan to increase meaningless metric X by Y% of completely subjective measurement units this year." We might even put that on our resumes, and pretend it's not bullshit in an interview. It's pants-on-head stupid. Just hire managers that know how to assess the performance of their reports for whatever it is they specifically do, and trust them to do it to the best of their ability. The amount of cargo-culting used to prop up those who are completely incompetent to assemble a working team and keep it humming is ridiculous. Eventually, these companies are going to have to promote more tech workers into tech management, because they'll be the only ones that actually know what good tech work looks like. Slapping on the same performance appraisal process used by the sales department from the top-down just isn't going to get around that.

commandlinefan 9y ago
I worked for one company for 9 years, and had 13 different managers in that timeframe. Never once did the same person do my annual performance appraisal twice. The worst, though, and the one I'll never forget, was when they brought in a new guy in December to be my latest shiny new boss. Well, my daughter was born a month premature the next month, right during performance appraisal time. So I was in and out of the hospital dealing with the stress of a 3.5-pound baby in the neonatal intensive care unit when he insisted that I dial in, from the hospital, for my performance review. Of course, he didn't know anything about me (we'd met less than a month ago), but he gave me a scathingly critical appraisal anyway, just to make sure I knew who was calling the shots around here.

dvfjsdhgfv 9y ago

It's just a bureaucratic requirement few people care about. A kind of game: I need to pretend I care and my manager has to pretend likewise. We fill in the forms, shake hands, and repeat this each year.

purplezooey 9y ago

Part of the problem is that HR is a total afterthought at most tech companies. Just a few token people and the C-level who only cares about making the "100 best places to work" lists.