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Paraphrasing what a manager told me once: "If anything in your performance review is a surprise, then I have failed as a manager." Coaching is not a purpose of

Paraphrasing what a manager told me once: "If anything in your performance review is a surprise, then I have failed as a manager." Coaching is not a purpose of a performance review. The coaching and communication should be an ongoing process that happens before the review. Problems should be brought up early enough that you have a chance to change or improve before it gets to the point of being written in a review. If this doesn't happen, it's a sign that the manager is either terrible at communication, not even trying to coach and improve their employees, or even sabotaging you on purpose. Instead, the purpose of performance reviews is documentation. It can be for good or for bad, depending on the person's performance. It makes info available to others and preserves it in case you transfer departments, your manager leaves, etc. Like any other documentation, it creates overhead, but you have to weigh that against the value it provides, and IMHO that's what should determine whether you do it (and how often).

paulddraper 8y ago
Not only that, a performance review is a synthesis. You don't just staple your semester of class notes together and hand that in as your final paper. A good performance review will identify trends, make recommendations, and use examples while still separating the signal from the noise.
themarkn 8y ago
I usually say this to my direct reports- "we have to do the review, but I promise there won't be any surprises!" And then I focus the review on how I value their contribution, how they positively influence their coworkers and clients. And if we are in-progress on improving something, we set those things as written goals for the next year.
mdip 8y ago
> If anything in your performance review is a surprise, then I have failed as a manager. I hear that a lot and tend to agree with the statement. I even used to say it in the opposite "If I get a bad review, that's a signal that I need a new job, because I think I'm doing well and I must have a terrible manager if he'd wait a whole year to tell me otherwise". And though I'm going to counter it, it's not inaccurate -- an employee shouldn't land in a review expecting that they've been doing wonderfully only to find out that they've been stinking up the place (or vice-versa), but the best manager that I have ever had, Lou, did surprise me at my first review. I wrote about it in another comment on this post so I won't rehash it, but I came to understand this as one of the benefits of performance review time. Managers are rarely thinking about ways that a top-performing employee can improve, but everyone has something they can improve and a good manager will provide feedback to a staff member if there are areas that they, and others are noticing, that the employee may not be seeing. Because "top performers" don't require the attention that other staff might, a formal review may be the only time that a manager really takes the time to think about them in the context of "improvement". In addition, it's easier to bring up areas of improvement during this time, because it is set aside as one of the purposes of a formal review. In the couple of decades that I've been working, I've had two managers offer me anything in the way of "areas for improvement" -- both times were at reviews -- outside of a review it has never come up. So yes, it is obscene for a manager to wait until review time to bring up a year's worth of failures, but being surprised by a bit of negative feedback -- provided it's not "Fix this or your getting a pink-slip" kind of feedback, isn't necessarily a management failure. It was quite helpful to me and I count Lou among about 3 people who I feel honored to have known[0] because their impact, caring and advice was life-changing for me. [0] The other two were my HS programming teacher (who's class I enjoyed in Junior High), the late, great, Mr. Dzwonkiewicz who made me love writing software at a young age, and the woman who cured my social anxiety and made me enjoy public speaking -- the director of To Kill a Mockingbird that I performed in as a young teenager. Her name, though, escapes me. :)
- scarface74 8y ago
  If I get a bad review, that's a signal that I need a new job, because I think I'm doing well and I must have a terrible manager if he'd wait a whole year to tell me otherwise This exactly. I've had two and half performance improvement plans in my 20 years. 1. My performance and attitude really did suck. I had been at a company too long (9 years), raises were anemic and the bonuses had gotten cut over the years to the point that in year 9 I only made $7K more than I did in year 2. My skillset had atrophied because I was both dealing with personal issues and concentrating on other "working hobbies" where I was making extra money. It was a horrible cycle. The further behind I fell salary wise, the worse my attitude got. I finally left 10 years ago and learned a lot from that mistake. 2. The second time (two jobs later, the company I worked for after the first event went out of business) wasn't because of performance but because I stepped on the wrong coworkers toes - a team lead that wasn't my manager. I learned this time around. I played the political game long enough after the PIP to get a set of skills I wanted (about three months) and left and got another job making 25K more. I did learn some political skills from that experience. 3. I went to another company where I was hired by a manager who was told by his manager to bring people in who could "affect change". The old guard won over, my manager's manager was laid off and my manager was forced out three months later. I got a bad review from my new manager - as did everyone my manager had hired - and we all left within 3 months. This time I left for $13k more and got a job as a team lead. - I was now working for a company that wasn't a software company, I was brought in to create a modern software department and then we got acquired and the new edict was that they "didn't want to be a Software company". But they did need at least two major projects done that I was responsible for, but they would only let me hire contractors and the red tape to get anything done was ridiculous. After realizing I was going to be made the fall guy and getting a preview of what my review was going to be, I started looking for another job and had one in 10 days making $7K more with less official responsibility but more decision making ability and I'm able to get more done with no red tape (i.e. I'm admin for AWS) My official PIP at job 2 happened about four years ago. Since then and three jobs later, I'm making 40K more and I am a lot smarter politically now.
  - sizzle 8y ago
    Thanks for sharing your experience. I'm still early in my career so it helps to hear this.
Taniwha 8y ago
I think there's another reason for annual performance reviews ... to remind management that it's time for a COLA without it becoming a big deal
- organicmultiloc 8y ago
  Maybe you shouldn't frame your compensation in terms of a "COLA adjustment" although I'm quite sure your employer would prefer that meek mindset.
  - Taniwha 8y ago
    I've been in this biz for 40 years, I've had years of way above average salary jumps - I expect a COLA every year, not something unreasonable
    - bauerd 8y ago
      What does COLA mean? I've no clue and googling the term just brings up soft drinks and cocaine. I guess a fancy term for bonus/raise?
      - andyjohnson0 8y ago
        Cost Of Living Adjustment
        Taniwha 8y ago
        yes, exactly that - basically correcting for inflation
      - gizmo686 8y ago
        Cost of living adjustment?
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 8y ago
lquist 8y ago
An opposing viewpoint from Andy Grove's High Output Management: Let's talk about surprises. If you have discharged supervisory responsibilities adequately throughout the year, holding regular one- on-one meetings and providing guidance when needed, there should never be surprises at a performance, right? Wrong. When you are using the worksheet, sometimes you come up with a message that will startle you. So what do you do? You're faced with either delivering the message or not, but if the purpose of the review is to improve your subordinate's performance, you must deliver it. Preferably, a review should not contain any surprises, but if you uncover one, swallow hard and bring it up.
- mewse 8y ago
  I don't think that's an opposing viewpoint. If a manager discovers a long-standing issue whilst preparing for the performance review, then yes, they absolutely must "swallow hard and bring it up". But not having noticed or provided feedback about that issue at any point in the past is still a failure of management.
  - davidkclark 8y ago
    Hence the hard swallowing.
  - dbcurtis 8y ago
    I was a manager at Intel during the Grove era. The ranking & rating process of those days forced a team of 8 or so peer managers to look at the performance of all of their reports together. Having 7 other managers point out an issue with one of your reports tends to help you get calibrated. Is it a failure of management to be poorly calibrated about your own people? Yes, a common one.
- danek 8y ago
  The cost-benefit still doesn't make sense to me. He's talking about doing a very expensive & generally counter-productive activity in the off chance that you might uncover some insight about your employee. I usually tell people the first half of High Output Management is good, but to skip the second half...
lskadf93idk 8y ago
We have performance reviews not annually, but every few years. My last review, the head of our division got really angry with me and gave me a very negative, punitive review. What I am infuriated about is that never in that few years did I receive any negative feedback, and I tried to do exactly what our subdivision had decided as a group to do, and what the immediate superior had wanted. My last review was glowing, perfect. So I go from a perfect review to being treated like a failure, fireable, with no negative feedback in the interim. Imagine if you in your area had discussed things, come to consensus decisions, you were willing to do everything asked of you, and then four years later someone higher up singles you out and yells at you for not doing what you're supposed to etc. As if you've been getting feedback that whole time. The worst part of this is that I know someone in our area is close friends with this division head and basically complains about everyone except one person in our area. So now I have this negative review, as if I were just being lazy, even impaired in my duties, and not doing my part when the whole time I just thought I was doing what we were supposed to. It's depressing as hell to me, and also angering.
- mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
  It could have been a positioning move to justify firing down the road. I freelance now but when I went through 9-5 I found the key to positive outcomes was always tied to confidence. The confidence I tried to harness cane in a form of acting like I was the boss with nobody above me. I found that my own bosses saw this as a strength and never questioned my judgement. Even when someone came back with logical counterpoints I'd stick up for my opinion very aggressively. I can't imagine working in a place that yells at me - that would be the final nail in the coffin where I would that that person everything I think of them and their inaptitude to "manage". I guess that's why I no longer punch the clock.
  - Mandatum 8y ago
    > Even when someone came back with logical counterpoints I'd stick up for my opinion very aggressively. I hate this so much. I hate it even more, because it's mostly true that it works. YMMV, and I'm talking of non-technical organisations or organisation where tech is a cost-centre rather than value-add. Those who don't fully understand it (it being whatever technical disagreement or choice made), which is usually the majority, will side with you. The remainder are usually people who can see that the organisation is structured this way and either give up out of apathy or leave for greener pastures. If someone literally yells at me, I'm out. Notice in that day, usually within the hour. If the organisation is willing to allow that behaviour, it's usually toxic. If I'm on contract (which I always am now), my opinion within that organisation will no longer be respected. Notice of non-renewal immediately.
mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
Performance reviews sound so cringey, I don't know how people can subject themselves to such practices. I guess it's one of those legacy practices to allow people to move up the ladder.
- sosborn 8y ago
  Done right they are actually helpful for everyone involved, especially if everyone goes in with a growth mindset.
GordonS 8y ago
This doesn't really work in organisationa with a high manager turnover. Where I work, I've had 12 managers in 15 years, so each manager doesn't really know me, or the 'goodwill' I have within our organisation and with our customers. They really are a waste of time at some orgs.

paulddraper 8y ago

Not only that, a performance review is a synthesis. You don't just staple your semester of class notes together and hand that in as your final paper. A good performance review will identify trends, make recommendations, and use examples while still separating the signal from the noise.

themarkn 8y ago

I usually say this to my direct reports- "we have to do the review, but I promise there won't be any surprises!" And then I focus the review on how I value their contribution, how they positively influence their coworkers and clients. And if we are in-progress on improving something, we set those things as written goals for the next year.

mdip 8y ago

> If anything in your performance review is a surprise, then I have failed as a manager. I hear that a lot and tend to agree with the statement. I even used to say it in the opposite "If I get a bad review, that's a signal that I need a new job, because I think I'm doing well and I must have a terrible manager if he'd wait a whole year to tell me otherwise". And though I'm going to counter it, it's not inaccurate -- an employee shouldn't land in a review expecting that they've been doing wonderfully only to find out that they've been stinking up the place (or vice-versa), but the best manager that I have ever had, Lou, did surprise me at my first review. I wrote about it in another comment on this post so I won't rehash it, but I came to understand this as one of the benefits of performance review time. Managers are rarely thinking about ways that a top-performing employee can improve, but everyone has something they can improve and a good manager will provide feedback to a staff member if there are areas that they, and others are noticing, that the employee may not be seeing. Because "top performers" don't require the attention that other staff might, a formal review may be the only time that a manager really takes the time to think about them in the context of "improvement". In addition, it's easier to bring up areas of improvement during this time, because it is set aside as one of the purposes of a formal review. In the couple of decades that I've been working, I've had two managers offer me anything in the way of "areas for improvement" -- both times were at reviews -- outside of a review it has never come up. So yes, it is obscene for a manager to wait until review time to bring up a year's worth of failures, but being surprised by a bit of negative feedback -- provided it's not "Fix this or your getting a pink-slip" kind of feedback, isn't necessarily a management failure. It was quite helpful to me and I count Lou among about 3 people who I feel honored to have known[0] because their impact, caring and advice was life-changing for me. [0] The other two were my HS programming teacher (who's class I enjoyed in Junior High), the late, great, Mr. Dzwonkiewicz who made me love writing software at a young age, and the woman who cured my social anxiety and made me enjoy public speaking -- the director of To Kill a Mockingbird that I performed in as a young teenager. Her name, though, escapes me. :)

scarface74 8y ago
If I get a bad review, that's a signal that I need a new job, because I think I'm doing well and I must have a terrible manager if he'd wait a whole year to tell me otherwise This exactly. I've had two and half performance improvement plans in my 20 years. 1. My performance and attitude really did suck. I had been at a company too long (9 years), raises were anemic and the bonuses had gotten cut over the years to the point that in year 9 I only made $7K more than I did in year 2. My skillset had atrophied because I was both dealing with personal issues and concentrating on other "working hobbies" where I was making extra money. It was a horrible cycle. The further behind I fell salary wise, the worse my attitude got. I finally left 10 years ago and learned a lot from that mistake. 2. The second time (two jobs later, the company I worked for after the first event went out of business) wasn't because of performance but because I stepped on the wrong coworkers toes - a team lead that wasn't my manager. I learned this time around. I played the political game long enough after the PIP to get a set of skills I wanted (about three months) and left and got another job making 25K more. I did learn some political skills from that experience. 3. I went to another company where I was hired by a manager who was told by his manager to bring people in who could "affect change". The old guard won over, my manager's manager was laid off and my manager was forced out three months later. I got a bad review from my new manager - as did everyone my manager had hired - and we all left within 3 months. This time I left for $13k more and got a job as a team lead. - I was now working for a company that wasn't a software company, I was brought in to create a modern software department and then we got acquired and the new edict was that they "didn't want to be a Software company". But they did need at least two major projects done that I was responsible for, but they would only let me hire contractors and the red tape to get anything done was ridiculous. After realizing I was going to be made the fall guy and getting a preview of what my review was going to be, I started looking for another job and had one in 10 days making $7K more with less official responsibility but more decision making ability and I'm able to get more done with no red tape (i.e. I'm admin for AWS) My official PIP at job 2 happened about four years ago. Since then and three jobs later, I'm making 40K more and I am a lot smarter politically now.
- sizzle 8y ago
  Thanks for sharing your experience. I'm still early in my career so it helps to hear this.

Taniwha 8y ago

I think there's another reason for annual performance reviews ... to remind management that it's time for a COLA without it becoming a big deal

organicmultiloc 8y ago
Maybe you shouldn't frame your compensation in terms of a "COLA adjustment" although I'm quite sure your employer would prefer that meek mindset.
- Taniwha 8y ago
  I've been in this biz for 40 years, I've had years of way above average salary jumps - I expect a COLA every year, not something unreasonable
  - bauerd 8y ago
    What does COLA mean? I've no clue and googling the term just brings up soft drinks and cocaine. I guess a fancy term for bonus/raise?
    - andyjohnson0 8y ago
      Cost Of Living Adjustment
      - Taniwha 8y ago
        yes, exactly that - basically correcting for inflation
    - gizmo686 8y ago
      Cost of living adjustment?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 8y ago

lquist 8y ago

An opposing viewpoint from Andy Grove's High Output Management: Let's talk about surprises. If you have discharged supervisory responsibilities adequately throughout the year, holding regular one- on-one meetings and providing guidance when needed, there should never be surprises at a performance, right? Wrong. When you are using the worksheet, sometimes you come up with a message that will startle you. So what do you do? You're faced with either delivering the message or not, but if the purpose of the review is to improve your subordinate's performance, you must deliver it. Preferably, a review should not contain any surprises, but if you uncover one, swallow hard and bring it up.

mewse 8y ago
I don't think that's an opposing viewpoint. If a manager discovers a long-standing issue whilst preparing for the performance review, then yes, they absolutely must "swallow hard and bring it up". But not having noticed or provided feedback about that issue at any point in the past is still a failure of management.
- davidkclark 8y ago
  Hence the hard swallowing.
- dbcurtis 8y ago
  I was a manager at Intel during the Grove era. The ranking & rating process of those days forced a team of 8 or so peer managers to look at the performance of all of their reports together. Having 7 other managers point out an issue with one of your reports tends to help you get calibrated. Is it a failure of management to be poorly calibrated about your own people? Yes, a common one.
danek 8y ago
The cost-benefit still doesn't make sense to me. He's talking about doing a very expensive & generally counter-productive activity in the off chance that you might uncover some insight about your employee. I usually tell people the first half of High Output Management is good, but to skip the second half...

lskadf93idk 8y ago

We have performance reviews not annually, but every few years. My last review, the head of our division got really angry with me and gave me a very negative, punitive review. What I am infuriated about is that never in that few years did I receive any negative feedback, and I tried to do exactly what our subdivision had decided as a group to do, and what the immediate superior had wanted. My last review was glowing, perfect. So I go from a perfect review to being treated like a failure, fireable, with no negative feedback in the interim. Imagine if you in your area had discussed things, come to consensus decisions, you were willing to do everything asked of you, and then four years later someone higher up singles you out and yells at you for not doing what you're supposed to etc. As if you've been getting feedback that whole time. The worst part of this is that I know someone in our area is close friends with this division head and basically complains about everyone except one person in our area. So now I have this negative review, as if I were just being lazy, even impaired in my duties, and not doing my part when the whole time I just thought I was doing what we were supposed to. It's depressing as hell to me, and also angering.

mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
It could have been a positioning move to justify firing down the road. I freelance now but when I went through 9-5 I found the key to positive outcomes was always tied to confidence. The confidence I tried to harness cane in a form of acting like I was the boss with nobody above me. I found that my own bosses saw this as a strength and never questioned my judgement. Even when someone came back with logical counterpoints I'd stick up for my opinion very aggressively. I can't imagine working in a place that yells at me - that would be the final nail in the coffin where I would that that person everything I think of them and their inaptitude to "manage". I guess that's why I no longer punch the clock.
- Mandatum 8y ago
  > Even when someone came back with logical counterpoints I'd stick up for my opinion very aggressively. I hate this so much. I hate it even more, because it's mostly true that it works. YMMV, and I'm talking of non-technical organisations or organisation where tech is a cost-centre rather than value-add. Those who don't fully understand it (it being whatever technical disagreement or choice made), which is usually the majority, will side with you. The remainder are usually people who can see that the organisation is structured this way and either give up out of apathy or leave for greener pastures. If someone literally yells at me, I'm out. Notice in that day, usually within the hour. If the organisation is willing to allow that behaviour, it's usually toxic. If I'm on contract (which I always am now), my opinion within that organisation will no longer be respected. Notice of non-renewal immediately.

mrhappyunhappy 8y ago

Performance reviews sound so cringey, I don't know how people can subject themselves to such practices. I guess it's one of those legacy practices to allow people to move up the ladder.

sosborn 8y ago
Done right they are actually helpful for everyone involved, especially if everyone goes in with a growth mindset.

GordonS 8y ago

This doesn't really work in organisationa with a high manager turnover. Where I work, I've had 12 managers in 15 years, so each manager doesn't really know me, or the 'goodwill' I have within our organisation and with our customers. They really are a waste of time at some orgs.