14 ms·

Atlassian ditches ‘brilliant jerks’ in performance review overhaul

40 points by yusufaytas 7y ago

achow 7y ago
On the other hand: Many former employees blamed [Facebook's] cult-like atmosphere partly on Facebook’s performance review system, which requires employees to get reviews from approximately five of their peers twice a year. This peer review system pressures employees to forge friendships with colleagues at every possible opportunity, whether it be going to lunch together each day or hanging out after work. “It’s a little bit of a popularity contest,” said one manager who left the company in 2017. “You can cherry-pick the people who like you — maybe throw in one bad apple to equalize it.” Inside Facebook’s ‘cult-like’ workplace, where dissent is discouraged and employees pretend to be happy all the time https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/08/facebook-culture-cult-performance-review-process-blamed.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/08/facebook-culture-cult-perfor...
- hnhg 7y ago
  This is quite a common approach in consulting companies too. It's not unique to FB.
  - notahacker 7y ago
    tbf in many consulting companies, the ability to network with people over lunch is at a work task least as important as actual proficiency at producing deliverables, which may be Powerpoints presented live to clients you've cultivated via networking. Not sure being an extrovert is quite so important to fixing bugs in the Facebook stack. (Maybe more so for the key account managers selling ads.)
- m0zg 7y ago
  The opposite side of this particular spectrum is Microsoft in 00's, where it was very clear to everyone that fixed sized pie is being divvided up, and people would wait for the smallest missteps by their peers, and CC their manager, and their manager's manager to make sure they know someone fucked up and their rating is lower at review time. Since there was a curve, one's own rating could then be higher, assuming they don't screw up likewise. Whether you're helping others didn't matter one iota. Personally, I prefer peer reviews, even though they do often lead to likeable no-ops being promoted, and introverts being passed over for a promotion. At least in "peer review" companies I never felt like my peers are trying to stab me in the back all the time.
  - arethuza 7y ago
    I knew people who had worked at a company where it was pretty standard for people to leave their "360 reviews" in tears as extreme levels of self-criticism were expected. Their company culture apparently encouraged this level save "radical honesty".
Traster 7y ago
>The $47 billion Australian software company, which was founded in Sydney in 2002 and floated on the US stock market in 2015, says two-thirds of every performance review will now have nothing to do with job skills. >Instead, equal weighting will be given to how each of its 3000 employees impacts others on their team, and to how they live the company values. Atlassian says the change will “more fairly measure people on how they bring their whole self to work”. For a company that seems to be catching on to the idea that working at a company might involve being good at working as part of a time, I can't help feel describing that as "having nothing to do with job skills" is probably not the right way of looking at it. In fact, there are some really funny points in this article that point to the bias that this is being met with >Asked if it would be possible for someone who did well in their role to be outscored by someone who did poorly but was more likeable For gods' sakes it is not about being likeable, it's about being able to work productively in a team environment. You aren't going to get a good review by being useless but really good at small talk in the kitcken. It's about being able to perform at the company in a way that positively impacts others whilst getting your own work done. Is is easier to work with someone if they're likeable? Probably. If someone is difficult to work with are they dislikeable? Sure. But stop talking about the side-effects and talk about the actual thing that's important - ability to add value to the company.
- always4getpass 7y ago
  I think the truth is somewhere in between. I'd much rather work on a company that has a pleasant atmosphere but not insane growth than on a shitty environment grinding my ass off. But ignoring performance completely, that is nuts. Because output and success also bring joy and enhance the atmosphere of teams.
- ramblerman 7y ago
  > says two-thirds of every performance review will now have nothing to do with job skills. I agree this is poorly worded on their behalf. A better approach would be to reframe team-player, and being somewhat likeable as job skills.
- marktangotango 7y ago
  You seem to agree with implication that developer performance is measurable, when in fact these management driven annual reviews are a fantasy used to justify someone’s already planned agenda; raises and promotions for those in the in group for example.
gridlockd 7y ago
> Atlassian employees can receive one of three grading levels on each element, based on “growth mindset language” — rather than a score, they either get an “exceptional year”, a “great year” or an “off year”. ...and right there flips the Bozo Bit.
- albandread 7y ago
  The truly brilliant will just win at the new soft skills game as well; and just adapt their behaviour. They are very used to hiding among us. The description brilliant jerks; does come over as despising of talent.
  - Quarrelsome 7y ago
    I feel like it more means people who poor social skills are tolerated because they are otherwise brilliant in a given niche.
  - gridlockd 7y ago
    If you're a truly brilliant person and you're still working at Atlassian, you should be on your way out anyway. Atlassian clearly has jumped the shark. I don't actually have an issue with getting rid of people that really are a drag on team morale with their antics, even when they're highly productive. Perhaps you can find another spot for them, otherwise let them go their merry way and have them be brilliant elsewhere. Having said that, there's a lot of people "on the spectrum" that are jerks not out of arrogance, but because their brain happens to make them essentially tone deaf. With all this talk about "diversity", I hope Atlassian doesn't forget about neurodiversity.
ps101 7y ago
Instead of either their old or their new approach: 1. Don't tolerate jerks regardless of their level of "brilliant". And simply not being likeable isn't enough to categorise someone as a jerk. 2. Give your employees honest reviews focusing on their actual skills, performance and impact. Don't come up with artificially soft language and treat them like children who need to tiptoed around.
- saiya-jin 7y ago
  > Don't come up with artificially soft language and treat them like children who need to tiptoed around. This is often an issue in big corporations by my experience. People complain about others behind their back, but never in the face, feedback just doesn't get back to originators so little changes. Its all nice and quiet and then bam! and the person is fired. Or not.
- gurkendoktor 7y ago
  But who gets to define the "jerk"? What if 9 people in the room decide to bet the company/project on blockchain vaporware, and you are fervently opposed? Many people will come across as obnoxious when they have to stand their ground vs the majority. You have to find a balance, otherwise you'll incentivize friendly groupthink.
  - ps101 7y ago
    being opposed != being obnoxious Being opposed should be encouraged even if it's just a way to internally test ideas; being obnoxious should be discouraged. You, your team and your manager should be able to make that distinction. If work at a place where disagreement is systemically taken personally, look for another place to work at.
    - wolfgke 7y ago
      > Being opposed should be encouraged even if it's just a way to internally test ideas; being obnoxious should be discouraged. The lines between "opposed" and "obnoxious" are very blurry and depend a lot on whether the respective person is very socially adept or not.
lmm 7y ago
And somehow, as if by magic, anyone from a working-class background will turn out to have been a "jerk", and those who went to the right schools and are friends with the right people will turn out to have been "living our values". And one more slice of that pesky social mobility will go away.
- alttab 7y ago
  What are the values? How well are they defined? It's a popularity contest which just creates a new type of politics unless its super well defined and easily demonstrable and measurable. This seems like a great way to push out your brilliant people who won't tolerate bullshit or sacrifice their point for the sake of social cohesion.
  - marcinzm 7y ago
    >This seems like a great way to push out your brilliant people who won't tolerate bullshit or sacrifice their point for the sake of social cohesion. Why do you believe such people shouldn't be pushed out? Social cohesion is important in any group of people working on a common goal and a company is made up of groups of people working together on common goals. Likewise, there's always bullshit in larger companies and those who don't "tolerate" it usually just force others to deal with twice as much.
    - cousin_it 7y ago
      Sure, many companies suffer from the "herding cats" problem and could use more cohesion. But there are also many companies that suffer from excessive groupthink, and would be better off with more people going against the grain. You can't say that one advice is universally better than the other, you need to look at the specific company.
    - Nasrudith 7y ago
      Because brilliant people move things forward by leaps and bounds. And anti-intellectualism has a proven track record of accepting failure in exchange for social control. Up until they get their asses kicked trivially when they try to push someone who hasn't slacked off. Why should bullshit be tolerated when it leads to waste and stagnation? That sort of attitude is why Detroit fell so hard along with many post industrial wastelands. They scorned higher education or going another direction and then their keystone economies collapsed.
bengale 7y ago
Sounds like Atlassian have reached the size where enough incompetents have been hired that they try to drive out the useful people because they make them look bad.
- gurkendoktor 7y ago
  Nobody ever got fired for choosing Jira and Confluence. It seems rather inconsequential which people Atlassian chooses to employ at this point.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    It kind of does if this turns into a trend that caches on in the industry.
    - gurkendoktor 7y ago
      Good point. I always hope that when one company doubles down on open offices, bizarro hiring practices, Agile, etc., that other companies will do the opposite and we developers can partition ourselves by how we want to work. But that never seems to happen.
  - ps101 7y ago
    It's never inconsequential who you employ, regardless or your position in the market.
- cryptica 7y ago
  I wonder what 'brilliant jerk' means? For me the worst kind of jerk is a 'fool with authority'. I'd much rather work under a brilliant jerk than a hypocritical fool.
  - sgift 7y ago
    > I'd much rather work under a brilliant jerk than a hypocritical fool. Good news: There are people who are neither. I prefer to work for competent non-jerks. A team of good people will always outperform a brilliant jerk that drives everyone else away.
SanchoPanda 7y ago
If they stick to it, it could be helpful in hiring as well. They need reverse inquiry from really smart kids (and it is mainly kids in all likelihood) who were not the standard candidate from years past.
Ynsa 7y ago
So, a person with an Asian name apparently has enough power to change a "system created by white men". Where is the all powerful patriarchy shutting this person down? What has this bureaucrat created apart from grabbing power?
jillesvangurp 7y ago
The weakness in this model is that technically people calling other people jerks, tend to be jerks. Especially when there's some negative consequence for that person in the form of less favorable reviews it would be kind of nasty to do this on the record. So, the people doing this the most would in my book be the actual jerks. This thing gets super political and in politics, the charismatic sociopaths end up leading. I'd advertise a different model where who works for whom is strictly voluntary. Somebody wants something done and needs somebody else to work with them; that other person needs to agree to work with that person and should have the option to join another team instead of being assigned to a group of people. Nobody likes working for jerks and the whole thing will sort itself out in no-time. Team players joining forces together will produce great results and you can then simply judge the output. You'll get certain people having a hard time getting a team together or finding a team that will have them because they are jerks, that would be a reason for them to get a bad review (because they don't deliver). People voting with their feet is a more honest model than people whining to their managers. Empower people to vote with their feet. Small teams, empowered to do what needs doing, with people committed to working with each other can get things done. You'll get all your performers joining forces and you can expect great results. Everybody else ends up stuck with each other and it should show in whatever teams results you get from that. Some people get a lot of stuff done by themselves and that might still be positive. Linus Torvalds is a jerk, I wouldn't want him on my team but I use Linux and Git on a daily basis and I'm glad he's working on that.
- euroclydon 7y ago
  That could be okay, if it’s done slowly and discreetly by upper management. Otherwise their are all kinds of hazards around recruiting like in the NCAA.
fhy45678 7y ago
1 Apple in 10 lemons is a culture misfit and can be labelled as a brilliant jerk.
logicchains 7y ago
"rather than a score, they either get an “exceptional year”, a “great year” or an “off year”." - I wonder if that means an average year counts as an "off year"?
- jakobegger 7y ago
  I assumed that "great" means average. If you ask someone, "How are you" and they say "Great!" it just means "Not significantly worse than usual". I also like the implication that there's nothing wrong with a couple of "great" years in a row, while a couple of "average" years in a row would at some point be pretty demotivating.
  - logicchains 7y ago
    Consider the context. If someone asks you "how did X on your team perform", and X's performance was average, not bad but nothing special, would you use the word "great"? The last place I worked with levels like that used "met expectations" for the average, which seems more accurate, and isn't something to be ashamed of.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  That seems like a purposeful omission of the "average" level; this makes average performance fall on either "off" or "great" end, depending on essentially non-tracked, political considerations. Not an improvement, IMO, and it also feels infantilizing. So Atlassian determined their workers are not adults but little children, who can't handle knowing whether their performance was better or worse than expected and how much, so instead they get gamified with a kindergarten-named, 1.3-bit scale?
patientplatypus 7y ago
Good. I turned down a job this week because it became clear that the CEO couldn't handle any non-positive feedback and took it as a personal criticism. Hey dude, if you have a redux reducer file that's over 11k+ lines long that doesn't mean that I'm "not smart enough to understand your code" it means you haven't bothered to keep basic code hygiene and break up your files. It was a shame too - cool industry and tech stack and an odious toxic suck-bro culture. /smh
- gridlockd 7y ago
  > Hey dude, if you have a redux reducer file that's over 11k+ lines long that doesn't mean that I'm "not smart enough to understand your code" it means you haven't bothered to keep basic code hygiene and break up your files. While I haven't seen the code, this belief that large files are bad "by default" to me is a clear sign of an developer who puts superficialities before more important work. In any event, any significantly evolved system has lots of sore spots that are nevertheless not the most pressing issue at any particular moment. This is the nature of things. Learning to accept that and still getting things done is valuable.
  - patientplatypus 7y ago
    Nah man, I didn't make it black and white like that. It was more along the lines of "why is this reducer so big? it seems like that's a major red flag to me because that usually means its difficult to debug" and the guy went bananas. I almost never make bold "it must always be so" statements, as only the Sith deal in absolutes.
TickleSteve 7y ago
So... no job at Atlassian for Torvalds??
majkinetor 7y ago
Unless the jerk part is extreme, this is totally inappropriate. Extreme brilliant jerks are rare in my experience. Funny/tolerable brilliant jerks are the norm in jerk world. This is babysitting of adult people. Any kid must tolerate/live-with way more insulting behavior every freaking day without anything in return like regular pocket money. Somebody think your code is shitty, you smell funny, you have weird glasses, you talk to quite, wow, lets immediately make a drama. World of adults has become inferior to the world of kids.
code4tee 7y ago
The spirit of this is in the right direction but the details are in the implementation. I’ve seen this sort of thing backfire big time as it basically encourages cliques of people that “like” each other and then shun others. If not done properly the whole company starts to feel like high school politics all over again as it loses track of what it’s actually accomplishing or not accomplishing and focuses too much on poorly implemented soft metrics. I’ve seen excellent managers that drive high performing teams get dinged by under-performers on those teams who say said manager is hard to work with. Sure they’d be much happier with a manager that let them slack off but that’s not going to help the company.
- dlkf 7y ago
  Nailed it. There are some very good points made in the article. Atlassian is a smart org and I suspect they're doing it well, but the article doesn't go into enough depth to let us look at it with a critical eye. There is a real danger that these policies will treat symptoms rather than causes. I think that people often take an extremely puerile view as to how exclusion and bullying manifest. I once saw an HN commenter suggest that the solution was to ban profanity. Now, obviously you shouldn't be screaming "fuck you" at your colleagues, but removing certain means won't fundamentally change behaviour if the ends remain the same. It's important to think about the incentives you've set up for your workforce. Are they playing a zero sum game? Does an assist count for as many points as a goal? > I’ve seen excellent managers get dinged in such a System because a few poor performers just mark the manager as difficult to work with to cover for their own underperformance. Which raises another question - why are these discussions always centred around "brilliant jerks" and not just, you know, "jerks" ? Is there any actual evidence that being a jerk correlates with being a good engineer? Or that brilliant jerks are harder to fire than incompetent jerks?
  - ryandrake 7y ago
    Yea, most of the jerks I've worked with in the past have not been brilliant. They were just jerks. The "My company was acquired and I got a management position out of it, so nothing I say is wrong" jerk. The "I've been successful here by not collaborating, so I don't have to collaborate with you either" jerk. The "I'm to busy to even acknowledge your E-mail" jerk. And all the many, many "Taking credit for other people's work" jerks. None of them were particularly brilliant or productive. Just jerks who flourished in environments where jerky behavior was either not punished, or got you promoted.
forgottenpass 7y ago
>Atlassian says the change will “more fairly measure people on how they bring their whole self to work”. They don't want people to bring their whole selves to work; nobody actually wants that. Lies like this cast immediate doubt onto everything else they're saying about the workplace environment.

40 points by yusufaytas 7y ago

On the other hand: Many former employees blamed [Facebook's] cult-like atmosphere partly on Facebook’s performance review system, which requires employees to get reviews from approximately five of their peers twice a year. This peer review system pressures employees to forge friendships with colleagues at every possible opportunity, whether it be going to lunch together each day or hanging out after work. “It’s a little bit of a popularity contest,” said one manager who left the company in 2017. “You can cherry-pick the people who like you — maybe throw in one bad apple to equalize it.” Inside Facebook’s ‘cult-like’ workplace, where dissent is discouraged and employees pretend to be happy all the time https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/08/facebook-culture-cult-performance-review-process-blamed.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/08/facebook-culture-cult-perfor...

hnhg 7y ago
This is quite a common approach in consulting companies too. It's not unique to FB.
- notahacker 7y ago
  tbf in many consulting companies, the ability to network with people over lunch is at a work task least as important as actual proficiency at producing deliverables, which may be Powerpoints presented live to clients you've cultivated via networking. Not sure being an extrovert is quite so important to fixing bugs in the Facebook stack. (Maybe more so for the key account managers selling ads.)
m0zg 7y ago
The opposite side of this particular spectrum is Microsoft in 00's, where it was very clear to everyone that fixed sized pie is being divvided up, and people would wait for the smallest missteps by their peers, and CC their manager, and their manager's manager to make sure they know someone fucked up and their rating is lower at review time. Since there was a curve, one's own rating could then be higher, assuming they don't screw up likewise. Whether you're helping others didn't matter one iota. Personally, I prefer peer reviews, even though they do often lead to likeable no-ops being promoted, and introverts being passed over for a promotion. At least in "peer review" companies I never felt like my peers are trying to stab me in the back all the time.
- arethuza 7y ago
  I knew people who had worked at a company where it was pretty standard for people to leave their "360 reviews" in tears as extreme levels of self-criticism were expected. Their company culture apparently encouraged this level save "radical honesty".

Traster 7y ago

>The $47 billion Australian software company, which was founded in Sydney in 2002 and floated on the US stock market in 2015, says two-thirds of every performance review will now have nothing to do with job skills. >Instead, equal weighting will be given to how each of its 3000 employees impacts others on their team, and to how they live the company values. Atlassian says the change will “more fairly measure people on how they bring their whole self to work”. For a company that seems to be catching on to the idea that working at a company might involve being good at working as part of a time, I can't help feel describing that as "having nothing to do with job skills" is probably not the right way of looking at it. In fact, there are some really funny points in this article that point to the bias that this is being met with >Asked if it would be possible for someone who did well in their role to be outscored by someone who did poorly but was more likeable For gods' sakes it is not about being likeable, it's about being able to work productively in a team environment. You aren't going to get a good review by being useless but really good at small talk in the kitcken. It's about being able to perform at the company in a way that positively impacts others whilst getting your own work done. Is is easier to work with someone if they're likeable? Probably. If someone is difficult to work with are they dislikeable? Sure. But stop talking about the side-effects and talk about the actual thing that's important - ability to add value to the company.

always4getpass 7y ago
I think the truth is somewhere in between. I'd much rather work on a company that has a pleasant atmosphere but not insane growth than on a shitty environment grinding my ass off. But ignoring performance completely, that is nuts. Because output and success also bring joy and enhance the atmosphere of teams.
ramblerman 7y ago
> says two-thirds of every performance review will now have nothing to do with job skills. I agree this is poorly worded on their behalf. A better approach would be to reframe team-player, and being somewhat likeable as job skills.
marktangotango 7y ago
You seem to agree with implication that developer performance is measurable, when in fact these management driven annual reviews are a fantasy used to justify someone’s already planned agenda; raises and promotions for those in the in group for example.

gridlockd 7y ago

> Atlassian employees can receive one of three grading levels on each element, based on “growth mindset language” — rather than a score, they either get an “exceptional year”, a “great year” or an “off year”. ...and right there flips the Bozo Bit.

albandread 7y ago
The truly brilliant will just win at the new soft skills game as well; and just adapt their behaviour. They are very used to hiding among us. The description brilliant jerks; does come over as despising of talent.
- Quarrelsome 7y ago
  I feel like it more means people who poor social skills are tolerated because they are otherwise brilliant in a given niche.
- gridlockd 7y ago
  If you're a truly brilliant person and you're still working at Atlassian, you should be on your way out anyway. Atlassian clearly has jumped the shark. I don't actually have an issue with getting rid of people that really are a drag on team morale with their antics, even when they're highly productive. Perhaps you can find another spot for them, otherwise let them go their merry way and have them be brilliant elsewhere. Having said that, there's a lot of people "on the spectrum" that are jerks not out of arrogance, but because their brain happens to make them essentially tone deaf. With all this talk about "diversity", I hope Atlassian doesn't forget about neurodiversity.

ps101 7y ago

Instead of either their old or their new approach: 1. Don't tolerate jerks regardless of their level of "brilliant". And simply not being likeable isn't enough to categorise someone as a jerk. 2. Give your employees honest reviews focusing on their actual skills, performance and impact. Don't come up with artificially soft language and treat them like children who need to tiptoed around.

saiya-jin 7y ago
> Don't come up with artificially soft language and treat them like children who need to tiptoed around. This is often an issue in big corporations by my experience. People complain about others behind their back, but never in the face, feedback just doesn't get back to originators so little changes. Its all nice and quiet and then bam! and the person is fired. Or not.
gurkendoktor 7y ago
But who gets to define the "jerk"? What if 9 people in the room decide to bet the company/project on blockchain vaporware, and you are fervently opposed? Many people will come across as obnoxious when they have to stand their ground vs the majority. You have to find a balance, otherwise you'll incentivize friendly groupthink.
- ps101 7y ago
  being opposed != being obnoxious Being opposed should be encouraged even if it's just a way to internally test ideas; being obnoxious should be discouraged. You, your team and your manager should be able to make that distinction. If work at a place where disagreement is systemically taken personally, look for another place to work at.
  - wolfgke 7y ago
    > Being opposed should be encouraged even if it's just a way to internally test ideas; being obnoxious should be discouraged. The lines between "opposed" and "obnoxious" are very blurry and depend a lot on whether the respective person is very socially adept or not.

lmm 7y ago

And somehow, as if by magic, anyone from a working-class background will turn out to have been a "jerk", and those who went to the right schools and are friends with the right people will turn out to have been "living our values". And one more slice of that pesky social mobility will go away.

alttab 7y ago
What are the values? How well are they defined? It's a popularity contest which just creates a new type of politics unless its super well defined and easily demonstrable and measurable. This seems like a great way to push out your brilliant people who won't tolerate bullshit or sacrifice their point for the sake of social cohesion.
- marcinzm 7y ago
  >This seems like a great way to push out your brilliant people who won't tolerate bullshit or sacrifice their point for the sake of social cohesion. Why do you believe such people shouldn't be pushed out? Social cohesion is important in any group of people working on a common goal and a company is made up of groups of people working together on common goals. Likewise, there's always bullshit in larger companies and those who don't "tolerate" it usually just force others to deal with twice as much.
  - cousin_it 7y ago
    Sure, many companies suffer from the "herding cats" problem and could use more cohesion. But there are also many companies that suffer from excessive groupthink, and would be better off with more people going against the grain. You can't say that one advice is universally better than the other, you need to look at the specific company.
  - Nasrudith 7y ago
    Because brilliant people move things forward by leaps and bounds. And anti-intellectualism has a proven track record of accepting failure in exchange for social control. Up until they get their asses kicked trivially when they try to push someone who hasn't slacked off. Why should bullshit be tolerated when it leads to waste and stagnation? That sort of attitude is why Detroit fell so hard along with many post industrial wastelands. They scorned higher education or going another direction and then their keystone economies collapsed.

bengale 7y ago

Sounds like Atlassian have reached the size where enough incompetents have been hired that they try to drive out the useful people because they make them look bad.

gurkendoktor 7y ago
Nobody ever got fired for choosing Jira and Confluence. It seems rather inconsequential which people Atlassian chooses to employ at this point.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  It kind of does if this turns into a trend that caches on in the industry.
  - gurkendoktor 7y ago
    Good point. I always hope that when one company doubles down on open offices, bizarro hiring practices, Agile, etc., that other companies will do the opposite and we developers can partition ourselves by how we want to work. But that never seems to happen.
- ps101 7y ago
  It's never inconsequential who you employ, regardless or your position in the market.
cryptica 7y ago
I wonder what 'brilliant jerk' means? For me the worst kind of jerk is a 'fool with authority'. I'd much rather work under a brilliant jerk than a hypocritical fool.
- sgift 7y ago
  > I'd much rather work under a brilliant jerk than a hypocritical fool. Good news: There are people who are neither. I prefer to work for competent non-jerks. A team of good people will always outperform a brilliant jerk that drives everyone else away.

SanchoPanda 7y ago

If they stick to it, it could be helpful in hiring as well. They need reverse inquiry from really smart kids (and it is mainly kids in all likelihood) who were not the standard candidate from years past.

Ynsa 7y ago

So, a person with an Asian name apparently has enough power to change a "system created by white men". Where is the all powerful patriarchy shutting this person down? What has this bureaucrat created apart from grabbing power?

jillesvangurp 7y ago

The weakness in this model is that technically people calling other people jerks, tend to be jerks. Especially when there's some negative consequence for that person in the form of less favorable reviews it would be kind of nasty to do this on the record. So, the people doing this the most would in my book be the actual jerks. This thing gets super political and in politics, the charismatic sociopaths end up leading. I'd advertise a different model where who works for whom is strictly voluntary. Somebody wants something done and needs somebody else to work with them; that other person needs to agree to work with that person and should have the option to join another team instead of being assigned to a group of people. Nobody likes working for jerks and the whole thing will sort itself out in no-time. Team players joining forces together will produce great results and you can then simply judge the output. You'll get certain people having a hard time getting a team together or finding a team that will have them because they are jerks, that would be a reason for them to get a bad review (because they don't deliver). People voting with their feet is a more honest model than people whining to their managers. Empower people to vote with their feet. Small teams, empowered to do what needs doing, with people committed to working with each other can get things done. You'll get all your performers joining forces and you can expect great results. Everybody else ends up stuck with each other and it should show in whatever teams results you get from that. Some people get a lot of stuff done by themselves and that might still be positive. Linus Torvalds is a jerk, I wouldn't want him on my team but I use Linux and Git on a daily basis and I'm glad he's working on that.

euroclydon 7y ago
That could be okay, if it’s done slowly and discreetly by upper management. Otherwise their are all kinds of hazards around recruiting like in the NCAA.

fhy45678 7y ago

1 Apple in 10 lemons is a culture misfit and can be labelled as a brilliant jerk.

logicchains 7y ago

"rather than a score, they either get an “exceptional year”, a “great year” or an “off year”." - I wonder if that means an average year counts as an "off year"?

jakobegger 7y ago
I assumed that "great" means average. If you ask someone, "How are you" and they say "Great!" it just means "Not significantly worse than usual". I also like the implication that there's nothing wrong with a couple of "great" years in a row, while a couple of "average" years in a row would at some point be pretty demotivating.
- logicchains 7y ago
  Consider the context. If someone asks you "how did X on your team perform", and X's performance was average, not bad but nothing special, would you use the word "great"? The last place I worked with levels like that used "met expectations" for the average, which seems more accurate, and isn't something to be ashamed of.
TeMPOraL 7y ago
That seems like a purposeful omission of the "average" level; this makes average performance fall on either "off" or "great" end, depending on essentially non-tracked, political considerations. Not an improvement, IMO, and it also feels infantilizing. So Atlassian determined their workers are not adults but little children, who can't handle knowing whether their performance was better or worse than expected and how much, so instead they get gamified with a kindergarten-named, 1.3-bit scale?

patientplatypus 7y ago

Good. I turned down a job this week because it became clear that the CEO couldn't handle any non-positive feedback and took it as a personal criticism. Hey dude, if you have a redux reducer file that's over 11k+ lines long that doesn't mean that I'm "not smart enough to understand your code" it means you haven't bothered to keep basic code hygiene and break up your files. It was a shame too - cool industry and tech stack and an odious toxic suck-bro culture. /smh

gridlockd 7y ago
> Hey dude, if you have a redux reducer file that's over 11k+ lines long that doesn't mean that I'm "not smart enough to understand your code" it means you haven't bothered to keep basic code hygiene and break up your files. While I haven't seen the code, this belief that large files are bad "by default" to me is a clear sign of an developer who puts superficialities before more important work. In any event, any significantly evolved system has lots of sore spots that are nevertheless not the most pressing issue at any particular moment. This is the nature of things. Learning to accept that and still getting things done is valuable.
- patientplatypus 7y ago
  Nah man, I didn't make it black and white like that. It was more along the lines of "why is this reducer so big? it seems like that's a major red flag to me because that usually means its difficult to debug" and the guy went bananas. I almost never make bold "it must always be so" statements, as only the Sith deal in absolutes.

TickleSteve 7y ago

So... no job at Atlassian for Torvalds??

majkinetor 7y ago

Unless the jerk part is extreme, this is totally inappropriate. Extreme brilliant jerks are rare in my experience. Funny/tolerable brilliant jerks are the norm in jerk world. This is babysitting of adult people. Any kid must tolerate/live-with way more insulting behavior every freaking day without anything in return like regular pocket money. Somebody think your code is shitty, you smell funny, you have weird glasses, you talk to quite, wow, lets immediately make a drama. World of adults has become inferior to the world of kids.

code4tee 7y ago

The spirit of this is in the right direction but the details are in the implementation. I’ve seen this sort of thing backfire big time as it basically encourages cliques of people that “like” each other and then shun others. If not done properly the whole company starts to feel like high school politics all over again as it loses track of what it’s actually accomplishing or not accomplishing and focuses too much on poorly implemented soft metrics. I’ve seen excellent managers that drive high performing teams get dinged by under-performers on those teams who say said manager is hard to work with. Sure they’d be much happier with a manager that let them slack off but that’s not going to help the company.

dlkf 7y ago
Nailed it. There are some very good points made in the article. Atlassian is a smart org and I suspect they're doing it well, but the article doesn't go into enough depth to let us look at it with a critical eye. There is a real danger that these policies will treat symptoms rather than causes. I think that people often take an extremely puerile view as to how exclusion and bullying manifest. I once saw an HN commenter suggest that the solution was to ban profanity. Now, obviously you shouldn't be screaming "fuck you" at your colleagues, but removing certain means won't fundamentally change behaviour if the ends remain the same. It's important to think about the incentives you've set up for your workforce. Are they playing a zero sum game? Does an assist count for as many points as a goal? > I’ve seen excellent managers get dinged in such a System because a few poor performers just mark the manager as difficult to work with to cover for their own underperformance. Which raises another question - why are these discussions always centred around "brilliant jerks" and not just, you know, "jerks" ? Is there any actual evidence that being a jerk correlates with being a good engineer? Or that brilliant jerks are harder to fire than incompetent jerks?
- ryandrake 7y ago
  Yea, most of the jerks I've worked with in the past have not been brilliant. They were just jerks. The "My company was acquired and I got a management position out of it, so nothing I say is wrong" jerk. The "I've been successful here by not collaborating, so I don't have to collaborate with you either" jerk. The "I'm to busy to even acknowledge your E-mail" jerk. And all the many, many "Taking credit for other people's work" jerks. None of them were particularly brilliant or productive. Just jerks who flourished in environments where jerky behavior was either not punished, or got you promoted.

forgottenpass 7y ago

>Atlassian says the change will “more fairly measure people on how they bring their whole self to work”. They don't want people to bring their whole selves to work; nobody actually wants that. Lies like this cast immediate doubt onto everything else they're saying about the workplace environment.