12 ms·

Hopefully fair performance reviews for software developers

141 points by 2bluesc 7y ago

commandlinefan 7y ago
The best discussion I've ever seen on performance reviews was Joel Spolsky's observation (https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/03/incentive-pay-considered-harmful/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/03/incentive-pay-cons...): "Negative reviews, obviously, have a devastating effect on morale. In fact, giving somebody a review that is positive, but not as positive as that person expected, also has a negative effect on morale. ... Most software managers have no choice but to go along with performance review systems that are already in place. If you’re in this position, the only way to prevent teamicide is to simply give everyone on your team a gushing review."
- wccrawford 7y ago
  I've only gotten gushing reviews for years, and at some point I started wondering how real they were. I've come to the conclusion that I really am doing well, but the reviews are not a way to prove that. They just prove that the company still wants me around, not that I'm excelling at my job.
- ChrisMarshallNY 7y ago
  Joel Spolsky is awesome. As a manager for many years, I feel I did well in this arena. I was able to keep a team of highly intelligent, experienced engineers together for decades, under...interesting circumstances. In the last fifteen years or so, our HR started to show a type of attitude that I think is prevalent in the modern American HR culture; that the corporation is always "on top," and that the employee/job applicant is always in a subservient position, in some way. I was instructed to word and score my reviews to (in my opinion) enforce this mindset. The scores generally got lower (did I mention that my team was "high functioning"?). I was actually told to lower my scores a few times. I made up for this by giving very "gushing" wording on the reviews. The employees knew the score. HR was applying their "alpha dog" mindset in all types of ways, so we all knew where this was coming from. It really didn't make much difference on salary increases. The range was generally tiny, and the score barely made any difference (Salary was not a real motivator). Don't even get me started on my own reviews. Several years, I got none at all, and that suited me fine, as the ones I did get were obviously quickly thrown together, using an SaaS "fill in the blanks" app.
  - cushychicken 7y ago
    >...a type of attitude that I think is prevalent in the modern American HR culture; that the corporation is always "on top," and that the employee/job applicant is always in a subservient position, in some way. I note this attitude as well. Where do you think it comes from?
    - ChrisMarshallNY 7y ago
      I can't speak for other companies, but our HR was run by the corporate Counsel (lawyer). I think that's increasingly common, these days, as the job of HR is generally to protect the corporation from its own employees. Lawyers have a naturally adversarial mindset. They never pass up any opportunity for an edge, as that edge can give them some leverage. That's not really a good or bad thing. That's their job, but it can be a bit jarring, when you encounter it.
      - cushychicken 7y ago
        Makes sense to me!
CoolGuySteve 7y ago
When was the last time you sat down with your spouse or someone else you spent a large portion of your day with and gave them a really fair and objective performance review? Make sure to frame the negatives along with the positives and use concrete examples: Honey, I liked that casserole but the way you did the dishes could use some work, I found a spot on my glass the next day. I'm hoping you'll improve by Q3. No. Performance reviews are not how humans are meant to interact. Even slight negatives will be blown out of proportion in peoples minds, that's how we're hard wired. So why create this drama intentionally in your company? If the person is really bad, then you have an intervention or possibly terminate them, but most people are just okay. Regular 1:1 meetings should be the only 'performance review' needed, a way to make sure both the manager and subordinate are on the same page about everything.
- mk89 7y ago
  I second this one. I am currently reading the Manager's path and it mentions a lot 1-1s. Like, a lot. However, let's be honest. A - 1-1 takes time, effort, willingness to do something. Listening, trying to solve a problem, etc. Retaining your employees... Blabla. The more I read it, the more I feel like it's a dream. Reality is:80-20%. 80% is good, 20% is need to improve or try to get rid of. And in the worst case, I hire new people. The good ones will go? Sad. We will see how to prevent such things... However, the answer is: caring. Performance reviews are just a formal way to do what the first poster has written.
  - pdpi 7y ago
    Speaking as a senior IC with some management experience, I find that 1:1s depend a lot more on the report than on the manager. I had exactly one really good manager in the past who could extract value from our 1:1s when I wasn't actively helping make the 1:1s productive, and, as a manager, I sucked at getting value out of the 1:1s. Today, as an IC again, I'm in a place where I can make the 1:1s valuable by driving the conversation myself — by preemptively telling my manager what my concerns are, and what I need from him, and I achieve this largely by saying the things my old manager knew how to coax out of me, and the things I wished my reports had told me.
SamuelAdams 7y ago
As a developer who has worked at several billion-dollar (non FAANG) companies, the only thing I get out of performance reviews are one of two things: 1. You're doing a great job. Keep at it. 2. You're doing terribly. We are going to start a paper trail to fire you (aka performance improvement plan). The only reason performance reviews exist at companies is so they have an established way of firing people. Even if I do a great job, top marks across the board, I only receive a 2-4% increase in salary. On the rare occasion I might get a bonus. So there's zero incentive to go "above and beyond" or otherwise improve in a way that benefits the company I am currently employed for. Now, I continue to improve every day by learning new skills. But these new skills rarely relate to what the current company needs - these are simply things I am curious about. However, these skills will never end up in a "core competency plan" because those plans, by nature, only list skills that benefit the company. Because the target / competency plan only benefits the company, the performance review (which is based off the comp plan) feels very one-sided / binary. So instead of focusing intently on those competencies, I do the minimum necessary to fulfill them (less than 2 hours of work) and spend the rest of my "self improvement time" learning things I'm genuinely curious about. Then, when I have a marketable understanding of these new tools / tech, I jump ship, usually for a higher compensation package. If you want performance reviews to actually matter, allow people to set goals that do not always benefit the company. Understand your employees have many different interests and give them space to explore those interests.
- harimau777 7y ago
  Did you mean to post this a second time?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - cuddlybacon 7y ago
    It is posted by a different username.
  - rileymat2 7y ago
    It is a completely different user. Based on history, the other one seems to be regurgitating comments.
ihiulll 7y ago
As a developer who has worked at several billion-dollar (non FAANG) companies, the only thing I get out of performance reviews are one of two things: 1. You're doing a great job. Keep at it. 2. You're doing terribly. We are going to start a paper trail to fire you (aka performance improvement plan). The only reason performance reviews exist at companies is so they have an established way of firing people. Even if I do a great job, top marks across the board, I only receive a 2-4% increase in salary. On the rare occasion I might get a bonus. So there's zero incentive to go "above and beyond" or otherwise improve in a way that benefits the company I am currently employed for. Now, I continue to improve every day by learning new skills. But these new skills rarely relate to what the current company needs - these are simply things I am curious about. However, these skills will never end up in a "core competency plan" because those plans, by nature, only list skills that benefit the company. Because the target / competency plan only benefits the company, the performance review (which is based off the comp plan) feels very one-sided / binary. So instead of focusing intently on those competencies, I do the minimum necessary to fulfill them (less than 2 hours of work) and spend the rest of my "self improvement time" learning things I'm genuinely curious about. Then, when I have a marketable understanding of these new tools / tech, I jump ship, usually for a higher compensation package. If you want performance reviews to actually matter, allow people to set goals that do not always benefit the company. Understand your employees have many different interests and give them space to explore those interests.
- rileymat2 7y ago
  That sounds very familiar.
  - marcinzm 7y ago
    Check out ihiulll's other comments, all are copies of someone else's comment. Seems like some sort of karma farming spam attempt.
    - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
      20 day old account, -9 karma. It isn't working.
Nursie 7y ago
I'm a contractor these days, I work with clients for a few months to a year or so at a time and then switch company, project and everything else. One of the major reasons I switched from regular employment to this model was not having to deal with bullshit like annual reviews, personal development plans, coming-year-business plans etc etc and other corporate nonsense. Maybe it works for those organisations, I don't really care, it always been just a waste of time for me. Particularly the annual reviews where you're supposed to show how what you achieved this year matches up to or exceeeds the plans agreed at the beginning of the year. Without fail those plans became irrelevant within a couple of months and I'd done something entirely different to the plan for the rest of the year. The review result thus always came down to how much management liked and appreciated what you had done for the year, which is a metric they would have used anyway and without the need for a tedious process.
x0x0 7y ago
Oh god, another info product written by some new manager who has a whopping... three years of experience as a manager. Of small teams. It's the same as all those 2 year developers who discover a pattern or two and gush advice on how they're the canonical authority to write MVC in rails. Try waiting for year 10 or so before dispensing your wisdom. Because the first part of dispensing wisdom is having the wisdom and experience to dispense. We can do better than Eternal September for advice.
- CarelessExpert 7y ago
  So do you have anything constructive to add to the conversation? Alternative resources you've found useful in your, I assume, long tenure as a manager and coach of staff? I mean, we can't do better than "Eternal September" here on HN if talented, experienced folks like yourself don't share the wisdom you've acquired over your long and illustrious career. Right?
  - x0x0 7y ago
    Yes, I constructively added this guy has no idea what he's blathering on about, and is definitely not letting that stop him from pretending he's an authority and dispensing advice. Now, you have a choice on where to learn things. You can learn eg development best practices from people who have 10 or 20 years of development, or you can ask someone who's built small greenfield projects. You apparently think we should value advice from noob's equally; good luck with that there. Since you don't know how to use google, try going to barnes and noble and asking them to get copies of Camille Fournier's or Michael Lopp's books.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - CarelessExpert 7y ago
      > Yes, I constructively added this guy has no idea what he's blathering on about, and is definitely not letting that stop him from pretending he's an authority and dispensing advice. Okay, well, so... examples? This sounds an awful lot like a simple appeal to authority to me. But "noobs" may have useful insights, just as "people who have 10 or 20 years of development" might have bad habits, biases, or misconceptions. Look, I think we can all use our brains and determine if this post contains some value or not. Personally, I've been a manager of staff for about five years, and the more regimented, structural approach outlined in this post illuminates some ideas that I might explore in my own practices, and dovetails well with how I've been trying to improve myself in this area. Am I going to take what this guy has written and follow it as though it's the bible of staff management? No, of course not. Again, I have a functioning brain, and in general I try to use it. But, I will read this post with an open, thinking mind and decide for myself if there's value to be gotten from it. That said, I come to these comment threads to find commentary or discourse that might touch on things I've missed when reading this material for myself. Ideally, that would include constructive criticisms of the content so we can, as a community, learn both from the post itself and from contributions from folks like yourself. If that's not what you're here for, and you'd rather just tear the author (and this community) down, I guess that's fine. But it seems like a waste of your time, not to mention an unnecessary expenditure of emotional energy. HN comment threads are really not worth getting worked up about. Anyway, I hope you have a good day!
guessmyname 7y ago
I had a performance review once… The only thing that I decided to change was my attitude in the office: I started smiling more, wearing nicer clothes, cleaning my desk, saluting my co-workers in the morning and wishing people a nice day in the elevators. All of a sudden my next performance review was labelled as “great” and I got a $5k bonus followed by $10k four months later. Nothing related to my workload changed. My theory is: either my co-workers, manager, human resources or all of them were concerned about my facial expressions and personality being always neutral, doing just what I was supposed to do in the office: work. My co-workers did not have anything special to say about me, nothing bad nor good, I talked with them just enough to do my job, almost never said anything about my life, family or the things I did during the weekend. Many people draw mental images of you using the information you give them about what you do in your life outside of work, so I assume they unconsciously translated the lack of personal details as “this person is not good for me” and somehow this ended up in the performance review that almost fired me. Years later, here I am, still playing the psychological game at work. It is tiring but it works.
- brlewis 7y ago
  Sounds like the process worked great. Your performance review led to you delivering more of what your company wanted to pay you for.
- CPLX 7y ago
  As a founder and manager I would gladly pay more for people who have a great attitude and improve the general vibe and morale of the team.
  - brixon 7y ago
    Years ago I worked for a company with 2 hardware techs. One customer specifically asked to for the "likeable dumb-ass" to help them even though they knew the solution to their problem might take longer, the smarter tech was a loud know-it-all ass hole and no one liked working with him.
  - HeroOfAges 7y ago
    Does this mean you would pay a premium and possibly promote a software developer that doesn't contribute to the product by writing code, but remembers people's birthdays and plans team lunches?
southphillyman 7y ago
Unless you work for a FAANG, in fintech, or some other company where raises and bonuses are a real thing these reviews tend to be useless. A lot of managers are busy and just throw something together at the last minute, subordinates realize the process is just a formality and stop putting much effort into it as time goes on, etc. Sometimes these meetings are actually counter productive because you end up arguing for a tiny slice of the bonus pie having to "sell" yourself to an individual who knows well what you have contributed. I have witnessed multiple people quitting shortly after feeling underappeciated in a performance review.
JustSomeNobody 7y ago
If you're in a position to review employees, never ever ever let them go into a review not knowing what is going to be on it. How do you do that? Communicate. Communicate constantly. Talk about their wins. Talk about their non-wins. Talk about their skills. Talk about what needs to be improved. Talk to them about what they want to learn. Talk to them about what they have learned. Talk to them all throughout the year.
duxup 7y ago
The yearly performance review system at most places I worked seemed to be largely formalized process laid out by HR to determine raises .. or paths to firing someone. That's it... the fact that it involved me seemed entirely unnecessary as mostly it was between HR and my boss and/or his boss as to what if any actions came of it. Sometimes not even my boss... Whatever work I did day to day if my manager had an issue I sure hope he would come to me and we'd work it out right then and there. At smaller companies things like raises and moving on were just determined largely as needed. I changed careers recently and managed 5 or 6 raises in salary in about a year's time (this was largely because I had no past career experience programming so I came in pretty low). In the meantime a coworker was politely invited to look elsewhere (more of a situation where everyone knew this wasn't the environment for him and not so much anything he did 'wrong' and they let him work while job hunting) after about 3 months of work.
oxfordmale 7y ago
Performance reviews are a waste of time, there has been plenty of research that shows they add little value to a company. Unfortunately is an easy process for HR to justify their existence and makes putting people on performance management a lot easier. Even worse are 360 reviews. Research has shown that peer review are generally inaccurate and often politically motivated.
reggieband 7y ago
I absolutely hate reviews. There is little I dislike more in formalized work culture than the annual review process. I recently worked at a place that did mid-year and year-end reviews and it was twice the hate. I worked at another company that had a massive job competency matrix distributed in excel with nearly 100 cells to fill in. I've had managers change my self-evaluations to ensure I used the exact language necessary to allow them to give me a raise/promotion that they felt I deserved. I've also been in the mid-level management hell that is stack ranking where 10 TLs get put into a room with senior managers and argue what order devs are relative to each other. But as a TL I've managed devs who are eager for this feedback. I don't understand it since I hate it. I also ensure I do 1:1s frequently and I focus on career topics during those discussions. Despite my inability to understand I've witnessed it many time: some people not only want reviews they feel like they need the review. This is especially true the younger a developer is. My theory is that they are still in the after-glow of university and they are used to the idea of regularly getting grades. So while I find reviews to be little more than justification for adjusting renumeration while providing legal cover, I respect as a leader the genuine need of many to receive a clear and useful performance review at least once a year.
- asdfman123 7y ago
  Young people who "need reviews" do not actually need reviews but validation. Giving them a mixed review is not going to help their performance or their morale. Imagine your wife or SO came to you and asked "Am I pretty?" and you told them, "Well, you've made some good efforts, but I think you could definitely dress a little nicer and lose some weight. I know we can get there after enough effort, though. Be a team player!"
  - reggieband 7y ago
    > Young people who "need reviews" do not actually need reviews but validation. I think that is cynical and I believe that you are generally incorrect. Every engineer is individual and has their own needs. It is my belief that good management attempts to understand the needs of individuals and will provide them what they need. Maybe you have managed people who were seeking validation during the review process, I have no doubt they exist. But I have personal experience with team members, to whom I have had the responsibility to deliver reviews, and they were looking for clear feedback.
kqr 7y ago
Nobody has mentioned Deming yet, so here we go. Team members generally all perform around the same level, at least within a couple of standard deviations. The reason for this is simple: individual skill does not determine performance in a team as much as the rest of the environment does. The system a software developer works in shapes their performance so much more than individual differences. So if you're going to assign promotions and bonuses on individual results, make God damn sure these results are truly off the charts compared to their peers. If you don't, you're basically running a lottery. Except you don't call it that, so your team will still try to actively do things to try to win this lottery. And these things will not be in line with what you want your team to be doing, because they will try those things first and see that they don't work. Because it's a lottery they have very little ability to affect, so obviously nothing will work. What's worse, you might very well also create internal competition, where your team stops working as a team. They will realise they can't win your lottery by doing great work, so they will start to prevent their teammates from doing great work instead. Performance reviews are so stupid. Just talk to your people. Have a conversation about how they are doing. And then let the entire team have the bonus(es). It can be so simple.
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  > The system a software developer works in shapes their performance so much more than individual differences. So what you need to reward is people who improve the system!
- asveikau 7y ago
  I would say it's worse than running a lottery. It becomes a self-reenforcing thing where you mentally bucket highly ranked individuals as "your good people". Then you give them the prestigious assignments at the exclusion of others, and that act alone gets them the bonus and promo at the next round, at the cost of under-investing in those who you passed over and demoralizing them. It becomes a tool to create and re-enforce bias, or an echo chamber.
- bubba1236 7y ago
  yeah you've not worked with low iq ppl before, your second sentence is false.
dvtrn 7y ago
Of all things, this stood out to me: I've read reports of hazing, students being yelled at, forced to do pushups Have any of these reports been publicized anywhere? I have a morbid curiosity to read about this and what people's responses to those moments were, compared to what my (a US Army veteran) response would be to someone who isn't my commanding officer telling me to get on the ground and push[0]. [0] It wouldn't be very polite, and it may contain a few expletives.
- brlewis 7y ago
  I think this was intended for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21971223 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21971223
  - dvtrn 7y ago
    Oops, major mistake on my part there, had both threads open in different tabs. Thank you.
gwbas1c 7y ago
I find performance reviews are better at confirming management problems to employees than reviewing employee performance. In once case a manager complained that I wasn't working on a component that wasn't my responsibility. (I was always happy to help!) I had to get the CTO involved, and then my manager stopped dragging me into this component. (Edit: It was SSO, and I wrote the browser part. About 95% of the bugs were server-side.) In another case, a project failed because it wasn't managed. My manager basically said something like, "I'm surprised to learn..." At this point, I realized that he wasn't paying any attention to the project.
makecheck 7y ago
The problem is the idea of an “annual” review itself, such as: - arbitrary annual review times almost never coincide with the most useful times to summarize contributions (e.g. try handing out bonuses the day after a big project ends, not months later) - similarly, arbitrary review times disadvantage new employees; you essentially “waste” a few months on tasks that won’t end up counting this year (“not enough contributions yet”) and that won’t count next year either! (oh those tasks were from last review cycle so...) - most systems I’ve seen will force you to summarize your worth in just a few broad strokes, and so much valuable work falls through the cracks in such systems
tibiahurried 7y ago
My normal process is to join a company, do good work so that I get a good performance review and likely promotion in max 2 years. If I really like the job I stick around for another year so 3 in total. I then leave and jump on another company and do the same. Sticking with the same company for more than 3 years does not gain you much in terms of other promotions or salary/bonus bumps. Loyalty is not your friend. Try to take advantage as much as possible from the current job market for as long as it last ... and care only for your personal career growth and money. Everything else is corporate bs.
cutenewt 7y ago
The biggest problem with performance reviews: managers are too scared to give feedback throughout the year, so when the feedback does come during the performance review - the employee is in utter shock. Generally, there's no perfect time to give others' feedback. Most people hate criticizing others. But as a manager, I find that it's necessary; otherwise the performance review experience is less than desirable. I have been using some performance feedback generators, and it's been helpful in helping me figure out how to phrase feedback so it's specific and mentioned in a way that's not careless or thoughtless.
zackmorris 7y ago
Good article, but I thought that the linked "shields down" article about what triggers an employee to leave a company was equally insightful: https://randsinrepose.com/archives/shields-down/ https://randsinrepose.com/archives/shields-down/ In my experience, that's happened at most jobs that I've held, and with most people who left. I find it kind of sad that with all of the work that goes into building a company, and all of the resources and expertise available at their disposal, that managers and employees can't really talk about what's really going on. Most interactions at a company are a delicate dance to preserve the thin veil of hope that makes capitalism possible. In the end, it really truly is just business. So I've found it helpful to treat it as such, and not get too wrapped up in the emotion of it. Something that really helped me was watching the entire Mad Men series, to get an idea of how this all works. I know that's old news today, but that show arguably had as much effect on my career as stuff like The Secret, manifesting things, The Pick Up Guide about neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) that circulated in the late 90s, and moving furniture (which taught me that all manual labor is exploitive because the lion's share of profit always goes to the people held in high esteem not the people who do the most work). That said, I'm a highly emotional person who wears my heart on my sleeve. YMMV.
luord 7y ago
I'm against the concept of performance reviews on principle for two reasons: 1. No matter how friendly and "two-way street" the manager tries to make it, the engineers are still captive audience with their jobs on the line while the manager holds all the cards. Even if the engineer is encouraged to, and does, provide feedback, this feedback is, at best, in the air. 2. No matter the feedback, the outcome is pretty similar: negative feedback encourages the engineer to look for other options because of the desire to be valued better. Positive feedback encourages the developer to look for new horizons that might be more challenging and/or more rewarding. Of course, I don't have a solution, because the closest alternative I can think of also has its own problems. That is, for the team to be completely self-managed so engineers encourage each other by deliberately highlighting and logging the teammates' achievements and for these achievements to be rewarded eventually by management. Regardless, if performance reviews are inevitable, this article is a nice, if maybe too optimistic, approach. Ultimately, I'd bet that the number of the engineers he manages who considered that his reviews were, at best, the best of a bad situation is more than zero.

141 points by 2bluesc 7y ago

The best discussion I've ever seen on performance reviews was Joel Spolsky's observation (https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/03/incentive-pay-considered-harmful/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/03/incentive-pay-cons...): "Negative reviews, obviously, have a devastating effect on morale. In fact, giving somebody a review that is positive, but not as positive as that person expected, also has a negative effect on morale. ... Most software managers have no choice but to go along with performance review systems that are already in place. If you’re in this position, the only way to prevent teamicide is to simply give everyone on your team a gushing review."

wccrawford 7y ago
I've only gotten gushing reviews for years, and at some point I started wondering how real they were. I've come to the conclusion that I really am doing well, but the reviews are not a way to prove that. They just prove that the company still wants me around, not that I'm excelling at my job.
ChrisMarshallNY 7y ago
Joel Spolsky is awesome. As a manager for many years, I feel I did well in this arena. I was able to keep a team of highly intelligent, experienced engineers together for decades, under...interesting circumstances. In the last fifteen years or so, our HR started to show a type of attitude that I think is prevalent in the modern American HR culture; that the corporation is always "on top," and that the employee/job applicant is always in a subservient position, in some way. I was instructed to word and score my reviews to (in my opinion) enforce this mindset. The scores generally got lower (did I mention that my team was "high functioning"?). I was actually told to lower my scores a few times. I made up for this by giving very "gushing" wording on the reviews. The employees knew the score. HR was applying their "alpha dog" mindset in all types of ways, so we all knew where this was coming from. It really didn't make much difference on salary increases. The range was generally tiny, and the score barely made any difference (Salary was not a real motivator). Don't even get me started on my own reviews. Several years, I got none at all, and that suited me fine, as the ones I did get were obviously quickly thrown together, using an SaaS "fill in the blanks" app.
- cushychicken 7y ago
  >...a type of attitude that I think is prevalent in the modern American HR culture; that the corporation is always "on top," and that the employee/job applicant is always in a subservient position, in some way. I note this attitude as well. Where do you think it comes from?
  - ChrisMarshallNY 7y ago
    I can't speak for other companies, but our HR was run by the corporate Counsel (lawyer). I think that's increasingly common, these days, as the job of HR is generally to protect the corporation from its own employees. Lawyers have a naturally adversarial mindset. They never pass up any opportunity for an edge, as that edge can give them some leverage. That's not really a good or bad thing. That's their job, but it can be a bit jarring, when you encounter it.
    - cushychicken 7y ago
      Makes sense to me!

CoolGuySteve 7y ago

When was the last time you sat down with your spouse or someone else you spent a large portion of your day with and gave them a really fair and objective performance review? Make sure to frame the negatives along with the positives and use concrete examples: Honey, I liked that casserole but the way you did the dishes could use some work, I found a spot on my glass the next day. I'm hoping you'll improve by Q3. No. Performance reviews are not how humans are meant to interact. Even slight negatives will be blown out of proportion in peoples minds, that's how we're hard wired. So why create this drama intentionally in your company? If the person is really bad, then you have an intervention or possibly terminate them, but most people are just okay. Regular 1:1 meetings should be the only 'performance review' needed, a way to make sure both the manager and subordinate are on the same page about everything.

mk89 7y ago
I second this one. I am currently reading the Manager's path and it mentions a lot 1-1s. Like, a lot. However, let's be honest. A - 1-1 takes time, effort, willingness to do something. Listening, trying to solve a problem, etc. Retaining your employees... Blabla. The more I read it, the more I feel like it's a dream. Reality is:80-20%. 80% is good, 20% is need to improve or try to get rid of. And in the worst case, I hire new people. The good ones will go? Sad. We will see how to prevent such things... However, the answer is: caring. Performance reviews are just a formal way to do what the first poster has written.
- pdpi 7y ago
  Speaking as a senior IC with some management experience, I find that 1:1s depend a lot more on the report than on the manager. I had exactly one really good manager in the past who could extract value from our 1:1s when I wasn't actively helping make the 1:1s productive, and, as a manager, I sucked at getting value out of the 1:1s. Today, as an IC again, I'm in a place where I can make the 1:1s valuable by driving the conversation myself — by preemptively telling my manager what my concerns are, and what I need from him, and I achieve this largely by saying the things my old manager knew how to coax out of me, and the things I wished my reports had told me.

SamuelAdams 7y ago

As a developer who has worked at several billion-dollar (non FAANG) companies, the only thing I get out of performance reviews are one of two things: 1. You're doing a great job. Keep at it. 2. You're doing terribly. We are going to start a paper trail to fire you (aka performance improvement plan). The only reason performance reviews exist at companies is so they have an established way of firing people. Even if I do a great job, top marks across the board, I only receive a 2-4% increase in salary. On the rare occasion I might get a bonus. So there's zero incentive to go "above and beyond" or otherwise improve in a way that benefits the company I am currently employed for. Now, I continue to improve every day by learning new skills. But these new skills rarely relate to what the current company needs - these are simply things I am curious about. However, these skills will never end up in a "core competency plan" because those plans, by nature, only list skills that benefit the company. Because the target / competency plan only benefits the company, the performance review (which is based off the comp plan) feels very one-sided / binary. So instead of focusing intently on those competencies, I do the minimum necessary to fulfill them (less than 2 hours of work) and spend the rest of my "self improvement time" learning things I'm genuinely curious about. Then, when I have a marketable understanding of these new tools / tech, I jump ship, usually for a higher compensation package. If you want performance reviews to actually matter, allow people to set goals that do not always benefit the company. Understand your employees have many different interests and give them space to explore those interests.

harimau777 7y ago
Did you mean to post this a second time?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- cuddlybacon 7y ago
  It is posted by a different username.
- rileymat2 7y ago
  It is a completely different user. Based on history, the other one seems to be regurgitating comments.

ihiulll 7y ago

rileymat2 7y ago
That sounds very familiar.
- marcinzm 7y ago
  Check out ihiulll's other comments, all are copies of someone else's comment. Seems like some sort of karma farming spam attempt.
  - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    20 day old account, -9 karma. It isn't working.

Nursie 7y ago

I'm a contractor these days, I work with clients for a few months to a year or so at a time and then switch company, project and everything else. One of the major reasons I switched from regular employment to this model was not having to deal with bullshit like annual reviews, personal development plans, coming-year-business plans etc etc and other corporate nonsense. Maybe it works for those organisations, I don't really care, it always been just a waste of time for me. Particularly the annual reviews where you're supposed to show how what you achieved this year matches up to or exceeeds the plans agreed at the beginning of the year. Without fail those plans became irrelevant within a couple of months and I'd done something entirely different to the plan for the rest of the year. The review result thus always came down to how much management liked and appreciated what you had done for the year, which is a metric they would have used anyway and without the need for a tedious process.

x0x0 7y ago

Oh god, another info product written by some new manager who has a whopping... three years of experience as a manager. Of small teams. It's the same as all those 2 year developers who discover a pattern or two and gush advice on how they're the canonical authority to write MVC in rails. Try waiting for year 10 or so before dispensing your wisdom. Because the first part of dispensing wisdom is having the wisdom and experience to dispense. We can do better than Eternal September for advice.

CarelessExpert 7y ago
So do you have anything constructive to add to the conversation? Alternative resources you've found useful in your, I assume, long tenure as a manager and coach of staff? I mean, we can't do better than "Eternal September" here on HN if talented, experienced folks like yourself don't share the wisdom you've acquired over your long and illustrious career. Right?
- x0x0 7y ago
  Yes, I constructively added this guy has no idea what he's blathering on about, and is definitely not letting that stop him from pretending he's an authority and dispensing advice. Now, you have a choice on where to learn things. You can learn eg development best practices from people who have 10 or 20 years of development, or you can ask someone who's built small greenfield projects. You apparently think we should value advice from noob's equally; good luck with that there. Since you don't know how to use google, try going to barnes and noble and asking them to get copies of Camille Fournier's or Michael Lopp's books.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - CarelessExpert 7y ago
    > Yes, I constructively added this guy has no idea what he's blathering on about, and is definitely not letting that stop him from pretending he's an authority and dispensing advice. Okay, well, so... examples? This sounds an awful lot like a simple appeal to authority to me. But "noobs" may have useful insights, just as "people who have 10 or 20 years of development" might have bad habits, biases, or misconceptions. Look, I think we can all use our brains and determine if this post contains some value or not. Personally, I've been a manager of staff for about five years, and the more regimented, structural approach outlined in this post illuminates some ideas that I might explore in my own practices, and dovetails well with how I've been trying to improve myself in this area. Am I going to take what this guy has written and follow it as though it's the bible of staff management? No, of course not. Again, I have a functioning brain, and in general I try to use it. But, I will read this post with an open, thinking mind and decide for myself if there's value to be gotten from it. That said, I come to these comment threads to find commentary or discourse that might touch on things I've missed when reading this material for myself. Ideally, that would include constructive criticisms of the content so we can, as a community, learn both from the post itself and from contributions from folks like yourself. If that's not what you're here for, and you'd rather just tear the author (and this community) down, I guess that's fine. But it seems like a waste of your time, not to mention an unnecessary expenditure of emotional energy. HN comment threads are really not worth getting worked up about. Anyway, I hope you have a good day!

guessmyname 7y ago

I had a performance review once… The only thing that I decided to change was my attitude in the office: I started smiling more, wearing nicer clothes, cleaning my desk, saluting my co-workers in the morning and wishing people a nice day in the elevators. All of a sudden my next performance review was labelled as “great” and I got a $5k bonus followed by $10k four months later. Nothing related to my workload changed. My theory is: either my co-workers, manager, human resources or all of them were concerned about my facial expressions and personality being always neutral, doing just what I was supposed to do in the office: work. My co-workers did not have anything special to say about me, nothing bad nor good, I talked with them just enough to do my job, almost never said anything about my life, family or the things I did during the weekend. Many people draw mental images of you using the information you give them about what you do in your life outside of work, so I assume they unconsciously translated the lack of personal details as “this person is not good for me” and somehow this ended up in the performance review that almost fired me. Years later, here I am, still playing the psychological game at work. It is tiring but it works.

brlewis 7y ago
Sounds like the process worked great. Your performance review led to you delivering more of what your company wanted to pay you for.
CPLX 7y ago
As a founder and manager I would gladly pay more for people who have a great attitude and improve the general vibe and morale of the team.
- brixon 7y ago
  Years ago I worked for a company with 2 hardware techs. One customer specifically asked to for the "likeable dumb-ass" to help them even though they knew the solution to their problem might take longer, the smarter tech was a loud know-it-all ass hole and no one liked working with him.
- HeroOfAges 7y ago
  Does this mean you would pay a premium and possibly promote a software developer that doesn't contribute to the product by writing code, but remembers people's birthdays and plans team lunches?

southphillyman 7y ago

Unless you work for a FAANG, in fintech, or some other company where raises and bonuses are a real thing these reviews tend to be useless. A lot of managers are busy and just throw something together at the last minute, subordinates realize the process is just a formality and stop putting much effort into it as time goes on, etc. Sometimes these meetings are actually counter productive because you end up arguing for a tiny slice of the bonus pie having to "sell" yourself to an individual who knows well what you have contributed. I have witnessed multiple people quitting shortly after feeling underappeciated in a performance review.

JustSomeNobody 7y ago

If you're in a position to review employees, never ever ever let them go into a review not knowing what is going to be on it. How do you do that? Communicate. Communicate constantly. Talk about their wins. Talk about their non-wins. Talk about their skills. Talk about what needs to be improved. Talk to them about what they want to learn. Talk to them about what they have learned. Talk to them all throughout the year.

duxup 7y ago

The yearly performance review system at most places I worked seemed to be largely formalized process laid out by HR to determine raises .. or paths to firing someone. That's it... the fact that it involved me seemed entirely unnecessary as mostly it was between HR and my boss and/or his boss as to what if any actions came of it. Sometimes not even my boss... Whatever work I did day to day if my manager had an issue I sure hope he would come to me and we'd work it out right then and there. At smaller companies things like raises and moving on were just determined largely as needed. I changed careers recently and managed 5 or 6 raises in salary in about a year's time (this was largely because I had no past career experience programming so I came in pretty low). In the meantime a coworker was politely invited to look elsewhere (more of a situation where everyone knew this wasn't the environment for him and not so much anything he did 'wrong' and they let him work while job hunting) after about 3 months of work.

oxfordmale 7y ago

Performance reviews are a waste of time, there has been plenty of research that shows they add little value to a company. Unfortunately is an easy process for HR to justify their existence and makes putting people on performance management a lot easier. Even worse are 360 reviews. Research has shown that peer review are generally inaccurate and often politically motivated.

reggieband 7y ago

I absolutely hate reviews. There is little I dislike more in formalized work culture than the annual review process. I recently worked at a place that did mid-year and year-end reviews and it was twice the hate. I worked at another company that had a massive job competency matrix distributed in excel with nearly 100 cells to fill in. I've had managers change my self-evaluations to ensure I used the exact language necessary to allow them to give me a raise/promotion that they felt I deserved. I've also been in the mid-level management hell that is stack ranking where 10 TLs get put into a room with senior managers and argue what order devs are relative to each other. But as a TL I've managed devs who are eager for this feedback. I don't understand it since I hate it. I also ensure I do 1:1s frequently and I focus on career topics during those discussions. Despite my inability to understand I've witnessed it many time: some people not only want reviews they feel like they need the review. This is especially true the younger a developer is. My theory is that they are still in the after-glow of university and they are used to the idea of regularly getting grades. So while I find reviews to be little more than justification for adjusting renumeration while providing legal cover, I respect as a leader the genuine need of many to receive a clear and useful performance review at least once a year.

asdfman123 7y ago
Young people who "need reviews" do not actually need reviews but validation. Giving them a mixed review is not going to help their performance or their morale. Imagine your wife or SO came to you and asked "Am I pretty?" and you told them, "Well, you've made some good efforts, but I think you could definitely dress a little nicer and lose some weight. I know we can get there after enough effort, though. Be a team player!"
- reggieband 7y ago
  > Young people who "need reviews" do not actually need reviews but validation. I think that is cynical and I believe that you are generally incorrect. Every engineer is individual and has their own needs. It is my belief that good management attempts to understand the needs of individuals and will provide them what they need. Maybe you have managed people who were seeking validation during the review process, I have no doubt they exist. But I have personal experience with team members, to whom I have had the responsibility to deliver reviews, and they were looking for clear feedback.

kqr 7y ago

Nobody has mentioned Deming yet, so here we go. Team members generally all perform around the same level, at least within a couple of standard deviations. The reason for this is simple: individual skill does not determine performance in a team as much as the rest of the environment does. The system a software developer works in shapes their performance so much more than individual differences. So if you're going to assign promotions and bonuses on individual results, make God damn sure these results are truly off the charts compared to their peers. If you don't, you're basically running a lottery. Except you don't call it that, so your team will still try to actively do things to try to win this lottery. And these things will not be in line with what you want your team to be doing, because they will try those things first and see that they don't work. Because it's a lottery they have very little ability to affect, so obviously nothing will work. What's worse, you might very well also create internal competition, where your team stops working as a team. They will realise they can't win your lottery by doing great work, so they will start to prevent their teammates from doing great work instead. Performance reviews are so stupid. Just talk to your people. Have a conversation about how they are doing. And then let the entire team have the bonus(es). It can be so simple.

BurningFrog 7y ago
> The system a software developer works in shapes their performance so much more than individual differences. So what you need to reward is people who improve the system!
asveikau 7y ago
I would say it's worse than running a lottery. It becomes a self-reenforcing thing where you mentally bucket highly ranked individuals as "your good people". Then you give them the prestigious assignments at the exclusion of others, and that act alone gets them the bonus and promo at the next round, at the cost of under-investing in those who you passed over and demoralizing them. It becomes a tool to create and re-enforce bias, or an echo chamber.
bubba1236 7y ago
yeah you've not worked with low iq ppl before, your second sentence is false.

dvtrn 7y ago

Of all things, this stood out to me: I've read reports of hazing, students being yelled at, forced to do pushups Have any of these reports been publicized anywhere? I have a morbid curiosity to read about this and what people's responses to those moments were, compared to what my (a US Army veteran) response would be to someone who isn't my commanding officer telling me to get on the ground and push[0]. [0] It wouldn't be very polite, and it may contain a few expletives.

brlewis 7y ago
I think this was intended for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21971223 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21971223
- dvtrn 7y ago
  Oops, major mistake on my part there, had both threads open in different tabs. Thank you.

gwbas1c 7y ago

I find performance reviews are better at confirming management problems to employees than reviewing employee performance. In once case a manager complained that I wasn't working on a component that wasn't my responsibility. (I was always happy to help!) I had to get the CTO involved, and then my manager stopped dragging me into this component. (Edit: It was SSO, and I wrote the browser part. About 95% of the bugs were server-side.) In another case, a project failed because it wasn't managed. My manager basically said something like, "I'm surprised to learn..." At this point, I realized that he wasn't paying any attention to the project.

makecheck 7y ago

The problem is the idea of an “annual” review itself, such as: - arbitrary annual review times almost never coincide with the most useful times to summarize contributions (e.g. try handing out bonuses the day after a big project ends, not months later) - similarly, arbitrary review times disadvantage new employees; you essentially “waste” a few months on tasks that won’t end up counting this year (“not enough contributions yet”) and that won’t count next year either! (oh those tasks were from last review cycle so...) - most systems I’ve seen will force you to summarize your worth in just a few broad strokes, and so much valuable work falls through the cracks in such systems

tibiahurried 7y ago

My normal process is to join a company, do good work so that I get a good performance review and likely promotion in max 2 years. If I really like the job I stick around for another year so 3 in total. I then leave and jump on another company and do the same. Sticking with the same company for more than 3 years does not gain you much in terms of other promotions or salary/bonus bumps. Loyalty is not your friend. Try to take advantage as much as possible from the current job market for as long as it last ... and care only for your personal career growth and money. Everything else is corporate bs.

cutenewt 7y ago

The biggest problem with performance reviews: managers are too scared to give feedback throughout the year, so when the feedback does come during the performance review - the employee is in utter shock. Generally, there's no perfect time to give others' feedback. Most people hate criticizing others. But as a manager, I find that it's necessary; otherwise the performance review experience is less than desirable. I have been using some performance feedback generators, and it's been helpful in helping me figure out how to phrase feedback so it's specific and mentioned in a way that's not careless or thoughtless.

zackmorris 7y ago

Good article, but I thought that the linked "shields down" article about what triggers an employee to leave a company was equally insightful: https://randsinrepose.com/archives/shields-down/ https://randsinrepose.com/archives/shields-down/ In my experience, that's happened at most jobs that I've held, and with most people who left. I find it kind of sad that with all of the work that goes into building a company, and all of the resources and expertise available at their disposal, that managers and employees can't really talk about what's really going on. Most interactions at a company are a delicate dance to preserve the thin veil of hope that makes capitalism possible. In the end, it really truly is just business. So I've found it helpful to treat it as such, and not get too wrapped up in the emotion of it. Something that really helped me was watching the entire Mad Men series, to get an idea of how this all works. I know that's old news today, but that show arguably had as much effect on my career as stuff like The Secret, manifesting things, The Pick Up Guide about neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) that circulated in the late 90s, and moving furniture (which taught me that all manual labor is exploitive because the lion's share of profit always goes to the people held in high esteem not the people who do the most work). That said, I'm a highly emotional person who wears my heart on my sleeve. YMMV.

luord 7y ago

I'm against the concept of performance reviews on principle for two reasons: 1. No matter how friendly and "two-way street" the manager tries to make it, the engineers are still captive audience with their jobs on the line while the manager holds all the cards. Even if the engineer is encouraged to, and does, provide feedback, this feedback is, at best, in the air. 2. No matter the feedback, the outcome is pretty similar: negative feedback encourages the engineer to look for other options because of the desire to be valued better. Positive feedback encourages the developer to look for new horizons that might be more challenging and/or more rewarding. Of course, I don't have a solution, because the closest alternative I can think of also has its own problems. That is, for the team to be completely self-managed so engineers encourage each other by deliberately highlighting and logging the teammates' achievements and for these achievements to be rewarded eventually by management. Regardless, if performance reviews are inevitable, this article is a nice, if maybe too optimistic, approach. Ultimately, I'd bet that the number of the engineers he manages who considered that his reviews were, at best, the best of a bad situation is more than zero.