4 ms·

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 perfor

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.
  - shinryuu 7y ago
    I've always found it a bit difficult to fully trust the manager because of the power differential. So that way I've often not done a lot of talking driving the conversation.
    - mk89 7y ago
      And I think you are right. However, I wonder how you communicate your needs for... Let's say a raise? Or a better position?
      - pdpi 7y ago
        You don't want to approach a promotion by saying "I want a promotion now-ish". Rather, you proactively start the conversation by saying "I want to be promoted in 6mo/1y. How do I get there?", and then you keep that conversation going. For raises, if your relationship with your manager is half decent it's fine to just ask for it. If you're a junior-ish IC your manager is also likely a lower-level manager who feels more affinity for ICs than for upper management and he'll side with you when bubbling your request up to the right people. If you're more senior, you have more leverage and the power dynamics start inverting a bit too. Also, you're expected to have the soft skills to manage that conversation.
    - pdpi 7y ago
      The power differential is often not nearly as pronounced as you think (this definitely becomes much more noticeable as you become more senior). Also, when I say that you should be talking about your concerns and being proactive, I mean that, with my manager, 1:1s revolve around topics like me expressing concern that, as upper management pushes for senior ICs to spend more time working on company-level (as opposed to team-level) work, the more junior members of the team are getting less support from me than they should, and we talk about how to manage that, by reprioritising hiring or by pushing back on some less-important initiatives. We talk about how much babysitting our intern will require over the next few weeks and who'll handle it, and about him asking for my opinion/advice on technical topics his other teams are dealing with that smell weird and he wants a second opinion, or me asking his opinion/advice on whether I'm striking the right balance between individual contributions and supporting others. That sort of thing.
decebalus1 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? About a year go, a user on Blind wrote a post in which he explained how he and his wife were doing yearly mutual performance reviews wrt their marriage. It was satire, of course, but everyone had a blast putting things into perspective about the toxicity of this practice.
- hitekker 7y ago
  I remember that one! The people who defended the practice in that thread were laughed out of the room, if I recall correctly.
- Cactus2018 7y ago
  >> My wife and I write each other annual reviews. Need advice. > My wife and I are competing our annual reviews of each other. One of the challenges I’m facing this year is we didn’t agree on OKRs and I have a lot of qualitative feedback but don’t like how the KPIs look. I’m worried her annual review of me will be similar. We both aligned that we’d max out 401ks, move for promotions and end a car lease. But her career moved faster and we don’t have joint accounts so I failed to enter a savings goal. I’m going to suggest she didn’t save enough to see if I can get insight. Also the household itself did well this year we deceased our order in rate by 15% while moving to a good mix of organics and non frozen items +20%. https://www.teamblind.com/post/My-wife-and-I-write-each-other-annual-reviews-Need-advice-eEzsioRp https://www.teamblind.com/post/My-wife-and-I-write-each-othe...
  - jimktrains2 7y ago
    Just a random not: frozen vegetables (and probably meat) are as healthy as fresh and probably healthier than store-bought canned vegetables. Frozen meals on the other hand...the salt alone could kill you.
anon73044 7y ago
Feels like it really depends on ego. If your employer only hires "rockstar" developers, they'll get used to being treated like rockstar and won't be able to handle any criticism. Same goes for IT and Ops, if everyone gets treated like a hero, no one will ever see a need for improvement. The best performance reviews I've had the are ones where my manager/TL is asking me what I'd like to improve in my work and my team's work. And the next part actually establishing a meaningful and attainable goal. If your spouse does something that drives you nuts, do you bottle that resentment up and save it for later (too late) or do you have the open and honest conversation to get through it early?
- CoolGuySteve 7y ago
  >If your spouse does something that drives you nuts, do you bottle that resentment up and save it for later (too late) or do you have the open and honest conversation to get through it early? Of course not, I wait until the end of the year, compose a 360 analysis using feedback from 5 of her peers, and we work through her KPIs together. Come on, this isn't about ego, if you had the social interaction of a "performance review" in any other setting, people would think you're a psychopath. Coming away from these meetings with positive feelings seems more like Stockholm syndrome than anything else.
  - anon73044 7y ago
    >Coming away from these meetings with positive feelings seems more like Stockholm syndrome than anything else. Why would an employer want you to experience anything less? And if you really hated that feeling, you'd have already started looking for somewhere else to work.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
dilyevsky 7y ago
Employer is NOT your spouse. If actually think it is, you’re in for a tough breakup because it certainly doesn’t operate in those terms.

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.
- shinryuu 7y ago
  I've always found it a bit difficult to fully trust the manager because of the power differential. So that way I've often not done a lot of talking driving the conversation.
  - mk89 7y ago
    And I think you are right. However, I wonder how you communicate your needs for... Let's say a raise? Or a better position?
    - pdpi 7y ago
      You don't want to approach a promotion by saying "I want a promotion now-ish". Rather, you proactively start the conversation by saying "I want to be promoted in 6mo/1y. How do I get there?", and then you keep that conversation going. For raises, if your relationship with your manager is half decent it's fine to just ask for it. If you're a junior-ish IC your manager is also likely a lower-level manager who feels more affinity for ICs than for upper management and he'll side with you when bubbling your request up to the right people. If you're more senior, you have more leverage and the power dynamics start inverting a bit too. Also, you're expected to have the soft skills to manage that conversation.
  - pdpi 7y ago
    The power differential is often not nearly as pronounced as you think (this definitely becomes much more noticeable as you become more senior). Also, when I say that you should be talking about your concerns and being proactive, I mean that, with my manager, 1:1s revolve around topics like me expressing concern that, as upper management pushes for senior ICs to spend more time working on company-level (as opposed to team-level) work, the more junior members of the team are getting less support from me than they should, and we talk about how to manage that, by reprioritising hiring or by pushing back on some less-important initiatives. We talk about how much babysitting our intern will require over the next few weeks and who'll handle it, and about him asking for my opinion/advice on technical topics his other teams are dealing with that smell weird and he wants a second opinion, or me asking his opinion/advice on whether I'm striking the right balance between individual contributions and supporting others. That sort of thing.

decebalus1 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? About a year go, a user on Blind wrote a post in which he explained how he and his wife were doing yearly mutual performance reviews wrt their marriage. It was satire, of course, but everyone had a blast putting things into perspective about the toxicity of this practice.

hitekker 7y ago
I remember that one! The people who defended the practice in that thread were laughed out of the room, if I recall correctly.
Cactus2018 7y ago
>> My wife and I write each other annual reviews. Need advice. > My wife and I are competing our annual reviews of each other. One of the challenges I’m facing this year is we didn’t agree on OKRs and I have a lot of qualitative feedback but don’t like how the KPIs look. I’m worried her annual review of me will be similar. We both aligned that we’d max out 401ks, move for promotions and end a car lease. But her career moved faster and we don’t have joint accounts so I failed to enter a savings goal. I’m going to suggest she didn’t save enough to see if I can get insight. Also the household itself did well this year we deceased our order in rate by 15% while moving to a good mix of organics and non frozen items +20%. https://www.teamblind.com/post/My-wife-and-I-write-each-other-annual-reviews-Need-advice-eEzsioRp https://www.teamblind.com/post/My-wife-and-I-write-each-othe...
- jimktrains2 7y ago
  Just a random not: frozen vegetables (and probably meat) are as healthy as fresh and probably healthier than store-bought canned vegetables. Frozen meals on the other hand...the salt alone could kill you.

anon73044 7y ago

Feels like it really depends on ego. If your employer only hires "rockstar" developers, they'll get used to being treated like rockstar and won't be able to handle any criticism. Same goes for IT and Ops, if everyone gets treated like a hero, no one will ever see a need for improvement. The best performance reviews I've had the are ones where my manager/TL is asking me what I'd like to improve in my work and my team's work. And the next part actually establishing a meaningful and attainable goal. If your spouse does something that drives you nuts, do you bottle that resentment up and save it for later (too late) or do you have the open and honest conversation to get through it early?

CoolGuySteve 7y ago
>If your spouse does something that drives you nuts, do you bottle that resentment up and save it for later (too late) or do you have the open and honest conversation to get through it early? Of course not, I wait until the end of the year, compose a 360 analysis using feedback from 5 of her peers, and we work through her KPIs together. Come on, this isn't about ego, if you had the social interaction of a "performance review" in any other setting, people would think you're a psychopath. Coming away from these meetings with positive feelings seems more like Stockholm syndrome than anything else.
- anon73044 7y ago
  >Coming away from these meetings with positive feelings seems more like Stockholm syndrome than anything else. Why would an employer want you to experience anything less? And if you really hated that feeling, you'd have already started looking for somewhere else to work.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

dilyevsky 7y ago

Employer is NOT your spouse. If actually think it is, you’re in for a tough breakup because it certainly doesn’t operate in those terms.