5 ms·

How can giving praise hurt you?

giantg2 6y ago
If the company's unofficial policy is that if someone gets a high rating on the team, then someone else must be given a low rating to balance that out, even if they don't deserve it.
- sjtindell 6y ago
  Thanks, I haven’t experienced that. How painful. I agree with other posters here when I read about your problem in these comments. Personally I think of my manager and performance review more as symptoms or results of a process, rather than the source of anything. Promoting myself - Github, LinkedIn, trainings and brown bag sessions for my coworkers, program completion emails, those are part of my job just as much as personal learning, architectural planning, and writing code. In fact because I don’t want to fear for my job, they are almost more important. Perhaps it’s not the ideal. But it’s the job description. There are so many pluses to what is essentially a god-level nine to five grind: freedom, intellectual work, lots of money and benefits, etc. I just accept that some of these non-ideal extras are part of my deal. Hope I’m not preaching, trying to help.
  - giantg2 6y ago
    Thanks for sharing! I loved giving a brown bag on Raspberry Pi project to my teammates. I know it's not a great work related topic, but installing and using linux and tips on securing it was at least tangentially related. I have to say, I wish I made lots of money.
- vlz 6y ago
  > someone else must be given a low rating to balance that out, even if they don't deserve it I wonder how this kind of thinking starts. Is there any rationale for this?
  - benhurmarcel 6y ago
    In my company, employees grades have to follow a normal distribution (HR rule). Most people must be ranked average, some must be ranked above, some must be ranked below. Otherwise all managers would give above average grades to most people, because it makes them look better, avoid conflict, and everyone is always convinced they're above average. So HR forces managers to find some losers. If a coworker is given an above average grade, it means I'm much less likely to get one. But in practice it doesn't matter too much because managers tend to distribute grades depending on time since last promotion/significant raise, to be able to justify the next one.
  - giantg2 6y ago
    The thinking is based on the budget and also to make managers show "managerial courage" that they are capable of delivering bad news.

If the company's unofficial policy is that if someone gets a high rating on the team, then someone else must be given a low rating to balance that out, even if they don't deserve it.

sjtindell 6y ago
Thanks, I haven’t experienced that. How painful. I agree with other posters here when I read about your problem in these comments. Personally I think of my manager and performance review more as symptoms or results of a process, rather than the source of anything. Promoting myself - Github, LinkedIn, trainings and brown bag sessions for my coworkers, program completion emails, those are part of my job just as much as personal learning, architectural planning, and writing code. In fact because I don’t want to fear for my job, they are almost more important. Perhaps it’s not the ideal. But it’s the job description. There are so many pluses to what is essentially a god-level nine to five grind: freedom, intellectual work, lots of money and benefits, etc. I just accept that some of these non-ideal extras are part of my deal. Hope I’m not preaching, trying to help.
- giantg2 6y ago
  Thanks for sharing! I loved giving a brown bag on Raspberry Pi project to my teammates. I know it's not a great work related topic, but installing and using linux and tips on securing it was at least tangentially related. I have to say, I wish I made lots of money.
vlz 6y ago
> someone else must be given a low rating to balance that out, even if they don't deserve it I wonder how this kind of thinking starts. Is there any rationale for this?
- benhurmarcel 6y ago
  In my company, employees grades have to follow a normal distribution (HR rule). Most people must be ranked average, some must be ranked above, some must be ranked below. Otherwise all managers would give above average grades to most people, because it makes them look better, avoid conflict, and everyone is always convinced they're above average. So HR forces managers to find some losers. If a coworker is given an above average grade, it means I'm much less likely to get one. But in practice it doesn't matter too much because managers tend to distribute grades depending on time since last promotion/significant raise, to be able to justify the next one.
- giantg2 6y ago
  The thinking is based on the budget and also to make managers show "managerial courage" that they are capable of delivering bad news.