5 ms·

Or perhaps they have and that is why your performance ratings are flat, you get a lousy annual raise/bonus (if any), and your career is stalled?

by cyb_ 5y ago

Retric 5y ago
Performance ratings are meaningless if you’re jumping ship every 2-4 years and the difference is between working twice as hard is a 2% raise vs a 4% one. What companies forget is new employees see the legacy of how you treated old employees over time. The basic structure of small consistent pay bumps was extremely effective when people stayed at companies for decades. Work twice as hard and make 2 percent more for the next 30 years, that’s a big bump. Pensions pushed that out so even people nearing retirement still had reason to care. I am not recommending people do the minimum, just acknowledging how people respond to incentives.
- dr-detroit 5y ago
  sorry due to covid your 2% was cancelled so your performance is worthless have a nice day.
- captainredbeard 5y ago
  The gap at big tech companies between okay and "doing well" (i.e. twice the effort) is not a 4% raise, it's a 40% raise.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Retric 5y ago
    That’s easy enough to check by actually talking with other employees. It’s really not a company wide question, often large raises early are fairly easy but get dramatically harder as compensation increases. Which of course change the effort:reward calculation over time.
throwawaysleep 5y ago
Except they aren’t flat. I worked hard the first two quarters. Got a 5/6. Did very little this quarter and also got a 5/6. So I’m basically just vegetating until I quit.
- salt-thrower 5y ago
  This is what all the cool-aid drinkers are missing in this thread. You can feel like you worked your ass off, or you can feel like you've been coasting, and still get the same performance review. I've seen genuinely valuable engineers get middling performance reviews because they didn't commit as many lines of code to Github that quarter as the other guy on their team. That's an extreme example, but even in a "good" system, management is notoriously blind to the actual value of an engineer. In a perfect system, performance could be measured empirically and compensation would be based on that. But no one on earth has figured that out yet, and something tells me they never will.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    It's not just about performance reviews. Imagine a world in which it's very difficult to assess performance, because that's often the reality. How does this system flourish if everyone is doing the minimum / least? It doesn't. It fails. 'Do A Good Job'. That the performance reviews say are a secondary factor. If you all stop doing good work, it will fall apart quickly and you will all be poor.
    - salt-thrower 5y ago
      > If you all stop doing good work, it will fall apart quickly and you will all be poor. I'm replying late, but wow, this is a gem of an argument. Really? The economic incentives that create this lucrative field in the first place are all gonna collapse if devs realize they don't need to bust ass at their job anymore? It's amazing that you think the individual work ethic of engineers is the only thing holding the tech economy together.
      - 5y ago

Or perhaps they have and that is why your performance ratings are flat, you get a lousy annual raise/bonus (if any), and your career is stalled?

by cyb_ 5y ago

Or perhaps they have and that is why your performance ratings are flat, you get a lousy annual raise/bonus (if any), and your career is stalled?

Retric 5y ago

Performance ratings are meaningless if you’re jumping ship every 2-4 years and the difference is between working twice as hard is a 2% raise vs a 4% one. What companies forget is new employees see the legacy of how you treated old employees over time. The basic structure of small consistent pay bumps was extremely effective when people stayed at companies for decades. Work twice as hard and make 2 percent more for the next 30 years, that’s a big bump. Pensions pushed that out so even people nearing retirement still had reason to care. I am not recommending people do the minimum, just acknowledging how people respond to incentives.

dr-detroit 5y ago
sorry due to covid your 2% was cancelled so your performance is worthless have a nice day.
captainredbeard 5y ago
The gap at big tech companies between okay and "doing well" (i.e. twice the effort) is not a 4% raise, it's a 40% raise.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Retric 5y ago
  That’s easy enough to check by actually talking with other employees. It’s really not a company wide question, often large raises early are fairly easy but get dramatically harder as compensation increases. Which of course change the effort:reward calculation over time.

throwawaysleep 5y ago

Except they aren’t flat. I worked hard the first two quarters. Got a 5/6. Did very little this quarter and also got a 5/6. So I’m basically just vegetating until I quit.

salt-thrower 5y ago
This is what all the cool-aid drinkers are missing in this thread. You can feel like you worked your ass off, or you can feel like you've been coasting, and still get the same performance review. I've seen genuinely valuable engineers get middling performance reviews because they didn't commit as many lines of code to Github that quarter as the other guy on their team. That's an extreme example, but even in a "good" system, management is notoriously blind to the actual value of an engineer. In a perfect system, performance could be measured empirically and compensation would be based on that. But no one on earth has figured that out yet, and something tells me they never will.
- jollybean 5y ago
  It's not just about performance reviews. Imagine a world in which it's very difficult to assess performance, because that's often the reality. How does this system flourish if everyone is doing the minimum / least? It doesn't. It fails. 'Do A Good Job'. That the performance reviews say are a secondary factor. If you all stop doing good work, it will fall apart quickly and you will all be poor.
  - salt-thrower 5y ago
    > If you all stop doing good work, it will fall apart quickly and you will all be poor. I'm replying late, but wow, this is a gem of an argument. Really? The economic incentives that create this lucrative field in the first place are all gonna collapse if devs realize they don't need to bust ass at their job anymore? It's amazing that you think the individual work ethic of engineers is the only thing holding the tech economy together.
    - 5y ago