Annual reviews are a safety net. In large, mature organizations there is pressure to enforce a minimum standard of management. That’s where I see annual reviews

Annual reviews are a safety net. In large, mature organizations there is pressure to enforce a minimum standard of management. That’s where I see annual reviews coming in. If you’re working in a well functioning team, you should be getting and giving feedback on a weekly basis (at least). In those cases, the results of an annual review should be a formality. A confirmation of what you already know from a year of feedback. One common organizational anti-pattern I see is limiting promotions to the annual review period. Annual reviews should be the minimum frequency at which you are evaluated. Unfortunately it’s easy to fall into the trap of _only_ assessing promotions at this time. Startups have a huge advantage here. A year in seed stage to series C startup is a tremendous amount of time. You’re forced to reevaluate everything including employee performance and responsibilities on a much more regular basis.