> - A tendency for managers to gear up more heavily with negative rather than positive feedback prior to reviews to reinforce their evaluations > - A tendency

> - A tendency for managers to gear up more heavily with negative rather than positive feedback prior to reviews to reinforce their evaluations > - A tendency of some reportees to play the performance review game, focusing on keywords and using selected past experiences to justify high performance behavior Creating a system that defines pay will result in employees optimizing around that system. > - High expectaions of raises/promotions every performance review, i.e. twice a year > - Anxiety and frustration related to recurrence and size of pay raises and promotions All of life is more expensive than last year and the year before; company profits still quite high. > - Subpar experience for the team. I would like for them to have a more fufilling and impactful performance review experience. They're there for the pay. Unless the performance review results in more money and/or a better life, you're not going to get a "fulfilling and impactful performance review experience". This is coupled by new hires generally getting comp offers at or above current staff comp rates. If you want people to feel good about their role, you have to pay them at or above what they'd make leaving for somewhere else. > Are you having a mostly positive or negative performance review experience? I've never really seen a process that wasn't toxic and anti-employee. Performance review biases towards managerial traits and away from individual contributor traits, IME, such that individual contributors that aren't interested in management score lower than aspiring managers, even if their actual job is unrelated to management. Similarly, performance is measured against The Next Role as opposed to the current job. As in, you're compared to the role above yours, suggesting you'd want it, rather than your actual role. You could look like a great employee if you only cared about your current job, but performance reviews are generally (kind of uselessly) focused on promotion. Coupled with the aforementioned managers' track, it's usually a pretty shitty experience.