19 ms·

Accenture will get rid of annual performance reviews and rankings

153 points by duncanawoods 11y ago

nitin_flanker 11y ago
Yes it is better to point out the shortcoming right after completion of a project rather than reminding about that after a whole fucking year. This will benefit both employees and managers alike.
yuhong 11y ago
Also bad IMO are fixed number of job positions. For factories it might make sense, but for many other jobs... It is one of the reasons why I feel that employment anti-discrimination laws are ineffective.
jsingleton 11y ago
The regular "laddering" process was a massive pain and a huge burden on staff that took away from doing real work. It also had the effect of forcing the most talented people out of the company as they tended to focus on actually building the things the clients wanted rather than playing the ranking game. Ranking was strongly correlated to time spent in the office rather than achievements or output. I don't think this will change the mindset internally although it's a positive move. There is a big company culture of not trying to excel at anything for fear of making a mistake and looking bad. The firm is also full of jokers who haven't got a clue about software and don't even think it's a technology company. Lots of politics too.
- kriro 11y ago
  """The firm is also full of jokers who haven't got a clue about software and don't even think it's a technology company.""" From (limited) experience this is true for many technology consultants. Unfortunately it's also somewhat common practice for business software projects that involve a small/medium sized software company and a gigantic client that the client requires the involvement of Accure et al. to feel more secure. Sadly it is not uncommon to have the consulting "software experts" do nonsensical tasks just so that they are not touching important stuff. These days, I am very skeptical about getting involved in any software projects that involve big name consultants.
  - justuk 11y ago
    A lot of the big names are smaller competitors who were bought out. If I wanted to buy into a big name like that, I would make sure their founding headquarters were based nearby and that they are run by the same soft of people that started it.
- pjmlp 11y ago
  I work for the competition and would say all consulting companies of similar size, suffer from the same diseases.
- _xander 11y ago
  It sounds like you have experience of the firm. I'm interested in tech consulting and was planning on applying after graduation. Would you advise against this? Are there any firms in a similar line of work that you would recommend? (This question is open anyone on HN who wants to chip in).
  - jsingleton 11y ago
    Yes, forgot to cite my source. Been there, done that, got the suits. It depends on what track you choose and what projects you get on, amongst many other things. There are plenty of talented people (at least to begin with) but they tend to get masked by people who would be better suited as contestants on the apprentice. If you go into consulting and you're even vaguely technical (can write simple software) then you will be very frustrated and will probably end up teaching the start group courses. If you're happy to have your non-technical manager take credit for your work then go for it. Solutions is more technical but doesn't pay as well. If you're the sort of person that reads HN (which you obviously are) then it is unlikely to be a good cultural fit for you. Swombat also has experience but I don't know if he'll chip in.
    - aaronchall 11y ago
      Hey, I read Hacker News, and I work at a Bank. You used to work at that firm. Why wouldn't I want to read Hacker News just because I have an MBA and know how to tie a tie (and can squeeze the seven P's of Marketing and Porter's Five Forces into an interleaved bullet pointed presentation on just about anything?)
  - jbattle 11y ago
    My first job out of school was in tech consulting, and I got a lot out of it. In the 5 years I was there I got to see probably 5-8 different companies of all types and sizes. It gave me a better understanding of the different kinds of problems and (sometimes) the positives at various types of companies. Plus, lots of variety in terms of the projects and technology I worked with. It would have been hard to get the same breadth of experience at a single job, and I don't think I've ever had it in me to change companies every 6-12 months.
zitterbewegung 11y ago
Annual performance reviews are annoying and don't make sense anymore because we need faster feedback loops for everyone really.
- twistedpair 11y ago
  There are various firms that use a quarterly review/bonus cycle. While great, this fails to account for the slow moving hulks that are US corporations. Remember, in most places you'll not get in your "Annual Goals" until March/April, will have you mid year review done in September, and then have your annual review due by early November (lest people's year end vacations be a problem). How could you possibly hope for management to promulgate their vision and read a sheet of paper in 3 months or less? Perhaps Profit Sharing is the better angle? At ZoomInfo, each quarter everyone gets a bonus based on the company profits of the quarter, distributed ~equally. If every everyone did a great job and company did well, everyone gets a bigger bonus. Not as great for the rockstars, but it's an incentive for everyone to work together. Of course, if the market is down, it will fail to incentivize people working their asses off to keep the company afloat.
  - plonh 11y ago
    And since rock stars are toxic on teams, this is great. Of eveeyine agrees X is a rock star, they'd happily push for X to be their lead.
davotoula 11y ago
"Brain research has shown that even employees who get positive reviews experience negative effects from the process." Can confirm, both employees that receive good score but not excellent and average score not good are demotivated. Only the excellent minority is motivated.
- __chrismc 11y ago
  As someone who has to give the news about the review outcome, I can confirm this from my own experience as well. Pretty much only those who come out of it as "top-tier" get any benefit, and no amount of "spin" will cushion the news of anything lesser. Of course, this isn't helped by there being an enforced normalisation curve on the ratings…
- pbhjpbhj 11y ago
  >Only the excellent minority is motivated. // Surely a minority of the excellent minority that 1) get recognised as excellent and 2) are motivated by such recognition.
- rayiner 11y ago
  Actually I find when I've gotten an excellent review it's encouraged a little complacency immediately after. Good feedback after a single assignment doesn't seem to do that.
- twistedpair 11y ago
  As someone who typically is a top performer, I found the dance just added overhead. I must keep tallies of all my "goals" and lists of everything I've accomplished in every respective category, and then waste hours cranking out my side of the review. Sure, I don't have time for it, so I make time for it, meaning less time for sleep. A good manager should know what you're contributing without this kabuki theater.
- ObviousScience 11y ago
  I generally got excellents on performance reviews for my brief, entry level stint at Big Corp. I still felt demotivated by the whole process, because it was a forced ranking of the system that wasted the whole teams time to say what everyone had already known: some of us did more work, some of us did less, and some of us were on a faster upward trajectory than others. It turns out that it doesn't actually motivate any of your employees to throw social hierarchies in their face -- it only causes tension and undue focus on micro-social hierarchies (those heiarchies within a social class, eg, the hierarchy of entry level tech workers).
binarymax 11y ago
I remember seeing a Show HN a while back to fill the void for ongoing performance feedback, which sounded interesting. I dug up the post and here is the site: http://finchreviews.com/ http://finchreviews.com/
scotty79 11y ago
Performance reviews and ranks exist for the sole purpose of giving employer excuse not to give most employees more money. "It's not us, it's you." If your employees leave you in two years max anyways, excuse or no excuse, there's not much point having this excuse.
btd 11y ago
Finally! It was very disappointing that girl that smile and had good relationships with out senior manager had the same salary as me, even if i got the best score in our delivery center.
- pbhjpbhj 11y ago
  Doesn't equal pay legislation mean that in practise if you got a pay rise, assuming you're male, that any female doing what might appear in court to be the same job has to get the same pay rise??
  - justizin 11y ago
    IANAL, but I think that's what's sticky about equal pay, or one thing. For a given job, not all _people_ will get the same pay, and as individuals, a particular man and a particular woman may not make the same, but across an organization we should find some balance, there should be women who make more than some men, etc.. I don't think anyone wants a situation where granting any individual a raise means that everyone with similar responsibilities (no two people 'do the same job') gets the same raise. But as I type this, it's clear how all of this grey area can (and surely IS) be leaned upon to maintain the status quo.
    - plonh 11y ago
      If the company does a good job codfying your contribution in a role+level, there is no problem giving everyone in the same role+level the same pay.
tragomaskhalos 11y ago
In my company, years ago, performance rating was done by your line manager just talking to your project manager(s) to find out how you were getting on, and the line manager would assign you a pay rise (or not) accordingly. This was a perfectly sane and workable system. Then the place got engulfed by this insane fad for "performance reviews", which is idiotic on its face for a number of reasons: 1. You request review feedback from peers - this is unworkable because if you work with someone who is useless, and you say so in their review, your working relationship with them becomes untenable; 2. The process also requires "self review", which is nothing but a mechanism for bullshitters to big themselves up. It is also time-consuming, and good people are generally too busy to dedicate much time to it; the bullshitters and timewasters otoh will happily dedicate days to polishing their lies and exaggerations; 3. In general the process massively favours those who play the performance review system, i.e. the politicians; 4. You are required to set "career objectives", which is almost entirely pointless since as a tech person you are largely constrained by what jobs need your skills at the particular moment you become available; there is little tolerance for people sitting around idle waiting for the perfect role that meets their desired objective.
- __chrismc 11y ago
  We possibly work for the same company, as our system - flaws and all - are identical to what you describe. As someone who has to carry out both sides of the process (reviewing staff/managing them through the process, and getting my own review done), I'm most certainly not a fan! Staff seem to fall into two categories - those who see the whole thing as political nonsense they don't have the time for, or have become so turned off by how bad it is that they just don't care about the outcome any more. The Accenture news was raised on an internal discussion about the review process almost immediately, as some people are that keen to get rid of the current way of doing things ASAP. Sadly, I can't see anything coming from it, as the word is that Upper Management values the generated metrics too much to change anything.
  - saiya-jin 11y ago
    well, don't blame them. above certain position (which is usually pretty low), politics overcome skills in terms of progress in career. so what do you expect from bullshitters who bullshitted their way up there into positions of power, that they would cut off their own source of (current and future) success? :) I work in same type of company, and it's pretty obvious how this and similar corporate cr*p clearly doesn't bring the best out of people, sometimes in contrary. If I would be owner/shareholder of any company, ever, first thing I would be concerned how incentives/bonuses for that extra mile/good work are being given. The higher the management, the more bonuses would be tied to long term progress (i know it's easier written than done, but i consider it at least partly responsible for financial turmoil of recent years too).
Rambunctious 11y ago
What a few big name companies (e.g. Microsoft) are getting rid of is the "forced bell curve fit" rankings. The core issue supposedly that team members are loathe to help anyone else succeed as that may not benefit them in the appraisal. Have heard that, in the new model, your manager gets a lot more liberty in deciding how to distribute the appraisal budget for the team instead of the hikes simply following a company-wide rule depending on the employee's rating tier.
- notahacker 11y ago
  My ex-employer went the opposite direction at the beginning of this year: moving towards appraisal related pay, complete with explanations of how management were being given special training on how to fit people to the right overall grade and even fewer top ratings were given out to make the whole thing cost neutral. You may be surprised to learn the process was not greeted by enthusiastic cheers.
delibes 11y ago
So many comments here reflecting ideas from the 2002 book "Abolishing Performance Appraisals - Why They Backfire and What to Do Instead". I think it's well worth a read, especially if you're implementing or in a position to influence these sorts of processes. Feedback is important, but once a year/half/quarter isn't really doing it. And ideally it shouldn't be related to what you're paid, though that's harder to convince people. It can work though, and the book provides some examples of alternatives.
analog31 11y ago
“Employees that do best in performance management systems tend to be the employees that are the most narcissistic and self-promoting,” said Brian Kropp, the HR practice leader for CEB. “Those aren’t necessarily the employees you need to be the best organization going forward.” Maybe I'm fooling myself and I really am narcissistic. But my feeling is that it's not narcissism but simply a rational adaptation to the conditions. What I do when you put a self-review form in front of me, is similar to what I do as a musician when you put some sheet music in front of me: Play the notes and try to make the audience happy.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- kyllo 11y ago
  Exactly. The whole self-review thing is an exercise in "tell me what I want to hear"
  - justizin 11y ago
    It /should/ be an opportunity to reflect on your weaknesses, I don't think I've ever met a manager who would do anything but laugh at all-tens in a self-review, but I have been able to keep annual review conversations short and comfortable by expressing self-knowledge and making it clear that we both wanted me to improve in the same ways, but also that there are simply some areas I'm not as strong in as others, and I should be deployed as such.
    - analog31 11y ago
      In my view, the process has lost that purpose since it became a zero-sum game for determining raises, bonuses, and even layoffs. At the same time it's also a game for my boss, who's competing with other bosses at his level for his raise and bonus budget. He knows that I've been a supervisor, and that I understand the game as well as he does. My boss accepts my all-positive self review, and then reminds me that I have to add two negatives, because it's mandatory. I choose negatives that are completely bland. What it means is that dealing with my weaknesses is not part of the annual review process. But I'm free to engage in as much introspection as I want, and my boss is welcome to chat with me about it at any time. On the other hand, I might choose to keep some of my weaknesses to myself. Working through my own shortcomings is something that might be a rational choice. And there's such a thing as too much information. ;-)
swombat 11y ago
It's sad and sort of amusing that most people here seem to be misunderstanding the point of this entirely. Unfortunately, this is likely prophetic of the way people within Accenture will misunderstand this too. Most of the grievances in comments here at this point are not so much about the feedback system as about the pay system. There is no mention in the article of "pay", "compensation", "salary", "reward", or any other word talking about the pay system. There is no indication that this is what's being operated on. What is happening is that they're replacing a yearly feedback process with a continuous feedback process. That's very worthwhile, but it won't solve issues with the pay system, or with politics, or with people "playing the game", etc. It just means that people will have more regular feedback. That's good in and of itself, but it won't suddenly transform the company or turn it upside down. Now, at the same time, reading this CEO's statement, and comparing it with the sort of stuff that was being said when I was working there, this guy seems positively enlightened. I hope this is just one piece in a pattern of many different things he'll be changing at Accenture. If it is, then there could be large scale change in Accenture. As it is, this is just one encouraging bit of change around the feedback process. NOT a change of the pay model. NOT something that will get rid of politics in the pay model. NOT something that will majorly change the culture. JUST something that will encourage everyone to operate in the way that good managers (of which there are many at Accenture) already operated.
- spydum 11y ago
  i think this hits the nail on the head. The real problem is the terrible managers, where the only time they even considered their direct reports performance, was during the annual performance reviews. Now, since there is no formal mechanism or check in place, they won't even do that. Are they better or worse off? I don't know.
- jsingleton 11y ago
  To be fair the pay was actually pretty good. I think the problem with a system like this is that it forces employees into one of two strategies with no middle ground. 1. Be super competitive and always aim to be ranked at the very top, to the detriment of working on your technical skills that don't help here. 2. See that the only winning move is not to play and ignore the ranking, focusing instead on gaining experience and forming a long term exit plan. I saw lots of examples of both tribes but not much in between.
koliber 11y ago
Annual reviews are too coarse of a tool to be effective. They cause stress for employees because a year's worth of feedback gets dumped on them at once. It is difficult to condense a year's worth of issues, praises, concerns, props, and feedback into a one-hour meeting. Reducing people to a set of numbers often leads to negative feelings. Good relationships, be it professional or otherwise, are based on effective communication. An ongoing conversation between managers and their reports is the best way for a manager to know what is going on and be connected, and for an employee to feel heard and in-touch. This conversation must be continuous and embrace all aspects of a employee-manager relationship. I've been working for over three years on a service called 15Five which is a tool for such communication. It is neat to hear how people use this service in their organizations as an alternative to annual reviews. I feel there is a growing shift away from quantified annual reviews and into more conversational feedback loops.
- spydum 11y ago
  i think the largest obstacle is that performance bonuses are still paid ANNUALLY. If I have an amazing Q1/Q2/Q3, but a terrible Q4, guess what happens when payouts come around? Manager remembers the last thing you did. if the industry really wants to transform performance, pay them out monthly or quarterly The real answer is, they dont want to. In fact, I suspect you will see an industry trend to disband performance bonuses for all non C-level employees over the next 5-10 years.
  - curun1r 11y ago
    > In fact, I suspect you will see an industry trend to disband performance bonuses for all non C-level employees over the next 5-10 years. I doubt that. Bonuses are basically a portion of an employee's salary that can be rescinded at the company's whim. Employees won't simply start working for less, so eliminating bonuses would remove the company's ability to give more during the fat years and less during the lean years. Terming them bonuses is actually wrongheaded, considering employees expect to get that money. Bonuses are on the offer letter...it's not like people show up their first day after accepting the offer and are told, "by the way, you'll get $X/yr bonus." They're actually concessions made by the employee during the negotiation phase to give the company flexibility over a portion of their salary. And I doubt we'll see companies want to give up that flexibility.
sigzero 11y ago
At my company we spend so much time on reviews it borders on the ridiculous and everyone is pretty much of the opinion they really don't matter unless the company wants to get rid of you at some point.
systemtrigger 11y ago
Read the fine print. They are not getting rid of performance reviews and rankings. They are removing the useless yearly conversation that formally informed the employee of what they already knew. I worked for Accenture, as well as its first incarnation Andersen Consulting, and in my experience the reviews that really mattered were the so-called role reviews. Roles are jobs at a client. Every role reports to a more senior Accenture employee who assigns scores as a judgment on performance. The annual review, held with one's career counselor, is a chat largely about the scores assigned to one from roles in the current year. The scores from roles add up to a number and that number is essentially the annual review. In this policy change, Accenture is simply removing a useless impotent non-position. It does nothing to curb the recency effect, for example, pernicious in the role review. That said, Accenture's process is more enlightened than most approaches to the formal review.
- plonh 11y ago
  It sounds like the role reviews did curb recency effect,and the new system throws that away
dkrich 11y ago
As a former employee (I actually used to work in the office in the picture), I have to say I am very surprised and impressed by this move. I once had a manager on a multi year oracle and Java implementation who didn't know what a database was. That is no exaggeration. I mean that literally. One of my most frustrating memories was being reliant on this person for performance reviews and staking my future on her opinion of my performance. She had no ability to assess anybody's performance, yet miraculously found herself in the position of reviewing many very good employees. We lost several team members as a result (in fact my experience there in large part set the course for my own departure). Not saying this will fix all the problems (inept management is a reality that exists in any organization of size) but it at least shows that top brass understands that the current system isn't working.
talk_about_pay 11y ago
But does this actually mean faster promotion cycles? I worked for Accenture for a bit and decided to quit when they would use technicalities to deny promotions. As a matter of fact, I was denied promotions for three cycles because I joined 2-3 weeks too late. Basically, because I joined the firm 2-3 weeks after the big yearly review, I wasn't eligible for any promotion for two years whereas if I had been given a start date a month earlier I would have been eligible after a year. I left and more than doubled my salary, work on newer technologies, largely in charge of my own schedule, can work anywhere in the world, and received promotions faster.
- __abc 11y ago
  Where do you work now?
- pcurve 11y ago
  very happy for you. Sounds like a dream workplace for most of us.
mcguire 11y ago
Speaking as someone who has worked with Accenture people on a government contract, Accenture is the most hellish employer I have had any kind of near-direct experience with. Between the mandatory, unpaid social events, annual performance reports, monthly performance reports, weekly performance reports (which, due to scheduling, needed to be done before the month or week in question), the "career counsellor (who, according to those who worked for Accenture, was mind-bogglingly stupid), the Accenture manager (who made Dilbert's pointy-haired boss look competent and effective), and the assorted other inanities of government work, I wouldn't have lasted with them two months. I won't work for IBM again because I've experienced their insanity, but I know people who were happy there; I wouldn't recommend Accenture to anyone, literally including Hitler.
jdbaldry 11y ago
There's plans for the company I work for to remove their old system of reviews too. It was supposedly introduced to cut some chaff and instill a high performance culture but it resulted in arbitrary performance ratings and both unhappy employees and managers.

153 points by duncanawoods 11y ago

Yes it is better to point out the shortcoming right after completion of a project rather than reminding about that after a whole fucking year. This will benefit both employees and managers alike.

yuhong 11y ago

Also bad IMO are fixed number of job positions. For factories it might make sense, but for many other jobs... It is one of the reasons why I feel that employment anti-discrimination laws are ineffective.

jsingleton 11y ago

The regular "laddering" process was a massive pain and a huge burden on staff that took away from doing real work. It also had the effect of forcing the most talented people out of the company as they tended to focus on actually building the things the clients wanted rather than playing the ranking game. Ranking was strongly correlated to time spent in the office rather than achievements or output. I don't think this will change the mindset internally although it's a positive move. There is a big company culture of not trying to excel at anything for fear of making a mistake and looking bad. The firm is also full of jokers who haven't got a clue about software and don't even think it's a technology company. Lots of politics too.

kriro 11y ago
"""The firm is also full of jokers who haven't got a clue about software and don't even think it's a technology company.""" From (limited) experience this is true for many technology consultants. Unfortunately it's also somewhat common practice for business software projects that involve a small/medium sized software company and a gigantic client that the client requires the involvement of Accure et al. to feel more secure. Sadly it is not uncommon to have the consulting "software experts" do nonsensical tasks just so that they are not touching important stuff. These days, I am very skeptical about getting involved in any software projects that involve big name consultants.
- justuk 11y ago
  A lot of the big names are smaller competitors who were bought out. If I wanted to buy into a big name like that, I would make sure their founding headquarters were based nearby and that they are run by the same soft of people that started it.
pjmlp 11y ago
I work for the competition and would say all consulting companies of similar size, suffer from the same diseases.
_xander 11y ago
It sounds like you have experience of the firm. I'm interested in tech consulting and was planning on applying after graduation. Would you advise against this? Are there any firms in a similar line of work that you would recommend? (This question is open anyone on HN who wants to chip in).
- jsingleton 11y ago
  Yes, forgot to cite my source. Been there, done that, got the suits. It depends on what track you choose and what projects you get on, amongst many other things. There are plenty of talented people (at least to begin with) but they tend to get masked by people who would be better suited as contestants on the apprentice. If you go into consulting and you're even vaguely technical (can write simple software) then you will be very frustrated and will probably end up teaching the start group courses. If you're happy to have your non-technical manager take credit for your work then go for it. Solutions is more technical but doesn't pay as well. If you're the sort of person that reads HN (which you obviously are) then it is unlikely to be a good cultural fit for you. Swombat also has experience but I don't know if he'll chip in.
  - aaronchall 11y ago
    Hey, I read Hacker News, and I work at a Bank. You used to work at that firm. Why wouldn't I want to read Hacker News just because I have an MBA and know how to tie a tie (and can squeeze the seven P's of Marketing and Porter's Five Forces into an interleaved bullet pointed presentation on just about anything?)
- jbattle 11y ago
  My first job out of school was in tech consulting, and I got a lot out of it. In the 5 years I was there I got to see probably 5-8 different companies of all types and sizes. It gave me a better understanding of the different kinds of problems and (sometimes) the positives at various types of companies. Plus, lots of variety in terms of the projects and technology I worked with. It would have been hard to get the same breadth of experience at a single job, and I don't think I've ever had it in me to change companies every 6-12 months.

zitterbewegung 11y ago

Annual performance reviews are annoying and don't make sense anymore because we need faster feedback loops for everyone really.

twistedpair 11y ago
There are various firms that use a quarterly review/bonus cycle. While great, this fails to account for the slow moving hulks that are US corporations. Remember, in most places you'll not get in your "Annual Goals" until March/April, will have you mid year review done in September, and then have your annual review due by early November (lest people's year end vacations be a problem). How could you possibly hope for management to promulgate their vision and read a sheet of paper in 3 months or less? Perhaps Profit Sharing is the better angle? At ZoomInfo, each quarter everyone gets a bonus based on the company profits of the quarter, distributed ~equally. If every everyone did a great job and company did well, everyone gets a bigger bonus. Not as great for the rockstars, but it's an incentive for everyone to work together. Of course, if the market is down, it will fail to incentivize people working their asses off to keep the company afloat.
- plonh 11y ago
  And since rock stars are toxic on teams, this is great. Of eveeyine agrees X is a rock star, they'd happily push for X to be their lead.

davotoula 11y ago

"Brain research has shown that even employees who get positive reviews experience negative effects from the process." Can confirm, both employees that receive good score but not excellent and average score not good are demotivated. Only the excellent minority is motivated.

__chrismc 11y ago
As someone who has to give the news about the review outcome, I can confirm this from my own experience as well. Pretty much only those who come out of it as "top-tier" get any benefit, and no amount of "spin" will cushion the news of anything lesser. Of course, this isn't helped by there being an enforced normalisation curve on the ratings…
pbhjpbhj 11y ago
>Only the excellent minority is motivated. // Surely a minority of the excellent minority that 1) get recognised as excellent and 2) are motivated by such recognition.
rayiner 11y ago
Actually I find when I've gotten an excellent review it's encouraged a little complacency immediately after. Good feedback after a single assignment doesn't seem to do that.
twistedpair 11y ago
As someone who typically is a top performer, I found the dance just added overhead. I must keep tallies of all my "goals" and lists of everything I've accomplished in every respective category, and then waste hours cranking out my side of the review. Sure, I don't have time for it, so I make time for it, meaning less time for sleep. A good manager should know what you're contributing without this kabuki theater.
ObviousScience 11y ago
I generally got excellents on performance reviews for my brief, entry level stint at Big Corp. I still felt demotivated by the whole process, because it was a forced ranking of the system that wasted the whole teams time to say what everyone had already known: some of us did more work, some of us did less, and some of us were on a faster upward trajectory than others. It turns out that it doesn't actually motivate any of your employees to throw social hierarchies in their face -- it only causes tension and undue focus on micro-social hierarchies (those heiarchies within a social class, eg, the hierarchy of entry level tech workers).

binarymax 11y ago

I remember seeing a Show HN a while back to fill the void for ongoing performance feedback, which sounded interesting. I dug up the post and here is the site: http://finchreviews.com/ http://finchreviews.com/

scotty79 11y ago

Performance reviews and ranks exist for the sole purpose of giving employer excuse not to give most employees more money. "It's not us, it's you." If your employees leave you in two years max anyways, excuse or no excuse, there's not much point having this excuse.

btd 11y ago

Finally! It was very disappointing that girl that smile and had good relationships with out senior manager had the same salary as me, even if i got the best score in our delivery center.

pbhjpbhj 11y ago
Doesn't equal pay legislation mean that in practise if you got a pay rise, assuming you're male, that any female doing what might appear in court to be the same job has to get the same pay rise??
- justizin 11y ago
  IANAL, but I think that's what's sticky about equal pay, or one thing. For a given job, not all _people_ will get the same pay, and as individuals, a particular man and a particular woman may not make the same, but across an organization we should find some balance, there should be women who make more than some men, etc.. I don't think anyone wants a situation where granting any individual a raise means that everyone with similar responsibilities (no two people 'do the same job') gets the same raise. But as I type this, it's clear how all of this grey area can (and surely IS) be leaned upon to maintain the status quo.
  - plonh 11y ago
    If the company does a good job codfying your contribution in a role+level, there is no problem giving everyone in the same role+level the same pay.

tragomaskhalos 11y ago

In my company, years ago, performance rating was done by your line manager just talking to your project manager(s) to find out how you were getting on, and the line manager would assign you a pay rise (or not) accordingly. This was a perfectly sane and workable system. Then the place got engulfed by this insane fad for "performance reviews", which is idiotic on its face for a number of reasons: 1. You request review feedback from peers - this is unworkable because if you work with someone who is useless, and you say so in their review, your working relationship with them becomes untenable; 2. The process also requires "self review", which is nothing but a mechanism for bullshitters to big themselves up. It is also time-consuming, and good people are generally too busy to dedicate much time to it; the bullshitters and timewasters otoh will happily dedicate days to polishing their lies and exaggerations; 3. In general the process massively favours those who play the performance review system, i.e. the politicians; 4. You are required to set "career objectives", which is almost entirely pointless since as a tech person you are largely constrained by what jobs need your skills at the particular moment you become available; there is little tolerance for people sitting around idle waiting for the perfect role that meets their desired objective.

__chrismc 11y ago
We possibly work for the same company, as our system - flaws and all - are identical to what you describe. As someone who has to carry out both sides of the process (reviewing staff/managing them through the process, and getting my own review done), I'm most certainly not a fan! Staff seem to fall into two categories - those who see the whole thing as political nonsense they don't have the time for, or have become so turned off by how bad it is that they just don't care about the outcome any more. The Accenture news was raised on an internal discussion about the review process almost immediately, as some people are that keen to get rid of the current way of doing things ASAP. Sadly, I can't see anything coming from it, as the word is that Upper Management values the generated metrics too much to change anything.
- saiya-jin 11y ago
  well, don't blame them. above certain position (which is usually pretty low), politics overcome skills in terms of progress in career. so what do you expect from bullshitters who bullshitted their way up there into positions of power, that they would cut off their own source of (current and future) success? :) I work in same type of company, and it's pretty obvious how this and similar corporate cr*p clearly doesn't bring the best out of people, sometimes in contrary. If I would be owner/shareholder of any company, ever, first thing I would be concerned how incentives/bonuses for that extra mile/good work are being given. The higher the management, the more bonuses would be tied to long term progress (i know it's easier written than done, but i consider it at least partly responsible for financial turmoil of recent years too).

Rambunctious 11y ago

What a few big name companies (e.g. Microsoft) are getting rid of is the "forced bell curve fit" rankings. The core issue supposedly that team members are loathe to help anyone else succeed as that may not benefit them in the appraisal. Have heard that, in the new model, your manager gets a lot more liberty in deciding how to distribute the appraisal budget for the team instead of the hikes simply following a company-wide rule depending on the employee's rating tier.

notahacker 11y ago
My ex-employer went the opposite direction at the beginning of this year: moving towards appraisal related pay, complete with explanations of how management were being given special training on how to fit people to the right overall grade and even fewer top ratings were given out to make the whole thing cost neutral. You may be surprised to learn the process was not greeted by enthusiastic cheers.

delibes 11y ago

So many comments here reflecting ideas from the 2002 book "Abolishing Performance Appraisals - Why They Backfire and What to Do Instead". I think it's well worth a read, especially if you're implementing or in a position to influence these sorts of processes. Feedback is important, but once a year/half/quarter isn't really doing it. And ideally it shouldn't be related to what you're paid, though that's harder to convince people. It can work though, and the book provides some examples of alternatives.

analog31 11y ago

“Employees that do best in performance management systems tend to be the employees that are the most narcissistic and self-promoting,” said Brian Kropp, the HR practice leader for CEB. “Those aren’t necessarily the employees you need to be the best organization going forward.” Maybe I'm fooling myself and I really am narcissistic. But my feeling is that it's not narcissism but simply a rational adaptation to the conditions. What I do when you put a self-review form in front of me, is similar to what I do as a musician when you put some sheet music in front of me: Play the notes and try to make the audience happy.

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kyllo 11y ago
Exactly. The whole self-review thing is an exercise in "tell me what I want to hear"
- justizin 11y ago
  It /should/ be an opportunity to reflect on your weaknesses, I don't think I've ever met a manager who would do anything but laugh at all-tens in a self-review, but I have been able to keep annual review conversations short and comfortable by expressing self-knowledge and making it clear that we both wanted me to improve in the same ways, but also that there are simply some areas I'm not as strong in as others, and I should be deployed as such.
  - analog31 11y ago
    In my view, the process has lost that purpose since it became a zero-sum game for determining raises, bonuses, and even layoffs. At the same time it's also a game for my boss, who's competing with other bosses at his level for his raise and bonus budget. He knows that I've been a supervisor, and that I understand the game as well as he does. My boss accepts my all-positive self review, and then reminds me that I have to add two negatives, because it's mandatory. I choose negatives that are completely bland. What it means is that dealing with my weaknesses is not part of the annual review process. But I'm free to engage in as much introspection as I want, and my boss is welcome to chat with me about it at any time. On the other hand, I might choose to keep some of my weaknesses to myself. Working through my own shortcomings is something that might be a rational choice. And there's such a thing as too much information. ;-)

swombat 11y ago

It's sad and sort of amusing that most people here seem to be misunderstanding the point of this entirely. Unfortunately, this is likely prophetic of the way people within Accenture will misunderstand this too. Most of the grievances in comments here at this point are not so much about the feedback system as about the pay system. There is no mention in the article of "pay", "compensation", "salary", "reward", or any other word talking about the pay system. There is no indication that this is what's being operated on. What is happening is that they're replacing a yearly feedback process with a continuous feedback process. That's very worthwhile, but it won't solve issues with the pay system, or with politics, or with people "playing the game", etc. It just means that people will have more regular feedback. That's good in and of itself, but it won't suddenly transform the company or turn it upside down. Now, at the same time, reading this CEO's statement, and comparing it with the sort of stuff that was being said when I was working there, this guy seems positively enlightened. I hope this is just one piece in a pattern of many different things he'll be changing at Accenture. If it is, then there could be large scale change in Accenture. As it is, this is just one encouraging bit of change around the feedback process. NOT a change of the pay model. NOT something that will get rid of politics in the pay model. NOT something that will majorly change the culture. JUST something that will encourage everyone to operate in the way that good managers (of which there are many at Accenture) already operated.

spydum 11y ago
i think this hits the nail on the head. The real problem is the terrible managers, where the only time they even considered their direct reports performance, was during the annual performance reviews. Now, since there is no formal mechanism or check in place, they won't even do that. Are they better or worse off? I don't know.
jsingleton 11y ago
To be fair the pay was actually pretty good. I think the problem with a system like this is that it forces employees into one of two strategies with no middle ground. 1. Be super competitive and always aim to be ranked at the very top, to the detriment of working on your technical skills that don't help here. 2. See that the only winning move is not to play and ignore the ranking, focusing instead on gaining experience and forming a long term exit plan. I saw lots of examples of both tribes but not much in between.

koliber 11y ago

Annual reviews are too coarse of a tool to be effective. They cause stress for employees because a year's worth of feedback gets dumped on them at once. It is difficult to condense a year's worth of issues, praises, concerns, props, and feedback into a one-hour meeting. Reducing people to a set of numbers often leads to negative feelings. Good relationships, be it professional or otherwise, are based on effective communication. An ongoing conversation between managers and their reports is the best way for a manager to know what is going on and be connected, and for an employee to feel heard and in-touch. This conversation must be continuous and embrace all aspects of a employee-manager relationship. I've been working for over three years on a service called 15Five which is a tool for such communication. It is neat to hear how people use this service in their organizations as an alternative to annual reviews. I feel there is a growing shift away from quantified annual reviews and into more conversational feedback loops.

spydum 11y ago
i think the largest obstacle is that performance bonuses are still paid ANNUALLY. If I have an amazing Q1/Q2/Q3, but a terrible Q4, guess what happens when payouts come around? Manager remembers the last thing you did. if the industry really wants to transform performance, pay them out monthly or quarterly The real answer is, they dont want to. In fact, I suspect you will see an industry trend to disband performance bonuses for all non C-level employees over the next 5-10 years.
- curun1r 11y ago
  > In fact, I suspect you will see an industry trend to disband performance bonuses for all non C-level employees over the next 5-10 years. I doubt that. Bonuses are basically a portion of an employee's salary that can be rescinded at the company's whim. Employees won't simply start working for less, so eliminating bonuses would remove the company's ability to give more during the fat years and less during the lean years. Terming them bonuses is actually wrongheaded, considering employees expect to get that money. Bonuses are on the offer letter...it's not like people show up their first day after accepting the offer and are told, "by the way, you'll get $X/yr bonus." They're actually concessions made by the employee during the negotiation phase to give the company flexibility over a portion of their salary. And I doubt we'll see companies want to give up that flexibility.

sigzero 11y ago

At my company we spend so much time on reviews it borders on the ridiculous and everyone is pretty much of the opinion they really don't matter unless the company wants to get rid of you at some point.

systemtrigger 11y ago

Read the fine print. They are not getting rid of performance reviews and rankings. They are removing the useless yearly conversation that formally informed the employee of what they already knew. I worked for Accenture, as well as its first incarnation Andersen Consulting, and in my experience the reviews that really mattered were the so-called role reviews. Roles are jobs at a client. Every role reports to a more senior Accenture employee who assigns scores as a judgment on performance. The annual review, held with one's career counselor, is a chat largely about the scores assigned to one from roles in the current year. The scores from roles add up to a number and that number is essentially the annual review. In this policy change, Accenture is simply removing a useless impotent non-position. It does nothing to curb the recency effect, for example, pernicious in the role review. That said, Accenture's process is more enlightened than most approaches to the formal review.

plonh 11y ago
It sounds like the role reviews did curb recency effect,and the new system throws that away

dkrich 11y ago

As a former employee (I actually used to work in the office in the picture), I have to say I am very surprised and impressed by this move. I once had a manager on a multi year oracle and Java implementation who didn't know what a database was. That is no exaggeration. I mean that literally. One of my most frustrating memories was being reliant on this person for performance reviews and staking my future on her opinion of my performance. She had no ability to assess anybody's performance, yet miraculously found herself in the position of reviewing many very good employees. We lost several team members as a result (in fact my experience there in large part set the course for my own departure). Not saying this will fix all the problems (inept management is a reality that exists in any organization of size) but it at least shows that top brass understands that the current system isn't working.

talk_about_pay 11y ago

But does this actually mean faster promotion cycles? I worked for Accenture for a bit and decided to quit when they would use technicalities to deny promotions. As a matter of fact, I was denied promotions for three cycles because I joined 2-3 weeks too late. Basically, because I joined the firm 2-3 weeks after the big yearly review, I wasn't eligible for any promotion for two years whereas if I had been given a start date a month earlier I would have been eligible after a year. I left and more than doubled my salary, work on newer technologies, largely in charge of my own schedule, can work anywhere in the world, and received promotions faster.

__abc 11y ago
Where do you work now?
pcurve 11y ago
very happy for you. Sounds like a dream workplace for most of us.

mcguire 11y ago

Speaking as someone who has worked with Accenture people on a government contract, Accenture is the most hellish employer I have had any kind of near-direct experience with. Between the mandatory, unpaid social events, annual performance reports, monthly performance reports, weekly performance reports (which, due to scheduling, needed to be done before the month or week in question), the "career counsellor (who, according to those who worked for Accenture, was mind-bogglingly stupid), the Accenture manager (who made Dilbert's pointy-haired boss look competent and effective), and the assorted other inanities of government work, I wouldn't have lasted with them two months. I won't work for IBM again because I've experienced their insanity, but I know people who were happy there; I wouldn't recommend Accenture to anyone, literally including Hitler.

jdbaldry 11y ago

There's plans for the company I work for to remove their old system of reviews too. It was supposedly introduced to cut some chaff and instill a high performance culture but it resulted in arbitrary performance ratings and both unhappy employees and managers.