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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

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).
  - curun1r 11y ago
    Rather than politics, I think the primary motivation is predictability and control over costs and the ability to link costs to the company's financial performance. A ranking process that buckets employees into performance categories allows you to determine the company-wide increase in salaries and the bonus pool first and work backwards to arrive at each employee's raise/bonus. And since bonuses are usually timed with the end of the fiscal year, that increase (or lack thereof) can be based entirely on the numbers they deliver to investors. Also, by forcing a relative appraisal of each employees performance, you force managers to view employees with a more critical eye. If I were to simply have to answer, "did X do a good job on this project?", my answer would almost always be yes, absent any incentive to say no. But there are members of my team who deliver significantly better than others, so the calibration process forces me to find a way to put them above the team members who perform at a lower level. Getting rid of performance reviews would, from what I've seen, create a culture of "don't screw up" rather than one of taking risks and trying to do as well as possible. As a manager who both received an annual performance review and delivered 10 of them in the past week (our FY15 ends 7/31), I hate the process more than most people. But I think this discussion is ignoring the advantages just because we all hate the process. We run the risk of creating a whole new process that we hate just as much as the old process. Because it all boils down to finding an impartial way to evaluate performance and, unless you can crack that nut, your process isn't going to work. Top performers will move on and you'll be left with only under-performers. And that's because humans naturally evaluate their circumstances relatively rather than absolutely, once you get beyond the basics (i.e. can I pay rent and bills). Someone making $100k/yr is going to feel underpaid if someone they feel they're better than makes more. Just because the current system for ranking is flawed doesn't mean that there doesn't mean that ranking isn't necessary.
aarondf 11y ago
Ernst and Young was that way when I was there ~2012
braythwayt 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. That sounds very much like "hiring people based on having a reasonable conversation about their experience.” It is a perfectly sane and reasonable system, provided everyone involved is acting in good faith, has a great deal of ability to evaluate people based on their actual contribution to the success of the company, and nobody has any overt or internalized biases. Without taking anything away from your company, I’m sure you will appreciate that in many companies, this business of “assigning you a bonus based on conversations with the project manager(s)” gets twisted into a horrible political game where people build fiefdoms based on tit-for-tat agreements, and where all sorts of biases come into play, e.g. the men are all “take-charge go-getters,” while the women are all “confrontational and bossy.” I’m saying nothing about performance evaluations being better, just that results like you have experienced with your company are remarkably difficult to reproduce and sustain. My bet is that if conversation works in your company, performance evaluations would also work. Maybe with more annoying paperwork involved, but it would still work.
- calinet6 11y ago
  Both systems have their downsides. The simpler system generally has fewer, and that makes it preferable in many ways. But there could also be a different simple system that has fewer downsides. It's important to first think of the active system at play and its influences on people, and second, try to improve it without disconnecting the model from reality. This is a hard problem, and is one of the reasons leaders and managers need systems thinking skills above all.
  - jdmichal 11y ago
    > Both systems have their downsides. The simpler system generally has fewer, and that makes it preferable in many ways. [Citation needed] Also, I find the version with paperwork better, because that creates a documentation trail. If someone is routinely favoring certain people or groups, documentation makes that easy to expose. As opposed to the "word of mouth" system where it's likely impossible.
s73v3r 11y ago
In this case, I'd say number 2 is your fault. Your company has clearly told you that they care more about what you write in your self review than in actually getting stuff done. Those people have realized this, and are simply giving the company what they asked for.
hinkley 11y ago
One of those software management coaches once complained about this structure, "instead of celebrating people for their strengths, we punish them for their weaknesses". Most companies have enough people that as long as I'm really good at three things and we all know which three things I'm terrible at, everybody gets what they need and the company flourishes. Instead we all have to be identical, and our "development plan" is all about getting better at doing things that normally I'd let somebody else take care of, because they will always be better at it than I am. No big raise for me, even though I've saved you two headcount and reduced regressions by a factor of four by improving the dev process and toolchain. Oh, you're surprised I gave my two weeks?

__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).
- curun1r 11y ago
  Rather than politics, I think the primary motivation is predictability and control over costs and the ability to link costs to the company's financial performance. A ranking process that buckets employees into performance categories allows you to determine the company-wide increase in salaries and the bonus pool first and work backwards to arrive at each employee's raise/bonus. And since bonuses are usually timed with the end of the fiscal year, that increase (or lack thereof) can be based entirely on the numbers they deliver to investors. Also, by forcing a relative appraisal of each employees performance, you force managers to view employees with a more critical eye. If I were to simply have to answer, "did X do a good job on this project?", my answer would almost always be yes, absent any incentive to say no. But there are members of my team who deliver significantly better than others, so the calibration process forces me to find a way to put them above the team members who perform at a lower level. Getting rid of performance reviews would, from what I've seen, create a culture of "don't screw up" rather than one of taking risks and trying to do as well as possible. As a manager who both received an annual performance review and delivered 10 of them in the past week (our FY15 ends 7/31), I hate the process more than most people. But I think this discussion is ignoring the advantages just because we all hate the process. We run the risk of creating a whole new process that we hate just as much as the old process. Because it all boils down to finding an impartial way to evaluate performance and, unless you can crack that nut, your process isn't going to work. Top performers will move on and you'll be left with only under-performers. And that's because humans naturally evaluate their circumstances relatively rather than absolutely, once you get beyond the basics (i.e. can I pay rent and bills). Someone making $100k/yr is going to feel underpaid if someone they feel they're better than makes more. Just because the current system for ranking is flawed doesn't mean that there doesn't mean that ranking isn't necessary.

aarondf 11y ago

Ernst and Young was that way when I was there ~2012

braythwayt 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. That sounds very much like "hiring people based on having a reasonable conversation about their experience.” It is a perfectly sane and reasonable system, provided everyone involved is acting in good faith, has a great deal of ability to evaluate people based on their actual contribution to the success of the company, and nobody has any overt or internalized biases. Without taking anything away from your company, I’m sure you will appreciate that in many companies, this business of “assigning you a bonus based on conversations with the project manager(s)” gets twisted into a horrible political game where people build fiefdoms based on tit-for-tat agreements, and where all sorts of biases come into play, e.g. the men are all “take-charge go-getters,” while the women are all “confrontational and bossy.” I’m saying nothing about performance evaluations being better, just that results like you have experienced with your company are remarkably difficult to reproduce and sustain. My bet is that if conversation works in your company, performance evaluations would also work. Maybe with more annoying paperwork involved, but it would still work.

calinet6 11y ago
Both systems have their downsides. The simpler system generally has fewer, and that makes it preferable in many ways. But there could also be a different simple system that has fewer downsides. It's important to first think of the active system at play and its influences on people, and second, try to improve it without disconnecting the model from reality. This is a hard problem, and is one of the reasons leaders and managers need systems thinking skills above all.
- jdmichal 11y ago
  > Both systems have their downsides. The simpler system generally has fewer, and that makes it preferable in many ways. [Citation needed] Also, I find the version with paperwork better, because that creates a documentation trail. If someone is routinely favoring certain people or groups, documentation makes that easy to expose. As opposed to the "word of mouth" system where it's likely impossible.

s73v3r 11y ago

In this case, I'd say number 2 is your fault. Your company has clearly told you that they care more about what you write in your self review than in actually getting stuff done. Those people have realized this, and are simply giving the company what they asked for.

hinkley 11y ago

One of those software management coaches once complained about this structure, "instead of celebrating people for their strengths, we punish them for their weaknesses". Most companies have enough people that as long as I'm really good at three things and we all know which three things I'm terrible at, everybody gets what they need and the company flourishes. Instead we all have to be identical, and our "development plan" is all about getting better at doing things that normally I'd let somebody else take care of, because they will always be better at it than I am. No big raise for me, even though I've saved you two headcount and reduced regressions by a factor of four by improving the dev process and toolchain. Oh, you're surprised I gave my two weeks?