
Ask HN: What does performance management look like at your company? - edgefield0
I&#x27;m curious to learn about staff performance management at other companies to understand what works and what doesn&#x27;t. How does your company set goals, evaluate performance, etc? Do you use OKRs or a similar tool? Thanks!<p>Edit: Clarified that I am asking about staff and employee performance management. Thanks!
======
cbanek
It's all honestly completely useless. I've never had a useful performance
review at any company ever. It's either I'm doing bad, and know it, and that
is either my fault or due to reasons outside of my control. Or I'm doing well,
and know it. Honestly, sometimes at places things were so bad that I felt I
was doing terrible, but I was actually keeping the team going by pushing past
a lot of tricky issues.

Really I think any company that waits until performance review time is really
broken. That could be a year, or sometimes many years.

Also, the usefulness or performance management is usually undermined by the
fact that the people doing the worst usually are in hardcore denial as to
their performance. Those people are the hardest to change and manage. I've
rarely seen performance management actually fix a problem, other than making
the environment so unpalatable that the person just leaves.

I really wish I could have all that time wasted on writing useless "self-
reviews" back. Even if I was staring at a blank wall it'd be time better
spent.

~~~
electricslpnsld
I wish I had that kind of insight into my ‘performance’ pre-review! I’m at a
FAANG right now and given my interactions with my manager alone, I figured I
was bombing performance-wise (constant complaints about my work, refuses to
acknowledge any accomplishments, super angry at me during one on ones, assigns
piles of work that ‘need’ to be done by Monday on Friday at 6pm and then
doesn’t even acknowledge the completion of the work next week, ...). Come
performance review time on the other hand I’ve had awesome peer reviews,
performance ratings, stock refreshes, etc for the past four biannual
performance cycles. Given the complete mismatch here between how I feel I’m
doing and how my manager treats me, I’m actually pretty happy we have this
performance review system in place. Probably just need a new manager...

~~~
AnotherGoodName
Stop your manager in their tracks next 1:1 and state you have some feedback
about how you're feeling here. Start by noting that it's a very stressful time
right now and that these concerns are even more important for you. Your
manager would likely be hurt if you left and good managers appreciate upwards
feedback so that they can correct on their side.

The fact that the performance rating is good means your manager probably is
acknowledging the work you do, just not to you. The manager input for ratings
is hugely important at the FAANGs, so your manager is clearly telling others
you're doing a great job. There's just clearly a gap here between you and
her/him in that feedback.

Source: Am a manager at one of the FAANGs. I'm finding that everyone is
overthinking every bit of feedback right now. Clearly minor feedback is hard
to differentiate compared to major feedback. Likely due to the video
communications barrier and that everyone is a little bit more alone with their
thoughts. I'm being cautious on delivery because of it. There's also less ad-
hoc thank you's and acknowledgements going around due to the remote barriers.

~~~
m0zg
> Stop your manager in their tracks next 1:1

BAD idea with most managers. Your manager is likely to be vindictive and
insecure if confronted like that. Even with peer reviews in place managers
have disproportionate influence on your reviews, and promo/comp decisions
(something you readily acknowledge). If the manager treats you with disdain,
it's almost impossible to fully reverse that - it's just human nature, let
alone do so through confrontation.

The best thing is to move on to greener pastures, of which there's vast
abundance at any FANG. People can move around easily there by design: that way
shitty managers get naturally de-staffed. Anything else is a sunk cost
fallacy. Do yourself a favor, and go to a team where you're appreciated,
respected, and can work alongside decent people. Do not tolerate this abuse.
Otherwise your career will stall, you won't be able to do anything about it,
and you'll feel miserable throughout.

Source: been there, done that.

~~~
srtjstjsj
Yes. Suck up to the boss, then say you're interested in a new opportunity at
Team X, or, sadly, you've accepted an offer to work somewhere else, or, you
are quitting for personal reasons.

~~~
m0zg
That's why I liked Google so much: you don't have to "suck up" to anybody. If
things aren't working out, figure out what you'd like to do instead and 2
weeks later you're working on that, if they have spots on the team and would
like your help. You may be asked to stay a bit longer, say 6 weeks, but the
process is very non-confrontational. It's not like that for junior people,
though - if you're junior you have to stay in your position for at least a
year, which IMO is dumb - people who work there have no problems finding
employment elsewhere. It should never be harder to move within the company
than _outside_ the company.

~~~
quickthrower2
Yeah for a big company there is no excuse. Smaller companies might be more
impacted by giving people this freedom but maybe the advantages outweigh the
disadvantages anyway.

------
howmayiannoyyou
Slightly off center from your question, but:

1\. Every Wednesday I Google Meet with my salespeople. We review the prior
week's priority prospects, this week's, and then I ask them about clients not
on the list that our BI system has identified as promising. An integration of
internal systems, Slack & Zapier alerts me each day to anomalies (good and
bad) with clients, inventory and systems. MixMax (shout out to Brad!) is a big
help in tracking email activity. RingCentral reporting is a big help in
validating Salesperson activity.

2\. Every Friday I review Github repository activity for my development teams.
A very soft-touch and collaborative conversation follows for developers and
engineers whose pace of work or direction seems off. This is almost always a
result of improper scoping, unrealistic milestones, or miscommunication.

3\. Every Monday and Tuesday I'm hands-on with my marketing team preparing for
the Wednesday release of our marketing communications, and reviewing ongoing
advertising campaign results.

4\. Every weekday I'm in our Xero accounting software looking at cash flow
projections, inventory, A/P and A/R. Xero is hot garbage IMHO, but I've built
some integrations that make is easier to use for real-time reporting.

5\. I visit our satellite facility every other week for in-person chats with
that team.

6\. I've invested a lot in automation to track our market, predict conditions
and generate alerts.

Notwithstanding 1-6 above, there's no substitute for good market conditions
and good employees. I have the latter, but not the former. I mention this just
in-case you're thinking you can systematize your way out of a demand vacuum.

~~~
sails
> Xero is hot garbage IMHO, but I've built some integrations

Curious to understand more about these? I've been doing a bit of exploring in
the analytics space here, and would love to know where you found the available
apps falling short.

~~~
darcys22
The financial cloud apps control your financial database and therefore your
ability to perform analytics on them. Open source allows you to actually plug
in and make dashboards.

It took me 20 mins to build a monthly revenue dashboard in metabase that
updates live and you cant do that natively with Xero.

[https://youtu.be/PeQR7GseFQI](https://youtu.be/PeQR7GseFQI)

------
combatentropy
It looks like a total waste of time.

As a developer of internal web apps, it is apparent what I must do next to
serve my users, in the next week, month, quarter, year --- I have a long to-do
list! It is also apparent what I must do to serve my team, in the next week,
month, quarter, year. (I get rave reviews from both, unsolicited.)

The goals that cascade from the executives are laughably vague and obvious:
cut costs, increase revenue, reduce maintenance, get to the root of recurring
problems, please the customer (of course they phrase those things with your
typical multisyllabic jargon). So what the process ends up being is taking my
goals that I have already got and writing them down in another place (a
shockingly flimsy and probably expensive web application they bought from a
vendor) using certain words that they like. It is a total waste of money and
time (which, ironically, is counter to at least two of their supreme goals).

Let me be clear. While it is theoretically possible that the executives know
of a problem or need at the company that I don't, and when they share their
company-wide goals it would be news to me, this has never happened. There has
never been a time when the yearly goals come out and I say, "Oh, well, now
that you put it that way . . . "

On the other hand, I must be above average, because there exist many at my
company who, left to themselves, would sit around and do nothing, or worse.
Presumably this whole ceremony is in reaction to their behavior. In my
opinion, such people should be fired, not babysat.

~~~
beardedetim
> In my opinion, such people should be fired, not babysat.

I feel this same way at most places I've worked. But as I've gotten older,
I've started to think "how can I level these people up?" and that has gotten
me much farther towards my personal goals than the prior thoughts.

Not staying you should or that you aren't already. Just a thought to past me.

------
candiddevmike
In most companies I've worked in: thinly veiled nepotism and cronyism. I've
never seen the inputs of a performance management tool being the only inputs
for calculating merit or bonus amounts, so the outcomes of both these
situations depends heavily on your relationship with your boss and their boss.

Don't get me started on stack ranking or making sure everyone "fits the curve"
by knocking down everyone to average because HR said so.

~~~
anonymous1111
> thinly veiled nepotism and cronyism

Exactly my experience as well, but it's often not even thinly veiled.

These processes should not even be referred to as "performance" reviews since
they often have little or nothing to do with performance. It's loaded and
deceptive language.

------
mr_blobby
We are a company of about 4000, our performance management is pretty shite. We
essentially function as a company of middle managers with a software
engineering department tacked on.

Getting promoted has very little to do with the role profiles of the above
grade but instead involves doing some menial task, for example I knew a guy
who was a total manchild and would smash the keyboard, groan and hide in the
toilet if he encountered some difficult code, he would also never ask for help
but because he did support he got promoted.

Also there's a limited number of slots, so you could meet the criteria of the
above grade go through the process and still not get promoted. We basically
lose all our developers after 2-3 years and most projects are composed of
contractors. people who can't leave before 2 years and mediocre developers who
are promoted way beyond their means and aren't good enough to work at other
companies.

The worst thing is our clients usually have a high opinion of us so our
competitors must be even worst.

------
vosper
I've never worked anywhere that OKRs are actually taken seriously or followed
through.

They'll get rolled out with a big hype, people will fill them out with varying
degrees of diligence and understanding of how OKRs are supposed to work.

3 months later they're already forgotten and out of date. Some managers will
try to keep it going for their teams, because that's what they were told to
do, but that'll peter out once they realise no-one else in the org is taking
it seriously.

6 - 12 months later there'll be a half-hearted attempt to reset and resurrect
the OKR process, but after the first time people take it even less seriously
the second time around, and after a few more months OKRs are never mentioned
again.

~~~
edgefield0
I've had a similar experience with OKRs. The issue becomes how often to review
and update? On the surface, OKRs seems like it would be a helpful tool but in
practice it seems pretty cumbersome and only moderately useful to guide goal
directed action.

~~~
srtjstjsj
OKRs are useful at the level of the company that has medium and long term
goals, not merely keeping the lights on and reacting to short term
emergencies.

An OKR is about a paragraph of text per quarter, hardly seems cumbersome.

------
JackMorgan
I'm eight years into management across two different sized companies. Both
have ultimately had entirely subjective systems.

I'm currently a director of a twenty person office. My current teams are
supposed to have stack ranked individuals, so I simply give everyone the exact
average. I also give everyone the same objectives: improve performance with
technical debt repayment, use retros to determine working agreements and
adhere to them, adhere to a WIP limit and then help any other team areas when
there are bottlenecks, do weekly research to keep your skills sharp, self
organize your team to best meet the business goals, help anyone with their job
when asked or offer a time when you next are free, and if you have no work ask
your team for something to do. These are pretty easy to meet, so people
usually do well on them.

Ultimately compensation is tied to the whole product, not the employee, since
we all split any money evenly.

I find this works exceptionally well at ensuring the ultimate goal is team
performance, not individual performance.

Team members not pulling their weight are identified and asked to find a new
job or improve. The ones that don't are given low ratings and let go.

In all it allows us to have a very stable team of high performers. Our average
tenure is over seven years. No one has any incentive at all to "beat" everyone
else. I've found the teams that employ such tactics never have long lasting
talent anyway, just a string of "heroes" who burn out after a few years.

Also I flush this out with a regular "salary review" where I try to ensure
everyone is paid fair market rate for their job. This happens maybe every 18
months or so for new grads, and less frequently as people get closer to salary
ceilings for our location.

~~~
spaetzleesser
My company doesn’t fire anybody so low performers are often moved into
management or get to do new green field projects. :(. Good performers are
stuck doing maintenance work on the money making products.

------
jimnotgym
HR people in the UK use 'performance management' as a euphemism for a kind of
legal constructive dismissal.

1) Their attitude stinks but nothing specific that can be picked up in a
disciplinary on its own

2) They have been in the job for a few years, and their old manager never
recorded the behaviour problems

3) Their role is not redundant

So to get them out you meet regularly, set short term goals, and be really
picky about not meeting them. The whole thing is designed to make the staff
miserable so they leave or get sacked for missing the goals, whilst building
up a substantial volume of paperwork supporting a legal defence at tribunal.

Or less cynically it allows the staff to understand what is expected of them,
so they perform better. This never works IMHO

~~~
funnybeam
As someone that has been in this position (manager in the UK) I have to agree
and think you have summed it up perfectly.

However, it is occasionally successful and those (admittedly rare) occasions
have been some of the most rewarding experiences of my career.

I also don’t think that what you have described is necessarily a bad thing. As
long as the manager goes into it in good faith and genuinely tries to
understand what the problems are and to help solve those problems then the
process works well for everyone - either they improve and become a happy and
productive employee or they leave (voluntarily or not) and can seek a position
more suited to their skills or personality.

Most of the times I have been through this the person involved was perfectly
capable of doing the job but they just didn’t want to for various reasons and
putting them on an improvement plan helped them see this and they move on
themselves before they were forced to

------
_t0du
First company: My manager met with me once over two years. It was 18 months
into my just over two years stay, and all she told me was "We don't know
eachother at all so I can't really judge your performance." She gave me the
standard 7% and we never spoke again.

Second company: It was a huge joke. The CTO invented KPIs that were
unattainable and didn't matter, and we were given raises purely because our
contract was profitable.

Third company: We had such a ridiculous process of "Write three goals and go
over them with your manager", which turned into "Just write anything so HR
doesn't complain." The goals were totally useless. Engineers did not have the
ability to decide what they worked on or how it went, but the goals implied
they did. It was awful and, luckily, did not effect bonus targets.

I honestly think that "performance management" at most companies is a huge
joke. I haven't seen it, and none of my peers have seen it, run successfully
or be taken seriously. Companies want to pretend they care about your career
trajectory and goals only until an employees goals require any legitimate
effort from the company's side. The goals/KPIs are pretty much only successful
if an employee sets those goals to be "Do whatever their manager thinks they
should do", which I would argue isn't a goal at all.

------
sleepysysadmin
It has been known for nearly 100 years that you can never criticize your
staff.

“I will speak ill of no man and speak all the good I know of everybody.”

― Benjamin Franklin

Last job, my last performance review. There was literally only 1 complaint
against me. I was late >40 times. My boss told me he was disappointed in me. I
was upset because I was never ever late to work; I was always early.

I asked him to tell me when I was late. He pulled it up. Everytime I worked
the weekend because I was oncall 24x7; I would swipe in and because I swipped
in after 8am or whatever it was considered a late.

So not only was I going above and beyond helping people afterhours, I was
taking a hit in my performance review because of it. Dont care how stoic you
are, that hurts.

~~~
C1sc0cat
I hope you then worked out how much TOIL you where owned and pointed out to
them the definition of salaried employment.

~~~
srtjstjsj
Salaried employment doesn't mean unscheduled.

~~~
C1sc0cat
Possibly in some cases (eg doctors on particular shift in a hospital) - but
normally as a salaried professional you manage your own time.

------
poof_he_is_gone
I work for a company that makes performance management and recognition and
rewards software. As such, it is deeply embedded in our culture. We have a mix
of tools that enable goals/OKRs, 1:1s, feedback, structured performance
reviews, and 9-box evaluations. I lead product design for the company, and
part of the reason I took the job was being able to deep dive into the user
experience of how this works, and ultimately improve my own management skills.
The process of rebuilding, testing, and developing the tools has exposed me to
some top brass HR folks at large companies. It has been awesome being able to
get the perspective on what works for individuals, and what outcomes people
are expecting at the company level. I really feel like I have grown
significantly as a manager in my time here.

At our company Goals/OKRs are set at the individual, department, and company
level. You can align your goals up, or set individual (personal growth) goals.
These can/should be reviewed in your weekly 1:1s with your manager. We allow
anyone to send recognition, or send or request feedback at any point. We have
several templates that facilitate different feedback types. We do quarterly
Check-Ins which is more of a top down performance review where you can reflect
on goal progress, feedback, and next steps with your manager. The 9-box talent
assessment is calibrated for each employee twice a year. We also facilitate
surveys at the company level to help do things like eNPS scores. If you want
to learn more, ask away or check us out at
[https://www.kazoohr.com/](https://www.kazoohr.com/)

------
jkingsbery
(Disclaimer: I work at Amazon, but don't speak on behalf of the company. Just
sharing some bits about my experience, this is just my experience and doesn't
reflect official Policy.)

Prior to working at Amazon, I had mostly worked for start-ups. The thing I
found at startup is that people are trying to figure out processes, and it's
kind of hard. Most people putting in a process (whether that's HR or the
founding team) are trying to do their best, but start-ups aren't at a large
enough scale where they really need to have scalable processes, and for
individual contributors all the distinctions are pretty informal anyway, so
there's usually no individual contributor promotion path.

At Amazon, I was fortunate to work under someone who had been my boss
previously, and we had a good working relationship. He was not afraid to give
me blunt, useful feedback about either my work or how my work was perceived.

At some of the start-ups I worked with, part of the year-end evaluation
involved filling out a form with a lot of evaluation criteria - the employee
would fill out a self-eval form, and the manager would fill out a form, and
then they would compare during the evaluation meeting. There's no such
equivalent at Amazon.

One thing that overall I like about Amazon's performance management in terms
of promotions is how it's centered around a document that you and your manager
write together. There are some tedious aspects to the process, but if nothing
else when you go up for promotion you know what your manager is officially
telling other people are your strengths and weaknesses. The flip side of the
process is that decisions about your promotion are being made based sometimes
on the quality of your promo doc. I'm not sure about all the company, but at
least in the team I was on some of the senior folks set aside time for
reviewing promo docs that they were working on with other members of the team
to iron out any "doc writing" issues.

We don't really have an official OKR system, but as a more senior engineer my
personal goal has generally been to enable whatever my team's goal is for the
quarter or year (launch this product; get this architecture document done;
research how to solve this problem).

Besides the official process, I've also found it useful to ask trusted peers
how I'm doing, whether I'm giving them everything they need and expect of me.
It's also pretty common to have one or more mentors outside of your team to
give you more informal feedback.

------
spaceisballer
I’m a big fan of Dr. Deming’s suggestions in this realm (for those not
familiar he was involved with helping the auto industry in Japan post WWII
among other things). Basically we focus too much on the who and not the what.
The manager creates the system to which the worker is involved in, then you
judge the employee on your system. So performance reviews are just ways to
blame. Instead power needs to be placed in the hands of the employee. They are
closest to the problem and the manager is supposed to empower them and
basically remove impediments. I’d have to go back to the books but I recall
him saying a three tier system but really aimed at seeing what employees need
help and those excelling that need to help distribute their expertise to help
the processes and continual improvement.

------
BrianOnHN
What size is your company/team?

Different strategies perform well depending on size. For example, most of the
time I find OKRs a little excessive for a small team.

Have you identified KPIs? What are they?

"What's measured is managed," said Drucker. Personally, finding what exactly
to measure is difficult. So don't be afraid to spend a lot of time figuring
this out. When you do, all the other performance management strategies will
somehow find a way to work towards your goals.

~~~
argiopetech
Drucker never actually said that, though it's been attributed to him
frequently. I found this blog interesting, and they link to the Drucker
Institute if you'd like something more authoritative.

[https://medium.com/centre-for-public-impact/what-gets-
measur...](https://medium.com/centre-for-public-impact/what-gets-measured-
gets-managed-its-wrong-and-drucker-never-said-it-fe95886d3df6)

Similar quotes are often attributed to Deming. He never make this claim
either.

~~~
BrianOnHN
I suppose I confused this with "Know Thy Time" in Effective Executive. Thanks
for clarifying, I'm sure I've incorrectly made this attribution before.

Edit: typo

------
heymijo
Performance management is subjectivity masquerading as objectivity.

I'm a broken record about this.

~~~
heymijo
In theory performance management should be about helping people improve. In
practice performance management is about four things:

1) Pay

2) Promotions

3) Accountability (e.g. firing)

4) To satisfy legal requirements (perceived and real)

Performance management falls under the umbrella of HR. HR's historical roots
are in compliance. In the 90's when cost vs. profit center was the rage, the
HRBP model emerged to prove HR could provide business value beyond compliance.
HRBP is the dominant model now but it hasn't had the impact its creator
intended. Inertia is a powerful thing.

Combine HR's roots in compliance, with the above four reasons performance
management exists in practice and that will give you a good way to understand
why performance management works the way it does.

If you're learning about these things in an effort to improve your own
organization's practices then you can also use the above to evaluate any
proposed changes and think about what they would have to contend with. History
is replete with failures. Unless you are in a small organization, with total
control over incentives and the culture then I will leave you with a quote
from Blade:

 _" Some motherfuckers are always trying to ice skate uphill."_

------
Traubenfuchs
At my previous company we had to pick goals that aligned with the goals of our
role/level and the goals of the company. It was a shit show. Our partner in
charge would reject goals until everyone was struck with goals that were very
far putside everyones comfort zone. Everyone hated it.

As senior dev / senior consultant I had to pick goals like „prepare a pitch
for a potential customer“, stretch goal „win a pitch“. I didn‘t want to do
this. I don‘t care about sales. I want to design and develop systems for
someone who wants me to do that, not convince someone to let me do it.

By now almost everyone quit.

Current company: I can work in peace. Bi-weekly 1:1 with my manager that is
usually over rather quickly.

------
pjc50
I've never worked anywhere where the annual review wasn't an almost entirely
fictional process. It's totally subjective finger-in-the-air stuff. Often to
my benefit, but I recognise that it's subjective.

------
29athrowaway
From a task-oriented perspective, developer A can seem more productive than
developer B because developer A marked more tasks as finished than developer
B.

The problem is that marking a task as finished does not mean that its
deliverable is solid. A developer can game the system by leaving technical
debt behind for others to fix. In this way, the developer is stealing
productivity from others, by forcing them to spend more time reading,
debugging, refactoring their half-baked code.

A neophyte manager may buy into this approach to performance, and even
encourage it. But after a few iterations of this unsustainable practice of
leaving tech-debt behind for no reason, reality sets in: now you need an army
of engineers to get things done because the system becomes fragile and
complicated. And you also need an endless amount of documentation that is
constantly getting out of sync.

In a way, under poor performance management rules, development becomes like a
game of pool: it's not only about having a higher score, but also about making
it more difficult for others to have a high score. If you want high
productivity, recognize this and penalize it.

------
jldugger
Generally, it's a dumpster fire.

In any rational world, execs would be basing their OKRs on something similar
to [https://stripe.com/atlas/guides/business-of-saas#the-
fundame...](https://stripe.com/atlas/guides/business-of-saas#the-fundamental-
equation-of-saas). Instead it's a trickle up process whereby people tell execs
what they want to work on, then the execs group those into OKRs. Also the OKRs
appear to only have one level, despite being an org with a thousand people.
And finally, the system uses the internal wiki to track, rather than
integrating with the project/issue backlog tool.

Annual reviews are even worse. People fish for peer reviews that paint the
rosiest picture. They only happen once a year and if something bad is going to
happen to you, I recommend it happen directly after reviews, and absolutely
never right before them, the recency bias is huge.

~~~
randycupertino
> People fish for peer reviews that paint the rosiest picture.

I found this happening when our firm used KPI metrics (key performance
indicators). Whichever metric management emphasized, those would shoot way up
via ... weird methods (all sorts of finagling, but not necessarily helping
overall firm performance). Every time they optimized for some other lever it
would have all sorts of unintended outcomes on other metrics and overall
people spent more time trying to get around the system and increase their
metrics than just doing a good job. System was scrapped < 12 mo later.

~~~
sriku
Don't reward raw metrics. Goodhart's law is too real in this context.

------
SergeAx
We are a team of ~50 software engineers and about the same amount of non-
engineering staff. We have a quarterly performance review. It starts from
setting goals at the beginning of the quarter. Then we have a home-brewed CRM-
like system to enter accomplishments, nominate peers, giving reviews and
feedback and finally grading.

Then managers talking to their reports, discussing results, giving and
receiving feedback.

Grades are from 2 to 5, greater is better. Normal grade is 4, it gives a bonus
of 1/2 of monthly salary. 5 is 1 monthly salary and 3 is 1/4 of monthly
salary. Our compensations are on market, so we ended up better compensated
even after grade "3".

Two 5's in a row is an occasion to talk about promotion. Two 3's is a reason
to talk about leaving the company.

That's about it, the whole process takes about two weeks, most of the time in
a grade calibration process.

------
BewareTheYiga
I worked for a big enterprise type company. Our performance management process
was predictably broken like most BigCorp companies processes are. We had
cascading goals from the CEO down to the team manger level, with numerous
layers in between. These goals were not data driven in any way. Our
performance process was heavily biased towards the quarter prior to the annual
review -- so don't put any points on the board until the 4th quarter, that's
when they'll count for the most. Common saying -- wins cover up sins.

As a manager of a team, I tried to institute OKR's into the process for my
team at minimum. I found that technique partially successful -- meaning
successful for me and my team but limited in that other teams in my department
wouldn't adopt them. Too much work they said.

~~~
arethuza
I worked in a large company for a number of years that had a system where you
were scored 1 to 5 (1 being bad and 5 excellent).

However, it really meant you were scored as either 3 or 4 as "nobody is a five
and if you were a one or two you wouldn't be here anymore". My manager and I
did agree it was a silly system so we settled on me being a 4 and I set
everyone who reported to me as all 4s - even though they all deserved 5s.

------
giantg2
I work for a large company. There are four ratings you can be assigned - 'not
doing your job', 'need more improvement', 'you're doing your job average to
well', and 'exceptional' for about 8% of people.

I can't really tell you how it's measured or anything like that. The company
has policies about it, but more often than not those policies are blatantly
violated. It basically comes down to the subjective opinions of your manager,
the department head, and the business people you interact with.

------
sushshshsh
Thankfully, there is none. What a blessing.

~~~
onion2k
It's not a blessing. As bad as performance management, goal setting, and OKRs
can be when it's done badly, working for a company that isn't engaged with
helping you to improve is far worse. Even if you're motivated to improve on
your own you'll be working with people who aren't and that's more stressful
and annoying than any number of performance measurement systems.

~~~
supernovae
Why concern yourself with everyone having to be like you?

~~~
onion2k
Because I'm awesome.

------
Aeolun
Frankly, our personal performance goals are just copied straight from the
department goals. Any attempt to make them a little sensible is met with a
‘just do what everyone else does’.

That said, when performance review time comes around, that also means that it
doesn’t really mean anything. The important thing is how your manager feels
about you, and the rest is a formality.

------
WJW
Last company I worked with used OKRs, but in their own "unique" way. Senior
management was always 3-4 weeks late with the company wide OKRs, so the OKRs
for individual teams would either be wildly divergent from the approved
company direction or they were switched mid-quarter to align with the company
OKRs.

Nobody ever checked the progress of the OKRs either, not even at the end of
the measuring period and not even to calibrate the realism of the goals for
the next measuring period. Once, when asked at an all hands meeting by the
person who had been designated "OKR champion" a year earlier, the CEO answered
he had forgotten about it but that OKRs were certainly still on.

I think the most success was had by a single guy who had managed to get
"increase twitter followers" on his personal OKR list. Not for some company
account btw, for his personal twitter account. It was continuous hilarity, but
I don't regret not working there anymore. Whatever system you use, take it
seriously.

------
narenchoudhary
It was pretty standard (at least on paper) in my last company (a top 10 bank
in terms of total assets).

1\. Agree OKRs with managers in the beginning of the year (to be completed by
March). Everyone at same level/hierarchy will have same baseline.

2\. Performance evaluation in October. Employees discuss their achievements
with managers.

3\. Results disclosed in February.

This waterfall-ish process never really worked:

1\. Over the year priorities change, teams evolve, and products take new
directions. So, everyone used to put vague OKRs.

2\. Evaluation process is a black box. Performance metrics (if there really
were any) were never disclosed, and were calibrated at multiple levels.

3\. You get to know only your evaluation. No data to compare to whatsoever.

I've seen this doing damage only. People with good visibility, and network
used to get better ratings despite average work. Silent hard-workers will get
average ratings, and will leave.

------
dimitar
I manage 30 people, but I review only 10 of them and the rest are reviewed by
my team-leads.

We use KPIs and 360 feedback. These are not perfect measures, and I
acknowledge that often, but are good enough for some purposes.

Performance reviews are easy for all sides if there is nothing new in them. If
you either side is surprised during a performance review they are not talk to
each other nearly enough during the reviewed period.

If I had the opportunity to evaluate I would experiment with more frequent
feedback - like monthly sessions, small forms focusing on a very few key
items.

~~~
edgefield0
What are your thoughts on 360 reviews? I've heard the process can be very
devisive?

~~~
spaetzleesser
I want to do 360s on the managers two level up and higher. Because they are
the real problem in my view. I hate snitching on my direct team members not
knowing how the the feedback is used so I usually just praise them without
much detail.

~~~
dimitar
We are not a big shop so there are not many levels up but the managers,
including myself also got 360 reviews.

~~~
spaetzleesser
We do 360s one level up but the real problems are two levels up. I think it
would be great if people could rate the management chain all the way up.

------
sameersegal
I am in the quest of a system myself. I have tried various systems and asked
other companies (big and small) on theirs. My tech startup was around 25-30
employees over 5 years. We have tried Balanced Scorecards/OKRs linked systems,
360 Evaluations, etc and ended up making a mix.

We used Google Sheets and asked for qualitative feedback on defined headers
(skill with KPIs & culture/values), and a rating (1-5). Each of the headers
had weightage that changed with roles & levels.

We tried to make promotions and compensation changes as data driven as
possible, but they were inline with intuition / general opinion. To the
employee it always felt like "Why did we do all this for such little change?!"
It sucks but you need to improve the system across many years. With every
round try and understand signal vs noise. That's how you build trust.

Consistency is key. A few learnings regardless of the system that I learnt the
hard way:

* Communication. You need to communicate before, during and after the process. You need to make it relatable for all levels of employees. Give them specific templates with specific examples. You need to remove the narrative of you-vs-them, doing-this-to-justify-an-increase, and bring focus on reflection.

* Frequency/Cycle. "if it hurts, do it more often" is the quote that applies to this. Never let it slide. Minimum every six months, ideally every quarter.

* Review of KPIs. You need to review the KPIs every week without fail. It forces you to focus on metrics that you can move on a week-on-week basis. Anything that changes in step function over a month/quarter/year can be broken into a smaller metric.

* Rewards and Recognitions. We were always late on this. Always rolling out the red carpet when someone threatened to quit. It always felt like extortion as the manager. Don't wait for the cycle to call out extreme performance (great and terrible). Give negative feedback in private as quickly as possible. Do a non-monetary (Amazon Gift Coupons etc) for great performance. Wait for promotions and compensation.

* Pay performance linked pay well. I think this was what I got wrong the most. I did not plan the company finances well enough to pay out immediately. I would say "Hey great performance! We will pay you $$ but in 2-3 months when our situation improves". That erodes trust in a moment.

* Getting and acting on feedback. I struggled on this one too and made many excuses -- we are going through a curve

Hope this helps. I would love to hear from others.

------
obi-wan
I'm currently working on solving this (still in the early stages). More
specifically I'm working to objectively measure performance over time, with a
strong focus on actionable insights to help you improve. If you would like to
test this email adaobi@mesure.app. Or you can just email me your problems and
i'll see if I can solve them.

------
awinder
I’ve used pseudo-OKRs at the last few places, where there’s basically a
bailout option where you just change the OKRs at the end of the year to match
what happened (if you were doing well). Depends on what you mean by
works/doesn’t work. In my experience performance management is mostly about
recording business justification for continued employment, bonuses,
advancement, or the negative versions of these. So by that metric these
systems definitely work.

~~~
anonymous1111
The OKR's can be ignored as long as there is "progress", but progress
measurement is still very subjective and statistics can be deceptive, so the
process often just ends up being the usual game of nepotism. Not hitting OKR's
can also allow managers to request more headcount, meaning they are
incentivized to make excuses instead of delivering value.

------
nemetroid
You fill in a bunch of forms during the year, at the end they tell you you've
placed in the highest tier, and as a reward you get a 3.5% pay increase
instead of 3.0%.

------
jdmichal
I'm actually defining this process for the first time in my current company.
I'll explain my philosophy behind performance levels and goals. I'd love any
feedback. I'm specifically trying to make this an actionable process.

First, the levels, because I perhaps have a different interpretation of these
than I'm used to seeing. There are essentially three levels that correspond to
performance compared to expectations. So underperforming, performing, and
overperforming. Only underperforming carries a negative connotation [0],
because it means that you are not meeting the expectations for your level. In
contrast, overperforming means that you are reaching beyond your current
level.

So, hopefully we have zero people underperforming. Also, hopefully we have the
vast majority of people performing. Because overperforming basically means we
need to be finding an expanded role for that person, which we may or may not
have. If too many people are overperforming, then we can maybe expect turf
wars as people start trying to expand their role without guidance, which is
terrible for morale. Hopefully we can balance overperformers with growth, so
we are moving people to expanded roles and then filling in below with new
hires.

So, given this leveling, there are two types of goals: baseline and growth.
Baseline goals apply to the entire team and define those baseline expectations
for that team. Meeting these goals will keep the team out of underperforming
territory [1]. Growth goals are tailored to a specific individual, and detail
specific targets to work on. The idea is to provide meaningful growth to the
person and their capabilities, with an eye towards expanding their role. Over
time, having and meeting these growth goals will result in overperforming as
the individual fills that expanded role more and more.

[0] Caveat: I would expect a junior-level to be growing. So juniors who are
not overperforming are worrisome.

[1] There's a bit of issue here in team vs individuals. Generally, as long as
the team is successful, I tend to err on the side of overrating individuals.
After all, part of the reason we make teams is to allow them to shore up
weaknesses and play to strengths. However, I leave in an out by having a
baseline goal centered on teamwork and team success. So if someone is not
contributing as expected to the team, there's something to call them out on.

------
underwater
I'm surprised at the references to OKRs as a part of performance reviews. Yes,
OKRs have elements of focusing and measuring progress, but they are also about
encouraging people to be ambitious and communicating intent.

It's generally accepted that using them for performance reviews is a bad thing
because it encourages people to be conservative and create hackable key
results.

------
totaldude87
My experience: Most of the time, all it takes , is to beat the system..

In one of the companies I worked for : one hand we were doing marvels in
automating stuff and repetitive work which saves ton of manual efforts and
reduces human errors , and guess what ! its not even accounted for in the
standard goals..

Sometimes you need to stare at the bullshit and say here we go and beat the
crap out of it..

------
afarrell
Tangent: Are there any good books or articles on how to find the answer to
this question within your own company as applied to yourself?

------
fsloth
To my knowledge there is no performance management as such (at least in my
subsidiary). We have a mandatory quarterly review, but it's intent seems to be
to maintain the manager-employee relationship to at least a bare minimum, and
to offer a platform to collect data if someone is really, really not pulling
their weight.

------
abyssin
At my previous company, performance management was a show they put on to get a
story to tell when it was time to discuss compensation. Lack of performance
resulted in firing without warning. Performance assessment gave information
about their reading of the job market and the risk you'd jump ship.

------
ochronus
Just to clarify: what kind of goals do you mean? Is the context people
management or anything in general?

~~~
edgefield0
People management. Goals for staff. Thanks!

------
Ruth_K
Most of the answers I would give to your questions are in this post:
[https://ivypanda.com/essays/performance-management-
essay/](https://ivypanda.com/essays/performance-management-essay/)

------
ochronus
Shameless plug about goal setting: [https://ochronus.online/goal-
setting/](https://ochronus.online/goal-setting/)

------
dghughes
Everyone got a 3 rating every quarter. Pointless.

------
egberts1
Survival of the fittest: after being at the lowest 10% for three of five
years, you get washed out

------
renewiltord
We used Google Sheets. Honestly, it appeared that culture was more important
than tooling here.

