
The Age of the Never-Ending Performance Review - petethomas
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-08-22/the-age-of-the-never-ending-performance-review
======
gentleteblor
More frequent performance feedback is a good thing. Just don't think for a
second that it changes the nature of the employer-employee relationship.

The employer wants: best work at the lowest price. The employee wants: to do
best work (hopefully) at the highest price.

That tension in price comes into play in all the big (hiring, raises,
promotions, bonuses) moments of this relationship and the deck is mostly
stacked against the employee.

What's an employee to do? Get leverage. And when i say get, I mean earn it
(because you work hard and smart and are killing it at work) and show it (be
savvy). You need to track every instance of your good work, every
demonstration of your value to the company. You need to know what form your
performance feedback will take (quick meeting? annual review? panel?) and be
ready with all the ammo/leverage/savvy/whatever you want to call it. You have
to be able to show what you're worth, what the company loses by losing you
(loss aversion works on your boss too) and all that.

~~~
SapphireSun
That's small ball leverage. Real leverage is being irreplaceable so that if
you leave they're screwed. Think of it like being a monopolist supplier.
Competition depresses wages, so the way to be rich is to be a monopolist.
Straight out of Peter Theil, though I don't think he'd like this version as
much.

~~~
ScottBurson
"Never make yourself indispensible. If you can't be replaced, you can't be
promoted."

\-- Something I once read somewhere. I can't say I've followed its advice, but
I also can't say I've observed it to be false.

~~~
dagw
Personally I don't want to be promoted. Promotions suck. Just keep feeding me
hard technical problems and keep administrative and management responsibility
as far away from me as possible and I'll be happy.

~~~
igf
Unfortunately the indispensible employee generally isn't the one getting fed
hard technical problems, he's the one responsible for maintaining the complex,
mission-critical _thingy_ that only he understands and which seems to break
down on a regular basis.

I do not envy the indispensible employee.

~~~
Ntrails
It's a trade off. I got in at 9.30, left at 5, was overpaid and spent most of
my day reading HN, doing side projects, or playing cool js games like that cat
one. My only meaningful responsibility was to make sure we didn't break down
too much or for too long, and that took a few hours a week.

I think that for some people that would have been a trade off they'd be happy
to make (and in many ways it _was_ attractive), I think if I'd got on with the
people I worked with I might still be there.

------
intended
>Of course, companies that turn themselves into unpleasant places to work will
presumably drive away the best workers.

The hand wavy, market-will-solve-it, get-out-of-jail-free-card of our
generation raises its greying head again.

A) You can only leave a firm if you have a sufficiently fluid job market for
your skills.

B) Firms will be dystopian, and managers will follow the latest HR fad or
mantra that infects their CEOs or competitors. "Forever criticism" will most
likely make it much worse.

c) We have repeatedly shown that human beings are terrible at assessing their
own inabilities, while also being influenced by non critical factors during
assessments of situations. The most likely scenario - forever criticism
combined with an annual review, will provide people with just the kind of data
minefield to blow each other up with.

D) Tools like this are an effort to bridge a paucity of managerial experience.
The solution to this is to give people actual managerial experience - i.e.
identify and train managers (not leaders), or teams which can self manage.

(side note - to achieve D, you need people to work in firms long enough for
the investment to be worthwhile.)

~~~
UK-AL
If you don't have the skills you probably don't deserve to be paid lots. So
that's a non issue

~~~
CalRobert
"...don't deserve to be paid lots..."

Yet what people "deserve" has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with what
they are paid. Do you think people in negotiations sit around thinking "what
does this guy deserve?" Or are they just trying to get the best bang for their
buck like anyone else?

~~~
UK-AL
If you have the skills you don't even need strong negotiation skills.

You always have the ability to just get multiple offers and walk away from the
worst.

~~~
pc86
I agree with your point higher up but couldn't disagree more strongly with
this:

> _If you have the skills you don 't even need strong negotiation skills._

If you have absolutely shit negotiating skills, or don't even negotiate, you
are going to be paid less than you deserve forever. You might get a few lucky
offers where the initial offer is actually close to market, but more often
than not you're getting an 80-90% market offer the first time around.

You combine developer pay being as high as it is, the majority of raises and
promotions being based off previous salary, and compounding interest, and it's
not unreasonable that no or poor negotiation could leave over a million
dollars on the table over the course of your lifetime.

~~~
UK-AL
It's very hard for companies to do this, if you have multiple offers.

You say I've got a better offer from x, and they will have to beat or say no.
You keep doing this, eventually you will reach market price regardless of
negation skills.

~~~
st3v3r
Wrong. If all the offers are around the same, you're still right where you
were.

~~~
UK-AL
If all offers are the same, that's a strong indicator to say that's your
actual value and not anyone low balling you

------
dbg31415
I work at a 50-ish person services agency. We used to do reviews at the end of
every project. Everyone staffed to the project has the option of publicly or
anonymously evaluating anyone else, and we offer the option for clients to
give us their feedback on anyone they want.

What we found is that nobody gives a shit. People with glowing reviews...
still leave the company (even with reviews tied to bonuses). People who are
great performers still get shit reviews from their peers based on personality
instead of merit.

So it's pretty much all just shit that wastes time.

We dropped reviews in favor of public praise mechanisms where anyone use an
open mic at our weekly staff meetings to praise a co-worker if they feel so
inspired (holy fuck it's a lot of sales people patting each other on the back
though), and a karma-tracking tool that keeps a tally in Slack. We also send
out a very simple questionnaire at the end of a project to our employees,
clients, and contractors... it's in a Google Form and they can opt not to
leave their name... we just ask, "What sucked about this project?"

Love to find a better way to do it... but meh, I don't want to waste any more
time on this. We all know who we like to work with, we know bosses give
bonuses based on who they like, and anything else is just a BS time-sink
designed to make you lie to yourself.

~~~
Terr_
> holy fuck it's a lot of sales people patting each other on the back though

Meanwhile at my company the engineering boss spends a brief time every monthly
meeting pleading for somebody--anybody--to submit nominations for corporate
recognition. Not sure if it's mass-imposter-syndrome or just high expectations
or what.

------
Spooky23
This is why HR people are HR people and don't do real work other than
negotiating the health plan.

Systems like this are trivial to abuse. Several years ago, I worked for a
company that was poised to expand a line of business that I happened to be in,
and we wanted to get certain people positioned to move up and certain other
people to stay where they were.

We didn't have a micro-management system in place, so we did what you do in
the absence of process: email. We did a traditional propaganda campaign. "Wow.
Betty Sue really did a great job at X!" "Joe had a bit of trouble getting
things going, but Mike helped close it." "Betty Sue and Mike rocked that TPS
report meeting!"

Instead of coming up with creepy ways to gather intel to let you do whatever
you want while avoiding discrimination lawsuits, hold managers accountable for
performance and give them the ability to manage.

------
mmmBacon
I recently moved to a SW company that does this every 6 months. I haven't been
through the review process yet but it seems all consuming for 3 out of the 6
months. My manager has a team of 7 and it seems like he spends half his time
on this.

Since I work on HW my projects are long-term and they don't fit this review
cycle very well. I also think it causes people to do a lot of nonsense stuff
as they desperately try to "make an impact" during the review period. A lot of
stuff is done that is a distraction in the name of making an impact.

I get the need to measure people and provide feedback but this constant review
shit is ridiculous. In my experience it's clear who is pulling their weight
and who isn't.

~~~
forgotmysn
It may be clear to you, but it's probably less clear to management. This gives
them a "pulse".

~~~
mmmBacon
If you are managing small teams of people and don't know if they are pulling
their weight, then the problem is that you aren't a very good manager.

------
JustSomeNobody
More frequent feedback isn't anything new. This is how one is _supposed_ to
manage.

Look, if you walk into a performance review and you don't know how it's going
to end, your manager is doing it _wrong_.

Your manager should know your strengths and weaknesses. They should know your
successes and failures and _why_ they were successes and failures. They should
know your goals and form a plan for you to help you accomplish them (a serious
plan, not some "well, they make us list three goals every year" crap). The
only way to get that is to have open, frequent communication with you.

A good manager is there to help you succeed. If not, they're just a boss.

------
sjg007
360 performance reviews suffer a similar problem in that the savvy folks will
all give each other positive feedback. In fact this is the ultimate solution
to the prisoners dilemma. Management is looking to divide and conquer which in
the long run will hurt even the best performers. Because even the best are
human and occasionally have performance issues outside of their control. Not
to mention the inequality in work assignments with respect to high value
business goals.

~~~
votr
And engineers with Libertarian slants happily go along with it while their
masters laugh.

~~~
kiba
Laugh what? It doesn't seem efficient.

~~~
dropit_sphere
But only shareholders care about aggregate efficiency. Managers do too, of
course, in the abstract, but not nearly as much as they do about their own
careers. You don't even need to be a bad actor for this to be true.

------
bloombergino
Well, isn't it ironic that Bloomberg still uses stack ranking and (quoting the
article) encourages managers to actively "manage out dead wood"?

The performance reviews I've experienced in my time at Bloomberg were some of
the most forensic shit I'd ever faced. Every misstep counts against you, and
"the talk" isn't far behind.

------
ryan606
The problem of "not enough feedback" is far more pervasive than that of "too
much feedback". However, most companies that try to resolve this issue try a
One Size Fits All approach for all employees, rather than customizing the
feedback solution. Different groups of employees need different frequency and
intensity of feedback: client-facing employees typically benefit from more
feedback than engineers.

------
otoburb
Some on HN bemoan the lack of a "true" meritocracy. Maybe these never-ending,
always-on performance evaluation and feedback loops are a dream come true for
the HN majority. But as the author states towards the end of the article,
everybody else will be left by the wayside as inequality grows between the
be[st|tter] performing and "other" people.

The question remains to be seen which side of the line the majority of HN
readers fall.

Of course, the more cynical amongst us may sneer and think "yet another social
system for fakers to game." They probably wouldn't be wrong either, but seems
on the surface that continuous performance evaluation will be slightly harder
to game.

~~~
wonkaWonka
No way. Fuck that.

I have quit jobs over their idiotic daily meeting rituals. Continuous
evaluation does nothing for team performance.

Firing people hurts morale. Hiring people who suck hurts morale.

Making people who suck, suck in public on a daily basis hurts morale.

Forcing people who actually get shit done, to mire themselves in tedium and
busy work, and engage garish displays of self-appraisal, not only interrupts
actual work, distracting from things that count, but provides for a constant
atmosphere of interrogation.

Playing the daily meeting, and weekly status game is shit. I won't do it.
Never again. Not for any amount of money.

Know what you want before you assign it to me. I'll get it done. Don't ask me
are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet? You child. Grow some
patience. The car ride is over when I park the car.

~~~
wyager
While I probably wouldn't use such strong words, I absolutely agree. The daily
standup/frequent performance review has disastrous effects on productivity
with no discernible benefit. It appears to be something that management can do
to cheaply create an illusion of managerial productivity.

~~~
bitJericho
If you're not willing to use strong language, then you might be part of the
problem.

~~~
ivraatiems
Good communicators don't need to swear or yell to make points.

~~~
bitJericho
The best ones do.

~~~
xanthor
You're a fucking idiot.

~~~
bitJericho
Fuck you pal!

------
thefastlane
be wary of any feedback loop that is visible to HR and permanently stored in
their systems.

and be wary of bosses who rely on these system rather than taking you out to
coffee and actually investing in you as a human being.

~~~
delazeur
At this point, I'm convinced that people go into HR because they aren't
competent enough to do anything useful with their careers. My firm's HR people
have wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars of our time holding mandatory
webinars to give us information that could have been contained in 2-3
paragraph emails.

~~~
CaptSpify
That's a pretty broad generalization. I've seen my fair share of crappy HR
groups, but I've also seen good ones. Just as I've seen some terrible Dev
groups, as well as some good ones.

~~~
delazeur
Yeah, I was definitely being unfair. I was irritated with my HR people when I
wrote that comment.

------
waspleg
Oh good USSR style spy on your neighbors is back for corporate monetization.

You know, I watched a few episodes of the English show Black Mirror about how
technology is used for vile dystopian hellscapes like this but it got too
depressing to watching after about 3 of them.

How long before this is directly tied to your social media by the companies
that require access to your accounts?

~~~
plasticxme
Requiring access to your social accounts is laughable. Unless it's directly
tied to your job, it's a signal to quickly and politely end the relationship.

------
ProxCoques
"... it’s easy to see how some workplaces could turn pretty dystopian pretty
quickly"

Frankly, it's hard to see how they could get much worse than they are right
now.

~~~
clifanatic
Watch it, they'll think you're challenging them.

------
mahyarm
Yellow submarine! What a great way to advertise your products to other
managers and HR departments who might use them.

I find in practice these web tools are just used to run typical annual / semi-
annual perf reviews and give the company an excuse to give people raises and
promotions in a non-adhoc manner. Everyone bitches about the time it takes to
do them and it's usually a low priority extra thing you have to do.

It feels like school report cards in essence.

------
davak
Anybody found that any of the continuous feedback tools are actually helpful
either as the employee or manager?

~~~
sounds
I'd be curious if anyone who has worked at Valve has any insights they would
like to share.

It's worth pointing out that Linus Torvalds has a successful continuous
feedback system -- and it is his 99% job to provide feedback. I only mean that
he doesn't write as much of the Linux code any more, day-to-day, he mostly
just reviews patches.

~~~
0xmohit
A recent _rant_ from Linus Torvalds on commenting style:
[https://lkml.org/lkml/2016/7/8/625](https://lkml.org/lkml/2016/7/8/625)

~~~
arethuza
What's so bad about that? It actually seems like a pretty sensible and well
argued bit of feedback - with some slightly colorful language but nothing that
seems that extreme.

~~~
soundwave106
It's honestly rather long winded for something the compiler isn't going to
give two hoots about. :)

When it comes to syntax, I personally think that the best policy is to pick
one style, and stick with it. I have come to distrust people with passionate
rants like this about syntax because, in my experience, in a few years there
probably will be another syntax that falls in fashion, and all of a sudden
this New Syntax that now is The New One True Way that everyone gets passionate
about, and you have to be high to actually like Old Syntax or something.

What can happen in long term projects is syntax mishmash. Not terribly a big
deal with comment formatting, but annoying for other things. Wonder if that
variable you are trying to remember is camelCase, underscore_notation, or
sHungarianNotation? Is the table you are joining to using Id as a key, TableId
as a key, or Table_Id as a key? That's more annoying than any of the problems
any syntax has.

So Linus's rant only would be useful to me if his opinion on comment
formatting has been consistent over the years. :)

