
MicroEval (YC S12) Aims To Take The Pain Out Of Performance Reviews - ernestipark
http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/16/microeval-launch/
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Splines
At MSFT my 1:1 with my manager is pretty much this. If there's any immediate
good/bad things that he needs to share with me, that's the venue we do it in.
It's one of the reasons why I really appreciate working for him (I had
previous managers that didn't help me at all and I was lost in the weeds).

It's not for everyone; but I personally really appreciated timely feedback on
what I was doing right and what I was doing wrong.

For the last few annual reviews it's been pretty hands off from my side of
things - anything that is brought up about great things I did or things I
struggle with we've talked about it already numerous times over the year. If
you're surprised in your annual review you're doing something wrong.

~~~
ernestipark
Agree 100% Splines. We've found that people are surprised way too often in
their performance reviews (which is actually how this company came about).
1:1s and face to face interaction is incredibly valuable and we don't seek to
replace or uproot that in any way. However, another important component is
keeping a record of progress so that the annual review is based on something
factual or at least written (especially when the review is the basis for
promotion/termination/bonuses etc). In addition, we've seen that MicroEval can
be a good tool that facilitates and begins conversations about performance and
growth.

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spaghetti
I'm all for improving performance in the workplace. Many businesses
desperately need it. However I feel like this product is striving to be a
faster horse instead of tackling the underlying issue. Namely that performance
reviews of any type can be gamed. Doesn't matter if they're every six months
or every ten minutes.

I think performance reviews can be eliminated entirely. VPs that are in charge
of products could be evaluated on how much revenue their product brings in.
VPs could have the power to fire anyone working under them. Same with the
managers working under the VPs.

The idea is to motivate employees to achieve one thing: bringing in more
revenue (which is the goal of all for-profit companies anyways). There's no
need to slice and dice the "performance" into pieces. Just empower people and
measure revenue.

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ryanwjackson
Thanks for the feedback spaghetti. To some extent, and for some positions,
hard metrics such as revenue are definitely a very strong indicator of
performance. However, this approach neglects the fact that businesses and
types of employees are extremely nuanced.

Often times it is very difficult for an employee to identify the reasons why
they are not performing up to expectations (this even applies to the revenue
model).

In our research, we have also found that a culture driven only by numbers and
money typically produce unhappy employees and decreased morale. Cultures that
are driven on improvement and achievement through performance tend to produce
happier employees that are excited to work for a what is likely unique
company.

Ultimately, we created MicroEval to increase the conversations happening in
the work place. And we want to provide the participants of those conversations
concrete things to talk about. Having identified the nuances of one's
performance gives them a clearer target for improvement.

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dman
I think youre on the right track - Ive worked on an eval application in the
past and your research about numbers / metrics is spot on. Try to stay away
from quantifying performance and focus on helping managers / employees capture
achievements / shortcomings. Give employees an opportunity to demarcate the
achievements / shortcomings they jotted over the year before the final eval.

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thaumasiotes
This article takes the perspective that the purpose of performance reviews is
to provide feedback to employees. It was my understanding that the purpose of
performance reviews was to provide evidence to the government that you had
reason to fire the person. Attacking the first idea won't bear much fruit if
what people want is the second.

This is a (slightly) different area, but during my year as a teacher, my much
more experienced coworker, who came from the New Jersey system, couldn't
emphasize enough that anytime a "problem" student committed any infraction, no
matter how minor, he wanted us to write it down. He was quite explicit that
this documentation should be based on our view of the student, not the
conduct, and that the purpose was that, should a parent complain about actions
we were taking against their child, we wanted to have a huge file of
infractions to show off.

(Clarification of "based on the student, not the conduct" -- otherwise good
student commits an infraction that might merit discipline ("She punched
through the girls' bathroom window"). We don't care. Awful student commits a
minor infraction ("Talking in class"). We write it down.)

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rjsamson
In the US we have at will employment, so using performance reviews primarily
for evidence to fire people is not going to something that is common.

~~~
thaumasiotes
Nominal at-will employment might not provide all the protection you would
expect. For example, though the employer may end an at-will contract for "any"
reason, certain reasons are legally prohibited.

Further, you might want to read [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-
greenspan/why-i-sued-goo...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-
greenspan/why-i-sued-google-and-won_b_172403.html) for an example of court
thinking:

'In fact, clause 6 of the AdSense for Content Terms and Conditions does not
allow Google to terminate accounts for "no" reason--only "any" reason. Much to
my amusement, the judge interrupted her to make a point that sounded familiar.

"But you couldn't terminate my account because of the color of my eyes, could
you? I have brown eyes. You couldn't terminate my account because of that."

Ms. Milani reiterated her previous arguments, but the judge didn't buy them.'

Personally, I would argue that "the guy has brown eyes" is sufficient "any"
reason, but I appear to be losing the popular battle.

~~~
rjsamson
You're correct. My only point is that it is not enough of an issue here in the
US that accumulating evidence to fire somebody is not a primary reason to
institute performance reviews company-wide (in general).

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kadabra9
This was an idea I was toying with for a while, and even started working on as
a side project, so while I'm kind of bummed these guys have beaten me to the
punch (and it looks like they did a nice job doing it), in a way it's sort of
nice to see that other teams out there concur with my assessment that the
current state of performance reviews is nothing short of awful.

I think the real question for something like this is: Can you convince
management that its a big enough problem?

Ask any rank and file employee at a mid size company and they will tell you
that evaluations are miserable, and borderline useless. When I mentioned some
ideas for improving evaluations to my manager at my current job, the feedback
I got was basically that the current system "wasn't great", (and basically
everyone agreed), but it wasn't bad enough to justify the pain of switching to
something else.

Convince the decision makers that bad evaluations are enough of a problem to
justify switching, and then make it easy to do so, and reviews could actually
(gasp!) become useful again.

~~~
ernestipark
Thanks for the validation kadabra9. This is absolutely a problem we are aware
of and in our experience, management does recognize that there is an issue.
However, what it may come down to is offering a product that is so clearly
better than the current methodology and solutions that it becomes a no brainer
to switch. This is what we'll be continuing to work towards. Would love to
hear more of your thoughts if you'd like to shoot me an email.

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pacaro
I'm torn by the screenshot; do the buzzwords in the sample make this more or
less appealing to your customers?

If there is no measurable difference, can you do the world a service and
reduce the buzzword usage?

When I'm faced with a question like "Did this individual contribute to
collaborative innovation and excellence in a dynamic group setting?" I tend to
throw-up in my mouth a little and stop giving honest answers and start
thinking about which answer will most benefit me...

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shmeesh
This is a great team and I'm excited for what they will do. Everyone hates
performance reviews!

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ckluis
$10/employee/m - seems expensive for a form tool that collects minimum data

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neya
Is Techcrunch connected to/or sponsored by YC by any chance? I'm not accusing,
I'm questioning out of real curiosity...I see many many YC-related posts on
Techcrunch..hence the curiosity.

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will_lam
I guess there's a void in the market somewhere after the Rypple acquisition by
Salesforce?

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ernestipark
Link to site: <http://microeval.com>

