
Ask HN: What do you think of performance appraisal at your workplace? - amirathi
What does the process looks like? What are the primary inputs? Do you use any tool to capture peer reviews?<p>What&#x27;s your take on the whole process?
======
scarface74
I've gotten to the point where I don't care. The difference between top
performer and bottom performer has been usually around 3%.

I appraise myself - have I learned new marketable skills? If so? I jump to
another job that will pay the equivalent of 3 or 4 years of raises.

~~~
rubicon33
It seems like software salaries really cap out at like ~150. I don't see how
jumping around jobs is going to push you past that, unless the new skill you
learned was a PHD.

~~~
pfarnsworth
150k? Not in Silicon Valley. My base is 200k and my friend just got a job with
a $300k base, but he's on the principal architect level. With bonuses and
stock comp, we make a lot more.

~~~
rubicon33
Yea, sure.

I highly doubt you or your friend make that salary without some special niche
knowledge. Even a PHD, perhaps.

~~~
pfarnsworth
You would be wrong. I am a regular backend coder. I'm good though, but most of
my coworkers make around the same as me. My friend is very talented which is
why he makes that much. He has an unrelated MSc (he's from India), but he's a
principal engineer. The point is 150k is not a barrier whatsoever, at least in
Silicon Valley.

------
maxk42
The performance appraisal process at most workplaces, sadly, is nil. You have
to be your own advocate. Been there a while? Time to take the boss aside and
say something like "You know I've been here for " \+ time + " " \+
plural(time_units) + " now and I've learned a lot. I've accomplished " \+ "
".join(accomplishments) + " and I have a much greater understanding of the
business' inner workings and the role I fill here. I think a raise of " \+
specific_amount_or_percentage + " would be appropriate."

This triggers an in-depth review, which consists of the chain of command
asking themselves "Do I like this guy?", "Can we afford it?", and "How much of
a pain in the ass would it be if this person quit?"

Repeat every 12 - 18 months.

------
aesthetics1
I work for the government (for now). We write our own performance evaluation
annually (a simple Word document template), with a list of projects completed,
and a list of systems that we maintain (and associated maintenance tasks). We
also have a section for personal/professional development to keep track of
training, education, and self-improvement. It is nice to reflect on what I
have done over the past year.

That being said, the performance review is basically a formality. We have 5
steps in each pay grade, and I have never seen someone miss a step after each
year. Someone could be sitting at their desk reading their Kindle all day and
still get their 5% jump every year. In addition to that, nearly 100% of
promotions are based on tenure. You will probably go from a level 1 --> 2 -->
3 --> Senior every year, and supervisory/management positions are only opened
upon the incumbent's retirement (to be filled typically by the most tenured
person to apply, regardless of fit).

It is not a good system. Lots of people stick around who should receive the
boot, and the wrong people are placed in supervisory/management positions
simply because they have been there for a while.

~~~
lostapathy
It could be worse.

I used to work for the state of Kansas and we had most of this, except we
didn’t get raises, nor were non-performers culled out. We probably lost a
month of productivity each year due to the work and anxiety the process
caused, yet the process had no bearing on anything.

~~~
mgkimsal
> yet the process had no bearing on anything.

Possibly had a bearing on compliance stuff that wasn't relevant to anything
you were doing. Having to have an annual review may be some legislative
requirement that makes little sense for what you're doing. (or, at least for
the level of time/effort involved).

~~~
lostapathy
Perhaps - but if so, management should relay that information so that people
understand. Pointless stress is horrible for morale and productivity.

~~~
mgkimsal
I totally agree.

------
shamzamblamb
We've just moved from stack ranking to a coaching orientated "flag if there is
an issue" system. Thank the gods. So much time is wasted in performance
management; what counts is that people who are not contributing can be coached
into success; or removed if they are really not suitable to the team (very
rare - and the fault of the manager - me - who accepted them). Promotion is
done competitively and on the basis of achievements, so high achievers have a
chance to differentiate. What I think is : all employees must have goals for
their year; those goals should lead to growth and development - project
contribution is table stakes... just do your job! Issues that get in the way
need to go to the goal register.

Most (95%) people want to do their fair share and be good at their job. Some
years they do a little worse because of health or family issues, some years
they hit it out of the park. The 5% who don't want to do this are always a
problem and need to be catered for separately. High performers can get
promotions. Appraisals are to determine these two things and share
information.

~~~
inevitable2
"...all employees must have goals for their year..."

In all seriousness, this type of appraisal process always confused me.

What are some examples of measurable goals that a rank-and-file "Member of The
Technical Staff" can come up with on their own, seeing as they likely don't
have much choice re the projects they work on, the teams they are in, etc.?

------
sjg007
360 (peer) reviews can be gamed so are pretty much useless or would be overly
critical.

Inputs are company goals and a self assessment of how your current work aligns
with them. Your manager then provides review.

Performance is a function of the business line. There is no carrot only stick.
So I think promotions and good performance reviews are a function of how
impactful your role is to some core business function. If you are not in a
profit center then you have to justify how your work saves money overall.

They also encourage maladaptive behavior among and across teams. Stack ranking
is particularly bad and I don't think companies have found ways to measure
performance without inducing competitiveness. Exceptions might be multi-
functional teams but these are more akin to a sports team where the best
players get playing time and they completely ignore the farm system.

------
mbielski
The entire process is a complete waste of time for all involved as it is not
linked to anything. Not raises, not promotions... nothing. It's like the
people in the adminisphere were told that they needed to do them to be
considered a "real" company so last year we started having them shoved down
our throats. This year the engineering team was told that we score too high
and make the rest of the company look bad. Give me a bleeping break!

~~~
commandlinefan
Joel Spolsky had an interesting (and, I think, accurate) take on the
pointlessness of performance appraisals: the only possible outcomes are it can
be neutral, or you can completely piss off the person you're appraising. If
the appraisal is anything less than glowing, you're just going to demoralize
the person you're reviewing:
[https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/03/incentive-pay-
cons...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/03/incentive-pay-considered-
harmful/)

~~~
mbielski
Yep, I completely agree about the accuracy. Last year it was neutral. This
year it slipped down a notch.

------
ahi
I work in academia. Our performance review process is mostly a make-work
scheme for HR. There are some forms for goal setting and reviewing how your
goals/progress fit with organization goals (which are vague enough to be
useless). In theory, HR reviews these forms, but that's doubtful because they
don't have manpower or operational understanding to do it.

It changes every couple years, but the outcome is basically a rating of
below/meets/exceeds expectations. No one is ever fired, and no one is ever
promoted based on these reviews (IT staff don't even have a career ladder to
climb). The rating will determine if your annual raise is CPI or CPI +- 1% so
it doesn't really affect salary either. The occasional market review which can
bump you from lowest decile of market to lowest quartile of market dwarfs the
effects of the review ratings.

So it's basically pointless and most managers don't pretend otherwise.

------
bungie4
Last month I was told I'd be docked a portion of my COLA because my time
estimates were always longer than my actual work time. This was because
management NEVER, EVER gives me anything close to a specification to estimate
properly from. So, I tend over estimate.

Looked at another way, I was docked because I consistently outperform
estimated time to delivery, which means the company actually makes more money
off my work because we charge our customers for development work.

So, what do I think of performance appraisals at my work place? I'm actively
looking for other work.

I also believe that performance appraisals, for anything but bottom rung
employees, are currently done one way only. They should be done from both
perspectives. The managed employees reporting to the managers boss. This way,
ineffectual middle managers can be disposed of.

~~~
Manozco
What's the meaning of COLA ?

~~~
s73v3r_
Cost of Living Allowance. It's basically the bare minimum of raises that one
can get. If that's all the company was planning on giving you to start with,
then you're working for a crappy company.

------
cjg
I'm all in favour of a regular informal discussion around what aspects of the
job are being done well and what could be improved.

But I suspect you are talking about something more formal, something tied to
salary increases.

I think such appraisals are damaging to the relationship between employer and
employee. The only benefit is for the company in that they make it clear that
you can't have maximum marks on everything (which is fair enough), but then
tie that to salary increases. "Well, we would have given you a bigger pay
rise, but you didn't get top marks on this particular skill." Or similarly,
evidence to get rid of someone you wanted out.

~~~
stult
Yeah my firm really emphasizes the importance of feedback, but insists it
happen via formal reviews which then drive compensation. Which is idiotic.
You'll never get genuine feedback if you tie it to compensation because the
feedback will be driven by how much the reviewer wants the reviewee to get a
raise. So basically by how much they like the person. It's a stupid system
that gets almost nothing right.

------
matthewmacleod
Each person with line-management responsibility seeks feedback about each of
their reporting employees from three other people at the company who they work
with – a cross-team mix. Typically three questions - what areas have they done
well in, which areas do you feel they could develop further, and what is your
overall experience working with them.

This feedback is anonymised, reviewed in terms of personal goals identified at
the previous review, and a new set of goals is generated for the next period
during a review meeting with each team member.

There are no objective metrics, and the focus is on helping employees to
identify and improve any areas they want to work on, with peer feedback used
as a tool to help identify those areas and understand if they are engaging in
behaviour or practices that might be positive or negative without realising
it.

This works pretty well, tends to lead to constructive criticism that can be
tied to actual steps to be taken to improve performance, and removes the
pressure of having to work to an arbitrary metric.

------
handbanana
Sadly, they don't exist where I work currently. There is just the occasional
1:1 which aren't very productive/helpful and are more shoot the shit vs
performance appraisal in style

------
lb1lf
I am quite happy with the process at my current enployer, I just want to share
the metric used at a former employer (only for a year, though, in fairness!)

We were judged by the number of lines committed to our CVS.

They realized that was probably not the best of ideas when a colleague and I
checked in 1M lines of comments just prior to our review.

~~~
ignoramous
Obligatory:
[http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Negative_2000_Lin...](http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Negative_2000_Lines_Of_Code.txt)

------
juanmirocks
What about good-old just "you did awesome in last project, I want you to know
this. Let's have a dinner/walk next time".

Simple warm human communication beats all? systems

~~~
commandlinefan
I think that, in most cases, the annual performance appraisal "dance" is a CYA
for companies that might have to go back and justify the firing of a low
performer. Unfortunately, some of the managers (especially the low-middle
managers) haven't learned to read between the lines and recognize that the
performance appraisal is actually just a formality and try to actually use it
as a club to beat more performance out of people who are already overburdened.

------
logfromblammo
I have never gone through the same performance review process two years in a
row. And despite all the tweaking and rejiggering, and employer changes, none
have ever been able to capture a meaningful metric for performance. Nor have
they ever resulted in a salary increase that meaningfully competes with moving
on to another company.

The only positive thing I can say about it is that it's less stressful than
the interview process, which is my only reason for staying somewhere that I'm
not particularly happy.

The only meaningful self-appraisal is "can I make more money doing the same
work for someone else?" And the only meaningful goals are "build my resume to
make myself a more valuable employee for _any_ company, not necessarily my
current employer."

It has always been a waste of time to require the employee's participation in
the review process. We are perfectly capable of appraising ourselves, and when
we do it, we are always doing it in the context of the whole job market, and
not just one company. But no one is ever going to admit "my goal is to jump
ship for your leading competitor within the next year and get 20% more pay for
doing exactly the same work." We will happily tell the current employer "I
plan to increase meaningless metric X by Y% of completely subjective
measurement units this year." We might even put that on our resumes, and
pretend it's not bullshit in an interview.

It's pants-on-head stupid. Just hire managers that know how to assess the
performance of their reports for whatever it is they specifically do, and
trust them to do it to the best of their ability. The amount of cargo-culting
used to prop up those who are completely incompetent to assemble a working
team and keep it humming is ridiculous. Eventually, these companies are going
to have to promote more tech workers into tech management, because they'll be
the only ones that actually know what good tech work looks like. Slapping on
the same performance appraisal process used by the sales department from the
top-down just isn't going to get around that.

~~~
commandlinefan
I worked for one company for 9 years, and had 13 different managers in that
timeframe. Never once did the same person do my annual performance appraisal
twice. The worst, though, and the one I'll never forget, was when they brought
in a new guy in December to be my latest shiny new boss. Well, my daughter was
born a month premature the next month, right during performance appraisal
time. So I was in and out of the hospital dealing with the stress of a
3.5-pound baby in the neonatal intensive care unit when he insisted that I
dial in, from the hospital, for my performance review. Of course, he didn't
know anything about me (we'd met less than a month ago), but he gave me a
scathingly critical appraisal anyway, just to make sure I knew who was calling
the shots around here.

------
badcodehere
We just finished our first year of formal performance appraisals (self-review,
review by manager, etc).

The best thing I can say in favor of the current system is that the managers I
know realize that it's a mess/work in progress. It seems like the poorly
aligned official standards are being duly ignored for now. I'm not a fan of
subjective evaluations, but they're better than completely random "objective"
ones. We'll see how it goes in a year or two.

How is it a mess? Line engineers and managers had opposing goals (maximizing
bug counts fixed, minimizing bugs--and those are terrible metrics even without
the mismatch), individuals had goals that had no relation to their work, or
which they had no power to affect.

Team leads had to give feedback, but there was zero structured discussion
about standards: I had to ask a manager how to translate my evaluation of a
developer into a numeric scale.

My manager had to stack rank 5 people on a 1-5 scale. This was theoretically
not just ranking "first" through "last", but ranking from "exceptional"
through "unacceptable".

------
ashelmire
We have some form that we and our direct supervisors fill out and discuss.
Supposed to be quarterly, but we haven’t done it in a year. It has literally
no effect on anything. There are no raises based on merit and you only get
fired if you do something egregious or funding gets cut. We get cost of living
increases. The perils of academia...

------
ndh2
There is none. Performance doesn't matter at all. It's weird.

------
jfasi
Downvote me if you want, but I work at Google and I can offer a counterpoint
to the process presented in the article that blew up yesterday:

[https://mtlynch.io/why-i-quit-google/](https://mtlynch.io/why-i-quit-google/)

As always, this is my single-sample personal view, so please don't mistake
this for anything beyond that.

It's true, we do place a lot of importance on complexity and impact, which are
fuzzy metrics, potentially inconsistently defined, and can be subject to
circumstance. Yes, engineers do suffer the temptation to game things by
releasing their work prematurely and not committing themselves to supporting
it. And yes, not all managers know how to set expectations appropriately,
occasionally resulting in disappointment and confusion for their employees.

However, that's the individual's perspective. Promotions serve the institution
first, and the individual second, and I'd like to offer the institutional
perspective.

Promotion to senior engineer is a _big freaking deal._ Once you are Senior,
you've effectively been given the keys to the kingdom. It's the industry
equivalent of tenure. Want to transfer to a team? No problem, your manager
knows they're going to get someone who's been through hell and is able to
deliver. Want to join another company? Great, "Senior Engineer, Google" is an
indisputable mark of quality, you'll at least get an interview.

If there's one thing I've learned in my time here, it's that false positives
are way more costly than false negatives. Hire someone who can't do the work?
Enjoy six months of trying to grow them plus however long it takes to get them
to leave and release their headcount. Promote someone who isn't indisputably
good enough for the title? Enjoy watching them fail to meet expectations cycle
after cycle, trying to grow them, only to watch them leave out of frustration
a year later.

Yeah, it kinda sucks as an individual contributor because proving yourself is
difficult and subject to external forces. That's _torture_ for the sort of
ambitious overachievers that tend to be drawn to this company. However, the
thing that makes your career growth difficult is the same thing that makes the
work so challenging and the work environment so pleasant.

Also, there are some recent developments the author didn't mention, and I
presume he left after this was put into place. A lot of focus has been drawn
away from the rank of Senior. On paper, things used to be "up or out" until
Senior, even though that wasn't really applied in my experience. Now it's only
"up or out" until L4, one promotion below Senior. Plus the Senior promotion
process is getting streamlined somewhat, although time will tell how that
plays out.

EDIT: And then there's money. Managers have enough leeway that overachieving
L4s can make almost as much as an L5, so it's not like the lack of a promotion
is impoverishing you.

EDIT EDIT: To give some more context on the process itself:

For non-promo candidates, we do mutual reviews. You list the colleagues you'd
like to review you and list the projects you've worked on and your
contribution to them. Then everyone comments on their colleagues' assessments.

Managers then get together and have a powwow in which they agree on who in
their groups are giving exemplary performance at each level, and people are
calibrated as above or below the models for their level.

For promo candidates, the self-assessment is much more in-depth, and a
committee of unrelated people get together and perform a similar assessment,
except against a more abstract rubric describing expectations at each level.

~~~
lanius
How is "up or out" enforced? If someone is consistently performing for their
level but never seeks promotion, would they just be unceremoniously fired?

~~~
jfasi
In my experience, it's not overtly enforced. At lower levels there's an
expectation of growth, so not growing can be seen as triggering a "fails to
meet expectations." If someone is underperforming managers start to try to
help them out and guide them, but after a string of "fails to meet"
evaluations the focus shifts to motivation and compatibility with the company.

Almost nothing is unceremonious around here. Even employees who are on their
way out are placed on performance improvement plans to give them a change to
turn themselves around. I've never seen anyone _fired_ : the closest I've seen
is people leaving of their own accord to save themselves the trouble of going
through the process.

------
nitwit005
We are supposed to set annual goals/metrics, but don't know what we're doing 3
months out. This was also the case at previous company. Pointing out the task
is impossible doesn't seem to bother management. Success Factors seems to make
half its income from this sort of thing, so I assume it's trendy.

There is a process managers are supposed to follow for promotions, which is
good on paper, but it's pretty clear managers only do the paperwork steps of
that and pick based on their own criteria. The one aspect of that that seems
to function well is managers get nudged about people who haven't been promoted
in a while.

Usual funding issues with promotions, but I think that's true everywhere.

------
dvfjsdhgfv
It's just a bureaucratic requirement few people care about. A kind of game: I
need to pretend I care and my manager has to pretend likewise. We fill in the
forms, shake hands, and repeat this each year.

------
delibes
I'm the tech director/CTO/whatever in a team of 3 devs (me plus 2). We don't
do 'performance appraisals'.

We often do code reviews. I sometimes do pair programming. Once in a while I
have a private chat about something specific that's not code related.

And this: [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Abolishing-Performance-
Appraisals-B...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Abolishing-Performance-Appraisals-
Backfire-Instead/dp/1576752003)

~~~
s73v3r_
Code reviews are something that is completely separate, to me. They should not
be considered in performance reviews, otherwise you lose a lot of their
effectiveness (the one exception would be if someone was being toxic in their
comments)

~~~
nojvek
Not doing code reviews I guess works for very small companies. Code reviews
are more for blind spot checks. And everyone had blind spots in a large
system.

~~~
UK-Al05
Everybody should do code review. But they should not be part of the
performance review process.

------
guilhas
I like it. It is officially once a year, but reviewed quarterly. My dev
manager never fail even if is to busy to say anything constructive. We both
chose objectives, we scheduled the next appointment at the end of the current
one. I basically have to talk about my performance and say what I think is
good or bad with me, or managers.

------
southphillyman
Ultimately I think they are pointless at most companies since the raise/bonus
pool is going to be defined by something out of your control. I have
experienced mostly self defined objectives where the completion of those
objectives are reviewed with a manger at EOY.

------
purplezooey
Part of the problem is that HR is a total afterthought at most tech companies.
Just a few token people and the C-level who only cares about making the "100
best places to work" lists.

------
pascalxus
With the stack ranking system they got here, they make it unnecessarily
stressfull. My boss and everyone else is so stressed out during appraisals
week. And all this stress is sooo unnecessary.

~~~
commandlinefan
I haven't been at the job I have long enough to have been through a
performance appraisal yet, but every job I've had prior to this worked the
same way: they demand that I set "goals" for myself early in the year and
don't give me any specific guidance about what sort of goals they're looking
for, so I put together a set of what I think are reasonable goals based on the
priorities I'm aware of at the time (taking in to account that I know that new
things will come up in the course of the year). Then my completely
unqualified, self-serving, low-level middle manager looks at my goals, says,
"these are bad goals", writes up a new, impossible set of goals based on the
project-of-the-day (his goals, of course, are so vague that it would be
impossible to ever say that he didn't reach them), requires that I agree to
them, and then gives me a negative performance appraisal at the end of the
period because I didn't achieve them (mostly because the priorities have
completely changed in the last 12 months so that none of the ridiculous goals
he made up for me make sense any more). But then, after my negative review, I
get a standard cost of living increase, they keep me on, give me more
responsibility, and then are genuinely shocked and disappointed when I leave
for a better paying job.

------
gadders
One of the best things about being a contractor in the UK is getting off the
pointless appraisal treadmill.

