

Ask HN: approaches to performance review for tech companies? - allochthon

Are there any tips you can offer for a startup that will eventually have to look at the question of handling performance reviews?<p>Most of us spend much of our lives at work, out of necessity or voluntarily, and we all want to be at a place where we enjoy working.  I get the sense that the approach of a business to performance review is critical to employee morale, to the tenor of their interactions with one another and to the long-term execution of the business.<p>In my own experience, I&#x27;ve witnessed forced&#x2F;stacked ranking lead to serious, concrete difficulties for a company I worked for. Such difficulties might not have been avoidable under another scheme, and I don&#x27;t want to overgeneralize from a single data point.  But the experience leaves me wondering, have you worked at a successful tech company that had an approach to performance review that the people making things happen, at whatever level, were generally happy with or even enthusiastic about?  One that keeps politics to a minimum and that encourages ownership and responsible risk-taking?  Have you seen a business that successfully manages itself with an approach to performance review that is mostly or entirely implicit?  Have you seen forced&#x2F;stacked ranking carried out in a way that employees at all levels feel confident that reasonable outcomes are the norm?
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6thSigma
My cofounder and I are working on an alternative to performance reviews which
focuses more on real-time feedback. Instead of a formal time period to do
reviews and tedious tasks like employee self-assessments, we just have a
continuous system with quick feedback loops from both management and peers. We
feel this solves the root intention of performance reviews and is less
invasive and demeaning to employees.

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allochthon
That sounds interesting. I'll keep an eye out for a product along those lines.
I agree that performance reviews are degrading. My hope is that they can be
made to go away somehow.

