
Get Rid of the Performance Review - prakash
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122426318874844933.html
======
DanielBMarkham
I love reading commentaries. As a result of that love, I've come to spot
populist messages. To me, a populist message is one in which most all of the
listeners are going to feel like "heck yes!" while they are reading it.

Populist messages have a tendency, however, to fall apart upon further
inspection. There is no doubt that people hate performance reviews -- managers
and employees alike. There's no doubt that in most cases they cause and create
behavior that nobody wants.

I think he misses the boat right off the bat with the purpose of the review.
The purpose of the review is to make sure the _manager_ is doing his job with
the employee, knowing what's going on in the employee's work, having an
interest, offering to help, seeing where the employee and the company's
interests can be aligned. Some of these conversations are tough, and if you
didn't require them, a lot of employees would never have the chance to say no,
I don't want to be a tech lead, I'd rather get into teaching (or something
similar). To view the review process as primarily raise and checklist based is
to see how it's done instead of seeing what it's supposed to do. A common
argument in populist writing is to say "since X is commonly done very poorly,
X is therefore a bad idea altogether"

He gets even further into the cool-aid with this comment "I'm sick and tired
of hearing about subordinates who fail and get fired, while bosses, whose job
it was to ensure subordinate effectiveness, get promoted and receive raises in
pay."

Sounds good -- as long as you think bosses should always be able to make/help
subordinates be happy and productive. But while managers are definitely super
people, they're not super _man_. Things happen in life. People get accepted at
jobs they will never like. Companies take directions employees simply can't
agree with. There are lots of reasons why somebody can get fired while
management is not responsible. I'm not even sure that _most_ times management
is responsible, but I know that it's not all of the time. Generalizations are
always false: including this one.

</Rant>

~~~
sgupta
"The purpose of the review is to make sure the manager is doing his job with
the employee, knowing what's going on in the employee's work, having an
interest, offering to help, seeing where the employee and the company's
interests can be aligned."

If performance reviews were that useful, why are they done only once a year? I
feel like this should be a weekly conversation. Employee growth needs constant
attention, but unfortunately it only happens for a handful of hours once a
year.

My attitude is more pessimistic. I feel like these reviews are only useful for
HR, so that they have a paper trail in place in the event that an employee
needs to be terminated.

Edit: Just so my intentions are clear, I'm a cofounder of ididwork

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Absolutely!!! Where I work we _try_ to take on the attitude that the review is
a formality: the employee should already have a good idea of what's coming.
The reality falls short of that, but give us credit for trying :-) The review
covers everything from what you did during the year to what you need to do
next year. Basically we have a set of core competencies that you must have,
depending on the kind of work you do and one of the reasons for the review is
to make sure you get the training you need.

My personal take, and what I try to do with my reports, is to give periodic
feedback, good or bad. That way people have plenty of time to either bask in
the glory or improve before the final review is upon them.

~~~
sgupta
I like your strategy. Would you mind my pinging you for your thoughts in the
future?

Your profile didn't have your email listed - if you could shoot me an email at
gupta[at]ididwork.com I'd really appreciate it!

------
narag
I did an excellent work for months so my project manager wrote a review that
should have granted a raise. But I got sent to a new customer that didn't like
my face and asked for a replacement after a week.

My boss was asked to burn the review. Someone else from above would write a
new one. I guessed what was going on (later my boss confirmed my guesses), so
I didn't waste a second. A week later I gave the two weeks notice to go to a
place with 20% more pay. I wouldn't if not for the review system.

~~~
andrewf
Sounds like the powers that be in your situation could corrupt any system.

~~~
ajross
Agreed. What happened here is that narag's employer wanted to fire him, or at
least demote him. Irrespective of the moral issues, it's not at all unusual
for an employer to choose their favorite customer-facing employees based on
who their customers prefer. That's just good business. The review thing was
just paperwork, basically. They needed to push some numbers around to get the
result they wanted, so they did. Is that ethical? Probably not. But it's not
insane either.

~~~
narag
Well, I would say that the previous customer that I worked for during many
months was very satisfied, so was my direct boss. They didn't want to fire me
anyway, just to freeze my salary.

My point (same as in the article) is that performance is not the question, but
market forces. It turns out they really lacked the power to give me a bad
review. The same person that ordered the good review to be burnt and wrote a
new one (very bad, I guess) was a few days later offering me 10% more pay,
just because I was leaving.

------
pg
One of the startups we funded this summer is solving this problem:
<http://ididwork.com>

------
ambition
I think this is a critique of bad organizations more than performance reviews
themselves. Most of the points can be attributed to organizational problems
rather than problems with the process of performing reviews.

A good boss in a candid organization will be delivering informal feedback
throughout the year. The annual performance review has no surprises; it's a
set time to formalize what is already known.

People shouldn't treat performance reviews as salary negotiations, but instead
as evidence-gathering for a salary negotiation. A salary negotiation has two
important variables and the performance review provides evidence for only one.
The two variables are a) Value delivered to the company by the employee and b)
Best alternative salary for the employee.

------
timcederman
I found this article's descriptions of performance reviews was simply nothing
like what I've experienced. Maybe it's a combination of being in the Bay Area
and having gotten used to getting feedback, and enjoying improving my
performance based on it, as a TA.

------
wynand
I fully agree with what's written here.

It's still quite disappointing to see him referring to managers as "bosses"
and non-managers as "subordinates". The next logical step is to state that
managers are not there to exert power, but to make it possible for non-
managers to do work. Fewer power plays means a better working environment.

------
wallflower
If I were trying to hire top people, I would try the idea of Sony's Computer
Science Laboratories (CSL) where everyone is on a 1-yr contract (a variation
of publish or perish).

"Unlike the rest of Sony, CSL employs researchers on a one-year contract
basis, with annual performance reviews. Salaries are high, but they are based
on success, not on seniority."

[http://www.technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_article.asp...](http://www.technologyreview.com/printer_friendly_article.aspx?id=12016&channel=computing&section=)

And then you have GE and IBM.

At GE in Jack Welch's days, they routinely fired the bottom 10%. Up or out.

At IBM, they rank all of their scientists from top to bottom.

~~~
mkn
_At GE in Jack Welch's days, they routinely fired the bottom 10%. Up or out._

 _At IBM, they rank all of their scientists from top to bottom._

One of my favorite examples by Edwards Deming is a factory that has three
production lines, each manned by an employee, each producing the same product
on the same equipment. Furthermore, assume that there are no defects in the
equipment, the manufacturing processes are under statistical control
(negligible products appearing 2 standard deviations from the mean in any
measured variable, iirc), and that the employees are equally skilled at their
jobs. The company has a policy to promote top performers and dismiss low
performers.

Every year, at the annual review, the company policy demands that they promote
one average worker, keep another average worker in production, and fire the
other average worker, simply because even a statistically controlled process
produces some variation. This is a random process in that all three candidates
have been defined as equally qualified.

In a typical software organization, where there is hardly such a thing as a
controlled process, performance reviews are pure fiction if they purport to
say anything about the individual. It's simply amazing hubris to think that
you can attribute any given success or failure to a quality of the individual
employee when your processes are not under statistical control. It is
therefore amazing naivete to think that promotions in an organization of any
size are handed out based on merit. They are handed out based on, at best, a
record of performance, which is subject to the vagaries of chance.

Note that I'm not advocating for any particular Utopic solution. I'm just
acknowledging that local reviews of system components (employees, in this
case) will never produce a globally optimum solution.

------
skmurphy
Periodic feedback in one on one meetings is a necessary precursor to any
effective formal review. One of the bigger problems with most review forms is
that they rest on a premise of a well rounded individual and focus on
improving weaknesses instead of building on strengths. Marcus Buckingham wrote
a great book, "First Break All The Rules," critiquing this approach.

    
    
       Problem with Performance Reviews
       http://gmj.gallup.com/content/529/The-Four-Keys-to-Great-Management.aspx
    
       First Break all the Rules summary
       http://gmj.gallup.com/content/1144/First-Break-All-Rules-Book-Center.aspx

------
DenisM
I tought this would be another anti-management bandwagon rant but this was
surprisingly insightful. Having endured 10 years of this I can clearly
recognize what is being discussed.

------
gamble
Some companies do genuinely believe in reviews for their own sake, but I
suspect that their current ubiquity has more to do with the fear that a laid-
off employee might sue for wrongful dismissal if a paper trail hasn't been
established.

It would be interesting to know if performance reviews are as common in
jurisdictions where employers can fire staff at will.

~~~
anthonyrubin
Illinois is an "at will" state. The useless checklist performance reviews
described in the article are extremely prevalent here. Wrongful termination
isn't the only reason that people sue. Claims of discrimination are probably
the biggest fear.

------
LPTS
No performance reviews. If you do good, you get generous raises, stock options
to get your own piece of the pie, and a bigger role in making the company
succeed. If you do bad, mediocre, or merely slightly above average, you get a
generous severance package and the gentlest kick out the door.

I do not understand why adult human beings, who get a few short years to do
something creative and useful, want so bad to be treated so similarly to grade
school children. Line up to pee in the cup and have your bodily fluid tested
just like the cattle you fat fucks gorge yourselves on. Come into the
principa...manager's office and get reduced to some meaningless numbers it a
social ritual that directly links to mankinds worse tendencies to form
hierarchies that exist to mantain power. Piss away the potentially creative
years of your lives living the same day over and over again and get a few
measly biosurvival tickets in return, until you drop dead. If you are going to
go through life processing your relationships to power structure like a grade
school kid, what's the point of being an adult?

I do not want to hire the kind of person who needs or wants to be validated
like a second grader. I would prefer to hire the kind of person who demands
the dignity and responsibility due to adult human beings, and would blow me
off if I tried to sit down and hand out gold stars based on what's already
happened. I would prefer to address real problems when they come up, as
appropriate, and ignore nitpicks rather then saving nitpicks to be unleashed
in a minefield of potential miscommunications and ignoring problems with
employees until the review. There is no need to have this stupid ritual every
six months.

I do like his "preview" idea. The idea of replacing review with long range
planning seems exactly right. Companies exist to invent the future, attention
should be focused on the future.

------
newt0311
Ummm... Replace performance reviews with performance previews and pretty soon,
they will become indistinguishable.

