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Comment by joshyeager | Hacker News Reader

Yes, feedback is essential for growth. Without it, you can't grow any farther or faster than your own ability to evaluate yourself and decide how to improve.

Annual performance reviews aren't a good feedback tool. They are much too slow, and usually also too big and generalized. What you really need is fast specific feedback (within a week, focused on one event, action-focused).

With that said, if you want to grow, don't ignore your annual review. It may be the only feedback you get from some people, so analyze it and extract whatever information you can to help yourself grow.

If you're a manager and your organization requires performance reviews, it's probably not worth the effort to fight them. Instead, work on giving your team feedback fast, specific throughout the year to help them grow. And do a good job on the annual reviews for their other purpose, which is recording performance for salary and promotion decisions.

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Thanks for your insights! I generally agree that feedback is important. Theoretically people should follow and gain from it. I started pleasantfish.com, a skills feedback platform where people could get anonymous feedback from their current and previous colleagues about their skills and qualities. But i generally saw people are either not interested in getting them reviewed much and even if they get feedback they are not much interested in improving upen feedback(asked through user feedback) which actually brought me to this question.

So i think somehow feedback has to be actionable and gives a plan of action to user in such a manner that he effortlessly tries to improve those things in his daily routine be it reading related articles or what. But users generally tend to be lazy which is why feedback in the end seems to be useless for them.

Oh, ok. I was mostly talking about how an individual can get maximum benefit from feedback. One of the biggest sources of growth for me has been actively engaging and acting on the feedback I receive. For more on that, I strongly recommend Thanks for the Feedback by Sheila Heen.

You're right that it's hard to get others to learn from feedback if they don't actively work at it. You can make your feedback easier to understand and more action-oriented. But if they're lazy or even just focused differently, your feedback to them won't be very effective.

As a manager, I think it's still worthwhile to give as much feedback as I can. Some of it might be heard and acted on, which will help the receiver grow.

I still think if it incentivizes users in a very straightforward way then this is useful to them. In my reply to drakonka, i mention how it can be used in the career to be a super useful thing not only to them but to the companies where they work or intend to work as well. Do you think it should be done that way?

Yes, that would be very interesting. As a hiring manager, I wouldn't make a decision based solely on that information, but I definitely would use it if it was available.

Yes exactly! Cannot base the decision entirely on that but atleast the insights can be really interesting. It would be great if you can check out this thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12142878) and then give your related feedback. This is how i am trying to tackle this problem.

From the feedback that i have got from this thread, however, feedback is a very personal thing and users who really want to improve themselves don't have a solution right now where they can privately request their coworkers(former or present) for this information and not get potentially penalized for it (if negative) by their existing managers in the performance review meetings.

Does "don't add your 2 cents" [1] contradict what you said?

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12156234

Where "grow" means "behave like the manager thinks is beneficial for the company".

http://yosefk.com/blog/people-can-read-their-managers-mind.h...

Probably better than "Thanks for the Feedback" by Sheila Heen.

Yeah, most feedback is going to come from what the giver feels is important, and a manager will usually prioritize what the company needs. A good manager will also prioritize the employee's own goals, but not every manager (or company) is mature enough to do both at the same time.

But that doesn't mean that you as an individual can't get value from the feedback you receive. You just have to process it intentionally, instead of taking it at face value. That's one of my favorite points in Thanks for the Feedback.

Honest feedback is important for growth, yes, but be ultra skeptical of peoples motives. Your manager may be downplaying your contributions to avoid having to give you a raise or to discourage you from seeking employment elsewhere.

Indeed a very valid point. Feedback has to be obtained at an individual level and it has to be given just for one purpose of constructive employee growth. I posted my comment summing up all the answers here and how i am trying to tackle these problems in my startup pleasantfish.com

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