Hacker News Reader

Comment by karaterobot | Hacker News Reader

> Many workers say they see little connection between working hard and being rewarded.

This has been my experience, and my personal theory to explain this change in productivity is that it's taking younger people in the workforce less time to figure it out than it took people my age. There normally comes a time around middle-age, when you say "I've been working like a dog for 15 years now, and what has it gotten me, and what good has it done in the world, and how much worse would it be if I coasted from here on out?" Now that's happening a few years sooner. The pandemic probably accelerated this introspection.

> An ADP Research Institute survey conducted in November 2021 found that U.S. workers said they were doing 8.4 hours of unpaid overtime work each week, down from nine hours the prior year.

Lazy so-and-sos. Makes me sick to my stomach.

View on HN

Definitely happening much faster than middle age. My friends and I have realized this and we're <25.

One of my friends busted his ass the first year he started working, got an average performance review. 2nd year he chilled out a lot and got a better performance review. Performance reviews at most companies are useless and it doesn't take long to figure it out.

Another friend told me that it's not possible to get the top performance rating in his company. They just don't give that rating out.

My take is that a lot of Gen Z are entering the workforce and thinking "you expect me to do all this work for an ok salary I will never be able to afford a house on? that's a bad deal".

To me, the funny part of all this is that I'd never work in a place that write me a performance review to begin with.

What companies don't do performance reviews?

the one I work for

Companies that humanize their employees won't reduce them down to a single review that only cares about the previous year and not the sum of their work. And yet we've normalized the former for some reason.

How do they ensure that rewards (promotions, salary increases, bonuses) go to people delivering value to the business and not those who are friendliest with management?

Huh. There are places that ensure actual effort results in salary increases, promotions, and bonuses? I seem to get better results when I work at a good level but without obviously putting in exceptional effort, to be honest. I wonder if this is shared by others?

I've never seen performance reviews ensure that.

Every place I've been, management runs the review process so... they don't.

Are performanxe reviews viable if your company wants to have your employees to cooperate with each other?

Individual performance reviews reduce incentives to cooperate, because you only need to have a good review in comparison, not on some non-existent absolute metric.

Yes they are. In fact, one’s performance objective in many cases depend on effective teamwork with one’s peers. And then there are the behavior part of performance reviews where you’re graded on intangibles like teamwork, trust-building, etc…

Performance review systems will always have flaws, but it’s better (in nearly all workplaces) to have a formal and transparent process for them than to have none at all.

I once saw a book written by a former HR manager who states, performance reviews are not really used to get better performance. They are ways for organizations to get documentation to fire you without getting sued for it, if they need it. HR’s job is to protect the company, not to protect the employee.

Yes they're valuable. Working together with your team is a core skill that everyone needs to have to be a professional developer, and as such is a major part of the reviews I do. Any good leader will encourage cooperation over competition.

Small ones, where everybody knows everybody else. Below a certain size you don’t really need a lot of larger company ceremonies because there’s nowhere to hide, either you deliver at the expected level or it very quickly becomes apparent.

This. And thats exactly my case. You have a deadline and you just commit to that. We as a team always "judge" or analyze in a constructive way our own job, we are adults and we know our flaws and our strenghts, once we delivered a job we ask ourselves what could we've done better, etc. So there's no need of corporate bullshitism and arbitrary reviews.

My experience might be abnormal but do most people not have to do their own annual performance review, with the "reviewer" just skimming it and giving a rating based on what they understood of your attempt to condense a year's work into a 500 word essay?

I have spend the past 15 years working in early stage startups, and I have never experienced a company with more than 30 people that were not doing annual performance reviews (mostly superficially just to tell investors that they were doing them).

So I have to question the validity of your anecdote. And even if you HAVE completely avoided any going-through-the-motions performance reviews, because you're working only for SUPER-early-stage seed round startups, then well... there are plenty of disadvantages to that life too. Not the least of which is that rising interest rates will likely be choking off the 15-year private equity gravy train cycle this year.

Even though you've worked for such amount of years, really impressive, that doesn't make you familiar with all companies out there and their cultures.

Your performance is always being reviewed

A formal review process at least surfaces those thoughts. It’s better than the quiet process where managers form their own conclusions without communicating them.

Manager here. I'd like to offer a plausible explanation for your friend's performance reviews. I tell my reports that I don't want them busting their asses or anything else, because that leads to burnout, which leads to falling behind, which makes them think they have to bust their asses to catch up, and it becomes an unhelpful cycle. Is it possible that your friend, after a year's experience, figured out ways to work more efficiently, so that they were more productive with less effort? That tends to happen when we strengthen muscles, and it also happens once you've gotten your bearings in a new role.

More likely if you stop paying attention to what needs doing, and more attention what your boss wants to see, you get a better review, regardless whether your boss is incentivizing business/customer needs or not.

You're not wrong, and if you have a good leader then those two sets of tasks are similar or identical.

Yeah I see so many areas where things need doing but they are unpleasant and provide no incentives for completion. Yeah they worked return 5-10x but that’s not something anyone cares about. Even worse if you get caught doing unpleasant things you will get punished by having to do more of them. It’s a loose loose proposition

Or...his managers are just bad at evaluating performance.

I'm sure he did get better at working, but he himself said to me he cared less and was surprised about getting a better performance review. He has very little supervision/management. I doubt the company has a good understanding of what he does.

I got three exceptional performance reviews now, but nothing more than nice words and I am also kind of done with doing anything extra.

It's only fair that you should give nice words on return.

Uhhh.

Boss: You did a good job this year, really appreciate the effort.

Serf: Well, golly thank you boss! Have I noted how great your hair is? Or how well you crack the whip? I surely would not have been as productive had you not been overseeing me with such zest.

> Performance reviews at most companies are useless and it doesn't take long to figure it out.

Not just useless but political and down to interpersonal relations more than they are to actual work.

I used to work for a major tech company that would have their employees write a plan for each year. It would be agreed and signed off by your manager.

At the end of the year you were supposed to use this as a template to see if you had achieved your goals, and that would be part of some sort of grading which would affect any bonus, promotion chances and any pay rise you might have coming that year.

Only, in between the two the year would happen. Business realities and management direction would change, and what you did bore little relation to what you planned to do. So instead of you being graded on how much of your plan you had achieved, you were graded much more fuzzily, usually on how much the manager liked you or how much you made them look good to their superiors. I'm not saying this out of bitterness either, I was usually one of the more favoured ones.

When I had a few years under my belt I decided that it was much easier to be a contractor and opt out of all that sort of ****

I've been having on and off conversations with my manager and her manager about career aspirations. I'm at a terminal level, so I can hang out where I'm at as long as I want. What I didn't tell my managers is the promotion game sounds like a lot of work for 6 months to a year for a possibility that I'll get a job with more work I like less and somewhat more pay. You also start running into the issue where big companies only need so many super senior engineers, so you can't play that game forever. You're also playing it against people who will play it forever because the title means something to them.

If I worked hard and wasn't rewarded for it, my conclusion would be to switch employers—not to cut back on my work ethic.

Working hard has basically made my career. I'm not substantially smarter than most of the people I've worked with, but I got rapid promotions basically exclusively from going above and beyond.

I respect not everyone wants to do that, but it's concerning that people increasingly don't even see the value in caring.

After you switch employers a few times, your strategy updates.

Switching frequently is not a strong strategy for top compensation.

You're not going to get to $1M+ TC with job hopping alone.

> "I've been working like a dog for 15 years now, and what has it gotten me, and what good has it done in the world, and how much worse would it be if I coasted from here on out?"

you just exactly described me, exactly 15 years. a lot of sleepless nights dwelling on this.

why do this for another 15, will never afford a home, my savings will be worth -50% in 15 years of what they are now.

i feel like i have to do something different but stuck on that first step. if it was that easy and so on...

Invest your money so they'll be worth 1.07^15 (2.76x) in 15 years of what they are now.

You missed the chance to include tax and inflation and tax on inflation in your algebra, sir.

He included inflation, and there's plenty of tax advantaged accounts that let you grow tax free

If you invest in a broad market equity index fund like VOO, then you will keep up with inflation. All the inflation has to be reflected in the country’s business’s bottom lines, so it would also be reflected in their share prices.

This is my strategy. Global index funds. 7% is what you can expect. Inflation reduces the net yield. Research ways to avoid tax on stocks until you pay out to yourself, most countries have this in one form or another.

"7%" is dead.

7 was a lie anyway.

...if you live in a country with low enough taxation on investments.

Where do I get 14-18% returns so that I can get 7 post tax and inflation real? That’s some crypto bullshit levels of growth

Where are you getting "14-18% returns"? The formula in the parent post uses 1.07, which translates to a yearly growth of 7%.

You need to need to subtract inflation, otherwise your real increase is negative

right, but is there any reason to believe that 7% inflation is going to continue well into the future? The markets certainly don't think so. They're currently pricing in a 2.33% inflation rate over the next 5 years, measured by the spread between inflation protected treasuries and non-inflation protected treasuries.

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/T5YIE

2.3 is too low. This seems to be based on treasury yields that yield negative real return right now.

In order to have v 2.3 you basically need to have 0 for the next 4 years if you average the previous year in.

Funny to hear this sentiment in a tech forum. If you do well in a programming career you can afford a house almost anywhere. I don't think you need to work more than 40h a week to achieve that either.

So the stories of having to live in a trailer in silicon valley because everything else is too expensive are all false?

Is that a fair conclusion from my comment? If so, I apologise.

Not in southern Europe, unless you want to pay the mortgage for the next 30 years or something.

Specially with Air BnB and pensioned foreigns driving the prices sky high.

A 30 year mortgage is pretty typical in the US. How does it work in southern Europe?

Yeah, now try that living from 1500 euros a month, typical salary in many IT shops.

I'd have to know what a mortgage costs.

About 500 euros monthly, depending on the agreement.

Spending 30% of your income on your mortgage is pretty close to what lots of people in the US do. The typical advice is that you shouldn't spend more than 28% of your gross on your mortgage.

Except that is much more than 30% for a large set of the population, hence why so many above 30 years old still live by their parents.

So a couple, each earning minimum wage, could afford a mortgage together? That’s not too bad.

Better never split up.

That’s minimum wage in most countries. Tech salaries are lower in Europe than the US but that has to be exaggeration. Either that or you’re looking in the wrong places.

Minimum wage is about 800 euros in Portugal, after taxes.

I think to still know enough about my home country.

I know Portuguese IT workers earning vastly more than that remotely, and I've been honestly quite impressed with Portuguese developers, so Portugal is a bit of an odd case. I suspect for the IT market the salaries paid in Portugal don't match up to the salaries actually being paid to many IT workers.

Not everybody lives in US.

I'm doing well in my programming career and a house in the majority of Canada is completely unattainable unless one partners up, or moves somewhere absolutely dreadful, which is the option I took and now regret.

Maybe this is true in America, but many of us don't live there despite a desire to do so.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com