Hacker News Reader

Comment by boredemployee | Hacker News Reader

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.

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.

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?

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.

What companies don't do performance reviews?

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.

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.

the one I work for

Reply on news.ycombinator.com