Are You Getting the Performance Ratings You Deserve?
scarletink.com
scarletink.com
This system is dystopian. Here are a few reasons why:
- Every productive member is rated every few months by people who don't have a clue about the actual work
- Your success as an IC depends on how well your manager defends you, not on what you did
- You might abruptly get ejected from a company just because the manager of managers decided to implement a stack rank and you fall in the bottom - once again, unrelated to the actual work you did
- You are working in a "team" but apparently competing against them because you don't want to fall at the bottom of the ratings system. If someone asks you to design a system where team members sabotage each other, what would you design?
- Collaboration is actively discouraged. No force multiplication, no mentorship except the fake "mentor" system established by corporate.
- The work you do doesn't matter. All that matters is performance ratings. Which means all that matters is bootlicking the right manager. You can NEVER have differences from a manager even if they are falling off a cliff.
And this is why the average tenure in tech companies is 18 months. Most people get tired of the management song and dance, dancing to ratings pretty quick. It's not that people are lazy. It's that the place of employment is actively hostile. People suffer through mental issues when working in a place that treats its own employees like enemies.
In my experience unless you’re exceptional, and plan it all out yourself, there is really no assistance with growing your career.
Do 2 years, assess if there’s long term opportunity, and leave if not. Always be prepared to leave, the worst thing you can do is sit somewhere for decades afraid of leaving.
I'm not going to drive off a cliff just because the OKR tells me there's actually a road there but I wonder about some people...
People whose value for the company is not for the next level get promoted due to luck or their ability to hack the system. Those who perform for the next level are not promoted.
The system feels broken. But! It is the best working process in big tech. And, on average, this bureaucracy helps to limit politics.
Basically perf review process feels horrible, till you work in a company that does not have it.
Limitations discussed in the text like manager could not explain why XXX exceeds on her role feels strange.
In every big company there is a career path document that shows what types of tasks person is expected to do at each level. You perform well on your level - (ME) meets expectations, you perform on the higher level - (EE) exceeds or strongly exceeds (SE).
You perform for 1 year+ on the higher level (typically EE + SE) + apply for promo => you get promo.
It is more or less standard across big tech.
Again, the system could be hacked, but on average it works.
P.S. Part about "you deserve" in the title and across the text talks about unhealthy entitlement. I would imagine that if engineer come to me and instead of showing evidence of how they consistently perform for the next level will talk about what they deserve it would not end with a promotion.
P.P.S. Read the text only till "This post is for paying subscribers only"
But, it is the best that we have and on average it works.
Rephrasing Churchill:
"No one pretends that career ladder is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that career ladder is the worst form of building hierarchy in the company except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…"
What are other, presumably better, ways to build a hierarchy in the company that has 1000+ people?
(Beyond that, it's for paying subscribers only.)
I've never, ever felt like my performance designation actually matched reality, and this has spanned three companies so far.
When I got promoted, it was because I cut my hair (the owner was a very stodgy boomer-type person). When I got "partially meets", it was because I had been put on an impossible project and my pleas of "this is literally impossible in the time given, it will minimally take X+3mo" were apparently not communicated upwards and the project missing was taken personally by my manager-of-manager-of-managers who apparently ensured I was given that designation. I've gotten "exceeds" when I've known I was slow (because I had a 2-month-old and the US gives far too little parental leave), and gotten "meets" when I smashed things out of the park.
All of this extends to my peers I've known well. One of the best engineers I've known was managed out of the company outside of a performance cycle because he was a bit of a grumpy-type person (but not in a way that I minded at all, I found him pretty endearing).
I don't really know how to fix the system, especially since as an IC I'm kept blind to most of its inner workings and even my EMs have not had the full story.
The most I've managed to synthesize is:
- I like it best when my direct manager has >80% of the control over my final designation. They know my work best, and when there is little meddling from above (there is ALWAYS meddling from above, of course), this seems to work out best.
- Even with above, perf is mostly bullshit politics. It hardly matters what your actual work is like - if people like you, as long as you're marginally useful, you're probably going to be retained; if people don't like you, you're going to be hard-pressed to get promoted or not be the first one canned if things turn down slightly. Reality is highly malleable and people will craft whatever narratives they need to to get the things they want done.
The second bullet is also a self-fulfilling prophecy. If people like you, you'll get more work and the work you get will be more impactful. If people don't like you, people won't mind setting you to the annoying thankless tasks.
I think I want my next job to be a very small team. I've worked at 10k people orgs and 50-100 person orgs, but never one with <10 engineers. I wonder what it would be like to be in an org where everyone ~knows how everyone else's perf is going. I can typically identify when someone's going to be in hot water, but only if I'm close enough to their work.
I’m increasingly convinced the best systems are those that spend the least amount of everyone’s time. If they’re going to be dysfunctional, they might as well not waste precious time or prolong the agony.
Since when is anyone equal or paid the same? It’s definitely not communism. Maybe dictatorship or so
I think 'communism-as-implemented' is a confusing intended meaning that isn't conveyed if you're only going to say 'communism'. There are other words for it.
This will happen even in a small org if your leadership isn't essentially driven motivated, and willing to take action.
At scale, this only becomes more difficult to manage, and the reality appears to be that almost nobody in leadership can actually keep up well enough to stop perf devolving into politics.
It also has to infect politics. The desperate struggle to enter a protected class is clearly motivated by this management fuckery. People are trying frantically to protect themselves.
I read an article in The New Yorker, years ago, that casually mentioned in passing that executives would do quarterly or annual performance reviews of their wives. Can you imagine?
Bullshit politics.
From another poster in this thread:
"Reality is highly malleable and people will craft whatever narratives they need to to get the things they want done"