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We get supposed "anonymous" surveys where I work and I see the hash at the end of the URL, and we've confirmed amongst a few of us that they're unique, and so the assumption goes that it's actually not anonymous at all. I don't think I would ever trust an "anonymous survey" from an employer to actually be anonymous. Maybe if it was hand written.

If the URLs had all been the same, then would you trust that it was anonymous?

Employees could lie about their own happiness, and satisfaction with their manager, to their own detriment. Employees could also lie about project progress and quality, also to their own detriment, because it looks bad if a team says "everything is on track, quality is great", and then the project runs long and is a buggy mess.

I just think a lot of what a manger does is give progress reports, and it's easy for one person to lie about progress reports, and then when it becomes clear that the progress reports were wrong all along, the manager somehow shifts blame to the workers. These surveys would give everyone a say in the progress reports.

I don't see how any deeply honest, earnest feedback can come from me when I am told "this is anonymous" and there's a 99.999999% chance that it isn't. If it came from a position of mutual respect then maybe I'd reciprocate, but it doesn't.

It's hard for me to take any of this seriously. Industry-wide we're told layoffs have to happen and these same corporations go on to post record numbers, far exceeding internal and external expectations. Executives are lavished with bonuses while many of my colleagues are getting < 2% CoL adjustments while taking on more and more responsibility and accountability. But also, please, tell us what we can do better! We're listening and we care.

So, no, frankly I don't feel like I owe my employer a single fucking thing beyond showing up, doing my work, and leaving. I certainly don't owe the top-level leadership team the truth when they aren't honest with me.

But I want to make it clear, too, that I'm not lying on these surveys. But, they're not getting a full accountability from me, from my perspective, either. And even if I wanted to give that, it'd be pretty hard when the questions are worded in such specific, guided ways and there's very little space for providing direct feedback.

I'm not saying these are the only questions that should be asked, or that this should be the only way of getting feedback. I suggested questions for a 30-second weekly survey. I think longer surveys with more detailed feedback should be done periodically as well.

And, if you decide to just always say things are going well, then that's what management will see, and the status quo will remain. At least until a project goes poorly--delivered late and a buggy mess. Then, if I were a high-level manager, I would look at the surveys and see that the team was happy and believed everything was perfectly okay right up until failure, and I would judge the team as incompetent, because a competent team would see failure approaching long before it happens. I'm not saying I would fire anyone, but clearly a discussion needs to be had with the team manager, and probably the whole team, about reporting problems early.

Of course, if a company wants people to report problems early, then they need a culture that responds well to early warning signs, rather than the shoot-the-messenger culture that is all too common. I do sympathize with your frustration for fucked up company cultures.

I would never treat them as anonymous. Expect that even if told they are that at some point someone could access your answers, for whatever reason they may have. I don't think you need to lie on them but I'd probably hold personal criticisms back and use a gentle touch. In essence, be positive and likeable.

Yes, I don't outright lie or try to sabotage, or otherwise do anything anti-social like that, but I approach it from the position that I am in fact standing in a room with an executive being asked these questions and if I were in that position how would I answer?

The main thing is to be sure to do them and not ignore them. They're "engagement surveys" and the first metric to determine engagement is if the employee engaged with the survey in the first place.

Shopify had this between ~2017 and ~2020 -- every project was expected to complete a "health check" every two weeks where anonymous participants gave a 1-3 score on various metrics including velocity, quality, making good decisions quickly etc. You couldn't see the scores until everyone had answered and there was cultural pressure towards honesty. All that was stored was the average score and optional comments.

If you left comments, it was generally possible to figure out who said what based on idioms etc. but they were kept separate from the scores anyway.

I thought it was a good system but I'm pretty sure it was gone by the time I left in 2023. If nothing else, I don't think a system based on that kind of radical candor can survive the first or second round of layoffs at any company.

> no matter how much lower-level managers complained, the team could still anonymously say when they actually believe the project will be finished. Etc.

This would result in lower tier managers announcing beforehand they claimed "x time for y project" and if the devs want their sickdays/bonuses/promotions they should claim same.

The survey I'm imagining is just "rate the progress of project X from 1 to 10 (1 being just started, 10 being complete)"[0], and also "rate your happiness from 1 to 10", and "rate the quality of the work done from 1 to 10".

This would be anonymous, the only thing that wouldn't be anonymous is whether or not an employee has updated their survey within the last 2 weeks.

I would absolutely throw that hypothetical lower-tier manager you mentioned under the bus. The surveys could have a "rate your manager 1 to 10" question too.

I think it would be valuable insight to all levels of management. If the team is being death marched, happiness and quality surveys would drop. Or, if you see a team deliver a buggy project, but quality surveys were high all throughout development, then you could tell that the team was incompetent and hire/fire/train accordingly.

[0]: Don't ask people to guess completion dates, have them guess percent completed and then calculate completion dates in the software.

This is exactly why deadlines in tech are such bullshit. It's my personal experience that more times than not I'm told the deadline as opposed to us reaching some kind of agreement. It's reasons like that that I have hard time taking it seriously when I'm told we're late. It's more like you're "estimate" was wrong or you demanded completion date was too aggressive.