Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time
I generally agree with most of the points that the author is making here, however, I have some counterpoints to offer as well.<p>The major issues with performance reviews almost always come down to poor execution.  The whole &quot;Performance Reviews Suck&quot; mirrors the whole &quot;Agile Sucks&quot; in that in principal it <i>can</i> be good, but in practice, it rarely is.  Most of it falls on how a manager handles a review, but part of it falls on how an employee receives feedback, as well.<p>So on to my counterpoints: At the one place and under the one manager, Lou, in my job history where performance reviews worked really well I managed to receive among the worst performance review I have ever received.  The <i>score</i>, as it stood, was fine -- I was a top performer at the company and it was hard to argue with the results -- I scored &quot;exceeds&quot; in every category.  The criticism, however, was rough -- it was honest, direct and after reading it, I couldn&#x27;t disagree with any of it very well.  I had a <i>great</i> manager who both understood where I excelled and recognized areas where I could grow.  He started out the review with &quot;Before you freak out . . . &quot; and went on to explain that the scores and the comments are not going to feel like they&#x27;re not in full agreement[0].  He explained that the yearly review[1] is about growth, and growth requires feedback, that he didn&#x27;t need to tell me how well I was doing because we both knew how well I was doing and that his goal is to specifically find areas where I can improve and put a plan together on how he was going to help me get there[2].  A bit of my feedback involved written communication to business managers, &quot;identifying what&#x27;s important&quot; and throwing the rest out.  My comment history will shine the light on the fact that I&#x27;m long-winded -- I type fast like the rest of you and I read very fast, so neither receiving or sending a long message is a burden.  He did several screen sharing sessions with me to hone my communications, he gave me several books (some from his personal collection) to help me to round out my engineering skills, encouraged me to look at languages and technologies that had different programming paradigms than I was used to.  It resulted in me studying a lot of areas that had little to do with my job as a primarily Microsoft-centric developer, but all of it resulted in me becoming a much better developer.<p>In the right hands, a performance review can be very powerful.  It provided a formal time slot to sit down and talk specifically about ways to improve at what I loved doing.  A lot of folks would think, &quot;Well, your manager should be doing that, anyway&quot; -- sure -- and in a couple of decades of having a career in engineering, the <i>only</i> time this has happened was under a formal review with all of two of the 15 or so people that I have worked for.  For whatever reason, people are unwilling to offer criticism like this outside of that setting, and most of them are unwilling to offer it <i>within</i> that setting for a high-performing employee.  And why should they?  The high-performers aren&#x27;t the ones they have to spend time on!  And honestly, I would have been more <i>comfortable</i> had he not shared these negative aspects of my performance with me -- they weren&#x27;t a &quot;big deal&quot;, they weren&#x27;t affecting the great ratings -- leave well enough alone! But the fact that he <i>did</i> bring these things to my attention made me better at what I love doing.  I didn&#x27;t get higher ratings at the next review (though I received feedback about how well I handled the feedback from the last review), and I received far fewer negatives in the process.<p>Since having that manager, I have told every <i>other</i> manager I report to that &quot;I&#x27;m comfortable with receiving criticism&quot; and that I value that kind of feedback, a lot.  It hasn&#x27;t made a terribly large amount of difference in the kind of reviews I&#x27;ve received, unfortunately, but my hope is that by putting that out there, I disarm a manager who is afraid of losing a top-performer as a result of negative feedback.<p>I&#x27;ve never had to give a review (as a manager; I&#x27;ve done a ton of peer reviews), but the advice I&#x27;d offer is: (1) Everyone has something they want to do better and <i>can</i> do better -- call it out.  Maybe they don&#x27;t even realize it&#x27;s a problem. I didn&#x27;t! (2) Don&#x27;t just <i>point it out</i>, commit to working with the employee on the area they received feedback on.  (3) Disarm the employee, particularly if their score is high as they&#x27;ll not expect to see negative feedback.  Start with compliments and move into areas of improvement; be as self-deprecating as possible[3].  (4) Actually <i>do</i> the things you set out to do to help your employee.  (5) Limit the happy stuff, don&#x27;t sugar coat the bad stuff[4].<p>That last point might seem off, and it is -- this only works if you had a boss like the one I had -- he was a great communicator and regularly provided feedback on the positive side.  So when he started off the review with &quot;You know how valued you are and how well you do your job&quot;, it wasn&#x27;t placating or dismissive -- I legitimately knew by the flexibility I was given and the constant feedback I received.  He was a master at criticising the act rather than the individual, as well, which is something I&#x27;d love to be better at.<p>[0] The comments started off explaining all of the areas that I excel in, but were terse and similarly direct.<p>[1] This manager also did quarterly less-but-still-somewhat-formal reviews, as well, which I valued.<p>[2] This was a key point, to me.  It was a recognition that part of his job was to make me better and that he wasn&#x27;t sending me off with negative feedback and expecting me to figure it out -- he was generating work for himself, as well.  Honestly, I felt pretty miserable about this particular review for about a month, but during that month, he followed up almost every day on one of the points we discussed and spent several hours providing advice and directly working with me to improve on the areas that he felt I needed help with.  I realized that it would have been a lot easier for him to say &quot;atta-boy&quot; and be done with it.<p>[3] My boss explained that he had the same problem &quot;focusing messages&quot; -- he&#x27;d spent an hour with his manager at a prior job agonizing over words in sentences trying to reduce content to a bit over a few tweets without diluting the message.  I don&#x27;t know if that was entirely true (except that this boss was also, easily, the most ethical person I&#x27;ve ever reported to).<p>[4] As in, don&#x27;t minimize the negatives, brush them off, or try to find ways that the negative is a positive -- it&#x27;s placating and dishonest about the intent.