Disclaimer: My bias isn't Dickensian, but I'm definitely biased too. I've only worked for what I would consider relatively good companies in terms of management and people. And I've almost always had managers that I highly respected. I've also known for awhile now that quitting isn't a big deal and I'd be employed somewhere else relatively quickly.


So... all that being said, I've had no problems putting criticism down in writing. And I probably wouldn't stay very long at a place where I did have that concern. I wouldn't put up with a company or co-workers like Dave describes above.

The key for me, is that you have to keep it constructive and evidence based. I think pointing out real problems (and real examples of those problems) is good. I wouldn't mention a co-worker typing slow, but I would mention real problems that are a result of that and let the guys manager figure out the causes and what to do to fix it.

All this being said, I also probably wouldn't put anything in writing that I hadn't brought up in a 1-1 with my manager before.

And when I had to deal with those stupid ass "rank this statement from 1-10" type questions I always just used a shifted scale to avoid problems (except extreme cases where someone is causing big problems). The old 10 means great. 8 means OK. 6 means really bad. Let my manager decipher what it all means.

This is someone who's been a position of management would say.

Writing a reminder slip renders the entire exercise moot. This is, once again, a failure of management.

What?

If you already brought it up face-to-face, why do you have to put it in writing as well?

If it's a serious problem, it is already taken care of.

What kind of company are people working at that they can't talk to their bosses?

I've worked people that wouldn't listen unless you stormed in and cussed them out, but at the end of the day, a high priority issue was taken care of.

Formal reviews (by a manager or by a peer) are useful (maybe) to make sure a minimum amount of feedback happens. It forces it to happen at least once per X period of time. And its a good time to talk about minor things that are being done well / need to be improved - things that sometimes don't get talked about often enough.

Major issues generally shouldn't wait until a formal review because if they're major, they should be brought up as soon as you know about it. That includes if you have a major complaint about someone you should bring it up and not wait months for a formal review process.

All that being said, people are people. Sometimes things get better. Sometimes they get worse. Sometimes they get better and then they get worse. The idea that "a serious problem" when it comes to people is just a thing to take care of once and be done with is naive.

And while I'd encourage people to not sit on major issues, some people still will. And so just because I'd encourage people to not wait and introduce major issues in a formal review - doesn't mean everyone follows that advice/strategy. And so a peer review is still better than nothing for those people.

I'm far from convinced that these things are net useful. But your objections seem pretty silly (and not particularly consistent).

My main issue is with the process and especially with writing things down as described. I stated my reasoning.

I'm not claiming I'm some excellent manager (this isn't surprising to you, I'm sure).

Problems are like roaches.

If you hear about 1, you have 5; if you hear about 5, you have 100; if you hear about 10, you are ****ed.

I pretty much agree with the bolded. Are peer reviews bull**** that companies have as part of the process? I think so. Ranking employees and putting the bottom 5% on performance improvement plans is bull**** but I'm sure that some folks like it. Good reason to give when you quit though.

Why do you consider that employee lackluster? Just think it through and do the evaluation as objectively as possible. Is the senior engineer reviewing you?

The usual suspects tarding it up in here I see.

Your manager generally has 5+ direct reports and a bunch of other responsibilities. Peer feedback gives them a chance to get another perspective that they don't get throughout the year or quarter or whatever.

And feedback doesn't have to be negative...

IDK, blackize, maybe you never worked in a truly toxic environment, but it doesn't mean that the concerns we are raising aren't very real.

If it matters, I used to have more than 5 direct and indirect reports, plus had to ensure 60+ people had their job the next day. If you really have this much responsibility, you don't have time to read a bunch of writing.

I'll go even further and say that if you really have no new perspective on your employees 3 months later, you are an awful manager. Just no excuse for that.

That's fair. Though in that case the problem isn't the process of peer reviews. It's that your job environment sucks.

My manager has no clue wtf I code or if it's close to good or even how to code.

My coworkers sure do.

Then your manager should.

None of the managers at my company do. I guess we are different than most and since it's big corp x I am sure it's different than this thread.

But ya, our managers aren't technical and are not involved in our work tasks or day to day operations.

Not sure that is good or not. But obv we rely heavily on peer reviews.

No that person is not reviewing me. The person has been a little slow at picking up Scala and the pair programming sessions have even made it more evident. Pair programming sessions spend a lot of time wrestling with the IDE and understanding the tooling rather than around coding or design. And the person does not take any initiative as compared to our other senior engineers. More of a reactive person who waits to be told what to do instead of jumping in. Just some things I have noticed from my perspective.

Peer review is generally about 1) highlighting the positive things your coworkers are doing that may have gone unnoticed and 2) helping your coworkers improve by pointing out the things that they can do even better. While YMMV, at most places, it's generally designed to be for the benefit of the person being reviewed - if you were that person, what would you want to know? It's not an opportunty to let off steam, it's not a whistleblower hotline and you should not assume that it's anonymous. Anything you're not willing to mention to the person directly and/or share with your entire team should be off-limits.

It's something I have to remind myself of from time to time but being positive and constructive about anything pays off in a professional setting because when you're saying something negative, other people can't tell if it's because you're a negative person or because you're truly in a negative situation or evaluating something that is truly negative. I'm not a big fan of fake positivity of the sort that corporations encourage and tend towards the blunt end of that spectrum but you can't just tell it like it is and expect other people to believe you.

There are ways to indicate that the employee is lackluster w/o coming out and saying it. If your boss gives a **** s/he will pick up on it. If not and they don't want to know, it's not worth sticking your next out anyway.

The longest tenure job I had was 3.5 years. I started responsible for setting up sales appointments and ended on the leadership team with 10% of outstanding stock as options. I was essentially the force running the company for my final year+.

I was primarily responsible for 100% of revenue, but I was very involved in every aspect of the company.

My "counterpart" was responsible for all of the projects once the client signed a contract.

It took me a while to realize, but I eventually became 100% certain this person was providing negative value in their role. While custom open source development is hard, this person just didn't have what it took to hold onto clients, and he churned basically every deal I ever brought in, many before the final invoice was paid.

It was incredibly frustrating because it seemed obvious to me having a C/D player in his role was untenable. So I went on a campaign to remove this person. I lost the campaign and because I had become so passionate about my work, I ended up leaving in a not great situation.

Now, approaching 2 years later, the company hasn't sold hardly anything since I've left, they've lost nearly every customer, and had to lay off down to 4 full time people (we peaked under my reign at 15 full-time salary and 10 full-time contractors + part time contractors).

I learned a very tough lesson that sticking your neck out in the hopes of removing someone from your company that is not your direct report (and that you have the authority over) can be an incredibly risky move. Your passion to do good work can be twisted into toxicity, and when you go that far, it's basically a lock that one of you won't end up continuing.

So I will play it incredibly safe in the future when it comes to providing feedback about people that don't report to me. You never know the repercussions of sticking your neck out.

This is exactly what I mean when I say that my negative feelings toward this other person where twisted into me being toxic.

Hindsight proves me correct 1000%, but in the moment it leaves too much up for interpretation.

It kind of depends on a lot of other factors. Personally, under the circumstances you describe, I would hate working there and if stuck with that guy, I would have quit as soon as I could. So trying to get the guy ousted under those circumstances is low risk. Either it works and you get to keep the job, or it doesn't and you quit. But you'd have quit anyway, if you hadn't said anything, because of the guy you had to work with.

I've experienced at least of those guys at nearly every job I've worked at, eventually. Either get me out of working with this guy, or I'll quit sooner rather than later. Sometimes they're incompetent, sometimes they're just really unpleasant. I worked with a guy once who was a very competent engineer but so hard to work with. He wanted to win every argument and his main tactic was that he was willing to argue about stuff longer than anyone else, so he usually won by attrition. Ironically he really liked me and when I left the company he sent me many emails trying to get me to come back, and lobbied the company to contact me and offer me more money, etc.

(I was underpaid at that job, and after I quit they offered me a very large raise, which actually offended me a lot. Anyone who manages people who reads this: consider... if you would be willing to pay someone more if they threatened to quit, maybe just consider paying them that now)

My old branch at Orakle actually has this as a written rule. You are not allowed to offer raises outside the specific timeline, and outside of the specific set range based on role, UNTIL they show you an offer for another job. Then they can offer a huge raise at their own whim. They have so far retained 0 people who get other offers with this strat. Most of us walk away pretty offended

A downvote button should only be used to show that a post does nothing to add to the conversation; it is not meant to show you disagree with the post.

^^ it's so binary yet so many screw that up.

So now I'd have to give instructions, then I have to read the reviews, and then when someone is bound to do it wrong, I have to call them into the office and explain what they did wrong and tell them to do it again...

I also think that anyone who has 5 reports needs to get out of their seat and walk around now and then. No one can manage people if they don't actually interact with people.

my favorite mgt quote:

"If you can solve your problem with money, you have no problem."

LL, it really feels to me like you learned the wrong lesson.

I don’t know if there was a way to offer constructive feedback to get the guy to improve or a better way to point out to others that this guy needed to improve. But if not, and a campaign to get him fired was all you could do, I don’t see why you wouldn’t want to go that route.