<story><title>When your coworker does great work, tell their manager</title><url>https://jvns.ca/blog/2020/07/14/when-your-coworker-does-great-work-tell-their-manager/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jedberg</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s not as bad as it sounds.  Yes, it certainly happens and it sucks for the good person that it happens to.  But managers like that don&amp;#x27;t last very long.&lt;p&gt;When you get let go, they ask in the exit interview if you were warned, if your manager gave you any feedback leading up to it, etc.  And then they follow up if the person says, &amp;quot;it was a total shock&amp;quot;.  I&amp;#x27;ve definitely seen managers make some bad firing decisions, but they were let go soon afterwards.  Word gets around quickly to their manager that they let go someone who was a strong contributor.</text></item><item><author>xvector</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s a massive amount of trust placed in managers. I&amp;#x27;ve had asshole managers before that didn&amp;#x27;t have this much power thanks to company structure.&lt;p&gt;Honestly I would never work at a place like this. Maybe it&amp;#x27;s lean and efficient for the company, but it definitely doesn&amp;#x27;t sound fun for the employee.</text></item><item><author>sleepydog</author><text>I agree, but in the specific case of Netflix, people are let go &lt;i&gt;all the time&lt;/i&gt;, and managers have a lot of authority to make the decision to fire someone. Tenure doesn&amp;#x27;t matter, either -- you could work there for 6 years and end up getting fired when you get a new manager or the existing one decides you&amp;#x27;re phoning it in.</text></item><item><author>Traster</author><text>I think this culture is often the difference between a company that&amp;#x27;s in exponential growth mode - where you care more about velocity than costs. When a company becomes a stable giant, the engineering department is no longer necessarily creating value in the same way it was before and often slowly becomes bloated.</text></item><item><author>jedberg</author><text>This is what I loved about working at Netflix.  We didn&amp;#x27;t have performance reviews.  It was assumed that your performance was good to excellent, otherwise you wouldn&amp;#x27;t be working there anymore.  You had a constant feedback loop with your manager on performance, but nothing was ever formal.&lt;p&gt;Raises were completely divorced from any performance assessment.  You were paid whatever they thought the max was for your skillset, based on a bunch of data they had on what people at other companies got paid for similar work.&lt;p&gt;What we did have was 360 reviews once a year.  It was basically a small survey you could fill out about anyone in the company, which they and their manager would see.  You could evaluate your boss, your VP, or people who worked for you, or anyone else you worked with anywhere in the company.  It was expected that managers do a 360 review for all of their reports, but beyond that you could do as few or as many as you wanted to.  It was basically a start&amp;#x2F;stop&amp;#x2F;continue kind of thing.&lt;p&gt;It was such a refreshing change from the stack ranking at eBay, which forced good people to get shitty reviews just so they could &amp;quot;fit the bell curve&amp;quot;.  And as you said, it incentivized you to not praise coworkers and some people even actively sabotaged their coworkers to get a better rank.</text></item><item><author>ping_pong</author><text>This is the biggest problem with stack ranking software engineers, the practice I had to endure while at a well known software company. All it does is create a zero-sum game, so I have no incentive to compliment anyone else. I needed to make sure that my rank was as high as I could make it, which really sucked during performance time. It was very stressful, even though I was a high performer, because it didn&amp;#x27;t foster the type of environment I wanted to work at, which is collaborative.&lt;p&gt;I heard from my friends at Facebook that the environment there is equally crazy. Everyone knows that the performance reviews are based on lazy stats, so they game the stats. Every time someone requests a meeting, they are expected to give a &amp;quot;thank you&amp;quot; which is one of the measures for performance. Also, things like the number of reviews commented on could be easily gamed by adding a &amp;quot;+1!&amp;quot; as a comment which sounds like another undesirable place to work at. Maybe current Facebook employees can comment, however.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>HarryHirsch</author><text>&lt;i&gt;When you get let go, they ask in the exit interview if you were warned&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why would anyone give any kind of useful information in the exit interview? The only one who benefits is the company, they need to cover their back in case a suit over harassment comes up. If anyone wants revenge over poor management, keep silent, let the fellow continue to lose the company money and set them up for a lawsuit.&lt;p&gt;HR is not on your side. The company is not on your side. The union would be, but in software we can&amp;#x27;t have that.</text></comment>
<story><title>When your coworker does great work, tell their manager</title><url>https://jvns.ca/blog/2020/07/14/when-your-coworker-does-great-work-tell-their-manager/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jedberg</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s not as bad as it sounds.  Yes, it certainly happens and it sucks for the good person that it happens to.  But managers like that don&amp;#x27;t last very long.&lt;p&gt;When you get let go, they ask in the exit interview if you were warned, if your manager gave you any feedback leading up to it, etc.  And then they follow up if the person says, &amp;quot;it was a total shock&amp;quot;.  I&amp;#x27;ve definitely seen managers make some bad firing decisions, but they were let go soon afterwards.  Word gets around quickly to their manager that they let go someone who was a strong contributor.</text></item><item><author>xvector</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s a massive amount of trust placed in managers. I&amp;#x27;ve had asshole managers before that didn&amp;#x27;t have this much power thanks to company structure.&lt;p&gt;Honestly I would never work at a place like this. Maybe it&amp;#x27;s lean and efficient for the company, but it definitely doesn&amp;#x27;t sound fun for the employee.</text></item><item><author>sleepydog</author><text>I agree, but in the specific case of Netflix, people are let go &lt;i&gt;all the time&lt;/i&gt;, and managers have a lot of authority to make the decision to fire someone. Tenure doesn&amp;#x27;t matter, either -- you could work there for 6 years and end up getting fired when you get a new manager or the existing one decides you&amp;#x27;re phoning it in.</text></item><item><author>Traster</author><text>I think this culture is often the difference between a company that&amp;#x27;s in exponential growth mode - where you care more about velocity than costs. When a company becomes a stable giant, the engineering department is no longer necessarily creating value in the same way it was before and often slowly becomes bloated.</text></item><item><author>jedberg</author><text>This is what I loved about working at Netflix.  We didn&amp;#x27;t have performance reviews.  It was assumed that your performance was good to excellent, otherwise you wouldn&amp;#x27;t be working there anymore.  You had a constant feedback loop with your manager on performance, but nothing was ever formal.&lt;p&gt;Raises were completely divorced from any performance assessment.  You were paid whatever they thought the max was for your skillset, based on a bunch of data they had on what people at other companies got paid for similar work.&lt;p&gt;What we did have was 360 reviews once a year.  It was basically a small survey you could fill out about anyone in the company, which they and their manager would see.  You could evaluate your boss, your VP, or people who worked for you, or anyone else you worked with anywhere in the company.  It was expected that managers do a 360 review for all of their reports, but beyond that you could do as few or as many as you wanted to.  It was basically a start&amp;#x2F;stop&amp;#x2F;continue kind of thing.&lt;p&gt;It was such a refreshing change from the stack ranking at eBay, which forced good people to get shitty reviews just so they could &amp;quot;fit the bell curve&amp;quot;.  And as you said, it incentivized you to not praise coworkers and some people even actively sabotaged their coworkers to get a better rank.</text></item><item><author>ping_pong</author><text>This is the biggest problem with stack ranking software engineers, the practice I had to endure while at a well known software company. All it does is create a zero-sum game, so I have no incentive to compliment anyone else. I needed to make sure that my rank was as high as I could make it, which really sucked during performance time. It was very stressful, even though I was a high performer, because it didn&amp;#x27;t foster the type of environment I wanted to work at, which is collaborative.&lt;p&gt;I heard from my friends at Facebook that the environment there is equally crazy. Everyone knows that the performance reviews are based on lazy stats, so they game the stats. Every time someone requests a meeting, they are expected to give a &amp;quot;thank you&amp;quot; which is one of the measures for performance. Also, things like the number of reviews commented on could be easily gamed by adding a &amp;quot;+1!&amp;quot; as a comment which sounds like another undesirable place to work at. Maybe current Facebook employees can comment, however.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kingbirdy</author><text>That still sounds pretty bad. The person who fired you getting fired doesn&amp;#x27;t get you your job back.</text></comment>