<story><title>Accenture will get rid of annual performance reviews and rankings</title><url>http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-leadership/wp/2015/07/21/in-big-move-accenture-will-get-rid-of-annual-performance-reviews-and-rankings</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tragomaskhalos</author><text>In my company, years ago, performance rating was done by your line manager just talking to your project manager(s) to find out how you were getting on, and the line manager would assign you a pay rise (or not) accordingly. This was a perfectly sane and workable system.&lt;p&gt;Then the place got engulfed by this insane fad for &amp;quot;performance reviews&amp;quot;, which is idiotic on its face for a number of reasons:&lt;p&gt;1. You request review feedback from peers - this is unworkable because if you work with someone who is useless, and you say so in their review, your working relationship with them becomes untenable;&lt;p&gt;2. The process also requires &amp;quot;self review&amp;quot;, which is nothing but a mechanism for bullshitters to big themselves up. It is also time-consuming, and good people are generally too busy to dedicate much time to it; the bullshitters and timewasters otoh will happily dedicate days to polishing their lies and exaggerations;&lt;p&gt;3. In general the process massively favours those who play the performance review system, i.e. the politicians;&lt;p&gt;4. You are required to set &amp;quot;career objectives&amp;quot;, which is almost entirely pointless since as a tech person you are largely constrained by what jobs need your skills at the particular moment you become available; there is little tolerance for people sitting around idle waiting for the perfect role that meets their desired objective.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>braythwayt</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;In my company, years ago, performance rating was done by your line manager just talking to your project manager(s) to find out how you were getting on, and the line manager would assign you a pay rise (or not) accordingly. This was a perfectly sane and workable system.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;That sounds very much like &amp;quot;hiring people based on having a reasonable conversation about their experience.” It is a perfectly sane and reasonable system, provided everyone involved is acting in good faith, has a great deal of ability to evaluate people based on their actual contribution to the success of the company, and nobody has any overt or internalized biases.&lt;p&gt;Without taking anything away from your company, I’m sure you will appreciate that in many companies, this business of “assigning you a bonus based on conversations with the project manager(s)” gets twisted into a horrible political game where people build fiefdoms based on tit-for-tat agreements, and where all sorts of biases come into play, e.g. the men are all “take-charge go-getters,” while the women are all “confrontational and bossy.”&lt;p&gt;I’m saying nothing about performance evaluations being better, just that results like you have experienced with your company are remarkably difficult to reproduce and sustain.&lt;p&gt;My bet is that if conversation works in your company, performance evaluations would also work. Maybe with more annoying paperwork involved, but it would still work.</text></comment>
<story><title>Accenture will get rid of annual performance reviews and rankings</title><url>http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-leadership/wp/2015/07/21/in-big-move-accenture-will-get-rid-of-annual-performance-reviews-and-rankings</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tragomaskhalos</author><text>In my company, years ago, performance rating was done by your line manager just talking to your project manager(s) to find out how you were getting on, and the line manager would assign you a pay rise (or not) accordingly. This was a perfectly sane and workable system.&lt;p&gt;Then the place got engulfed by this insane fad for &amp;quot;performance reviews&amp;quot;, which is idiotic on its face for a number of reasons:&lt;p&gt;1. You request review feedback from peers - this is unworkable because if you work with someone who is useless, and you say so in their review, your working relationship with them becomes untenable;&lt;p&gt;2. The process also requires &amp;quot;self review&amp;quot;, which is nothing but a mechanism for bullshitters to big themselves up. It is also time-consuming, and good people are generally too busy to dedicate much time to it; the bullshitters and timewasters otoh will happily dedicate days to polishing their lies and exaggerations;&lt;p&gt;3. In general the process massively favours those who play the performance review system, i.e. the politicians;&lt;p&gt;4. You are required to set &amp;quot;career objectives&amp;quot;, which is almost entirely pointless since as a tech person you are largely constrained by what jobs need your skills at the particular moment you become available; there is little tolerance for people sitting around idle waiting for the perfect role that meets their desired objective.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>__chrismc</author><text>We possibly work for the same company, as our system - flaws and all - are identical to what you describe. As someone who has to carry out both sides of the process (reviewing staff&amp;#x2F;managing them through the process, and getting my own review done), I&amp;#x27;m most certainly not a fan! Staff seem to fall into two categories - those who see the whole thing as political nonsense they don&amp;#x27;t have the time for, or have become so turned off by how bad it is that they just don&amp;#x27;t care about the outcome any more.&lt;p&gt;The Accenture news was raised on an internal discussion about the review process almost immediately, as some people are that keen to get rid of the current way of doing things ASAP. Sadly, I can&amp;#x27;t see anything coming from it, as the word is that Upper Management values the generated metrics too much to change anything.</text></comment>