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Very timely episode of Good Time coming up on career management 
and the creator economy 
Follow along here
https://twitter.com/GoodTimeShowCH/status/1353901859845533696
and the creator economy Follow along here
https://twitter.com/GoodTimeShowCH/status/1353901859845533696
. @stevesi: The unfortunate fact is that performance reviews are a miserable experience for everyone involved. Managers and individual employees included.
. @stevesi: At Microsoft, one of the biggest challenges was just communicating and explaining how the performance review system was supposed to work. Lots of misunderstandings around things like e.g. stack rankings.
. @stevesi: Early on at Microsoft, there was almost no guidance around how to do performance reviews. You would just download a word doc template from a shared file server and email it to your manager.
. @stevesi: Performance reviews are about evaluating how in sync you are with the company culture. You should be doing things that the company's culture rewards. It's also a good time to ask yourself whether you're doing the company values in the way the company values.
. @stevesi: The "Zero Defects" memo was infamous at Microsoft. It was born from a lot of internal frustration with how buggy releases were. Someone told me I should just copy parts of the memo in my performance review to show I was in sync with the company. https://sriramk.com/memos/zerodef.pdf
. @avichal: Performance reviews are the "leg day" of running a business. No one wants to do it but it's important to maintain the health of your business.
. @avichal: As a manager, one of the highest leverage things you can do is provide detailed feedback to your direct reports during performance reviews. 20 hours of careful feedback will improve your team's output for the rest of the year.
. @stevesi: It's an easy trap to come up with a performance review system that only works for the strong performers. For example, giving extremely concise feedback that fits on a post-it note is great for high-performers but not for everyone else.
. @sriramk: In a well-run company, there shouldn't be any huge surprises during performance review time. Ideally, most performance reviews should be non-events.
. @sriramk: I recommend keeping a personal doc with all of your accomplishments. This is helpful for your manager to make the best case for you in calibration meetings with other managers.
. @aarthir: Netflix has no discrete performance review process. They have a very strong culture of continuous evaluation based on a "Start-Stop-Continue" framework.
. @sriramk: Performance reviews are actually two different things conflated into the same process: (1) giving feedback to employees to improve their work and (2) how much money should be given to each employee. But in practice it is very hard to separate the two.
. @stevesi: Everyone keeps trying to come up with new performance review systems, but you can't avoid the ugly reality that there's a limited budget of salary/equity raises to give out.
. @stevesi: For new grads, a common mistake is to talk about your accomplishments in terms of individual code commits and JIRA tickets. Instead, think about how the next level of management views your work and try to speak at that level of abstraction.
. @stevesi: The wrong way to answer the question of "what can you improve on?" is to say "I'm good at X, but I do too much of it", e.g. "I work too hard" or "I write too much code".
. @garrytan: When should startups implement formal performance reviews?
. @stevesi: I've seen co-founders do it with each from the beginning. Another milestone is when not everyone is working with everyone else. Next milestone is ~100 people. You can't be too early.
. @stevesi: I've seen co-founders do it with each from the beginning. Another milestone is when not everyone is working with everyone else. Next milestone is ~100 people. You can't be too early.
. @stevesi: As a manager, you should write feedback for your reports in the way you would want feedback given to you. You also have to remember that it's only fair for your feedback to be challenged. Empathy is the most important thing.
. @garrytan: Not having enough respect for proper management and performance reviews is what killed my startup. One of my directs came to me and said "Garry, you're the worst manager I've ever had."
. @sriramk: I dislike the phrase "feedback is a gift." It's an easy out for people to give distasteful feedback and an excuse for being a jerk.
. @sriramk: Two books I like about culture, performance reviews, and giving feedback:
No Rules Rules by @reedhastings
The Culture Code by @DanielCoyle
No Rules Rules by @reedhastings
The Culture Code by @DanielCoyle
. @aarthir: In my first year at Microsoft, I asked my manager about how to get promoted and he was very taken aback that I was even asking. Since then, as a manager, I try to be very explicit about having it be a part of the feedback process for my reports.
. @stevesi: One source of asymmetry in the performance review process is that you only know how you're doing, but your manager knows how your entire team is doing. One solution is to have a work buddy to calibrate with.
. @sriramk: One cynical trick is to do your best work towards the end of the review cycle. Work done at the beginning of the cycle is sometimes forgotten due to recency bias.
. @sriramk: Another cynical trick is that you should get to know your manager's peers and your skip level manager since they will be in the room during calibration process. At the very least they should be aware of what you're working on. Even basic recognition is helpful.
. @stevesi: I generally agree with @sriramk's tips, but be careful not to be overtly political. Depending on the specific culture, there's a very fine line between self-promotion and politicking.
. @stevesi: If you get feedback that you weren't expecting or don't want to hear, try to just accept it. More importantly, don't keep re-living it in your head. Focus on the future instead of mulling on the past.
. @aarthir: As a manager, giving someone negative feedback is always a super difficult conversation. Instead of focusing on the person themself, I focus on the work output and how good of a fit the person is for the project.
. @garrytan: My most common career advice I give to people:
Are you earning, and are you learning?
If both, then stay.
If neither, then leave.
Are you earning, and are you learning?
If both, then stay.
If neither, then leave.
. @sriramk: The biggest missed opportunity in performance reviews is giving effective feedback to your manager. There may be areas they have blind spots for that they would be happy to fix.
