When I was 8 years old, elite athlete that I was, I joined a school bowling league. We bowled every Tuesday after school at Monaco Lanes. I enjoyed it. I guess I was an average bowler, but I don’t really remember for sure.
Coincidentally, that was the winter when I got my first pair of glasses. Glasses made a huge difference in my life because I never realized I was extremely nearsighted. It was the only vision I ever had, so I thought it was normal! Bowling was part of that. With glasses I could suddenly see the faraway pins much more clearly. What I thought were blurry little red and green dots on the pinsetter were actually the numbers 1 and 2 to indicate which ball you were about to roll. So the glasses helped a lot, and my bowling scores improved.
That’s how I accidentally discovered how to win the Most Improved Bowler award:
Be a mediocre bowler.
Get glasses.
Start bowling much better.
Win Most Improved Bowler.
Decades later, no longer bowling in competition, I was working in Silicon Valley. This involved a different kind of scorekeeping. In my whole career, I never got the hang of performance reviews. I naively thought good performance reviews would automatically follow good performance. I never knew the performance and promotion game, and never cared to learn. When my manager asked what I wanted to be doing in a year, 3 years, 5 years, I always said the same thing: doing something useful, and learning new stuff. Not what they wanted to hear, it turns out. As time passed at work, I usually thought I was doing well – my managers never said I wasn’t. Then I’d be surprised with a mediocre or poor review.
Sometimes I was frustrated enough to try to get into the game. I went to an informational talk where the speaker was giving advice on getting better performance reviews. He said that when you start a new job, your first review is always going to be mediocre. Therefore, don’t do too much in your first review period. Then, in the next period, go all out and you’ll get a good review. Was this real, official advice? I don’t know, but no way was I going to do that. It was the Most Improved Bowler strategy, except on purpose.
I had an excellent manager near the end of my career who wanted to help me get better performance reviews. He advised me to check the company directory for people in our group who were at a higher level than me, then be sure to meet with at least 2 of them every week. That way they would rate me more highly at review time.
I never did have those meetings, and I kept getting mediocre to poor reviews. Eventually I was managed out of my last unhappy job, and that turned out to be a relief. I was fortunate enough to retire. And a wonderful part of retirement is that I have no more performance reviews!
I hated reviews in all my jobs. Apple, Microsoft, Sun. They all sucked. I just wanted to do my job.
They always wanted me to be a manager. Heck no! Why? I code, I don’t manage people.
Apple were the only ones who let me code and team lead. Which meant I had input in my boss reviewing the team but I mostly coded.
Now I hear how many people my friends get to review and I’m horrified.
I was like you Scott - what do you want to do in 3 years? This, thanks!. Apparently wrong answer.
I love being retired 😁
I had some PR experience when I was working. Performance reviews are not entirely about the employee. Unless the employer actually gives helpful guidance and expectations to the organization and supervisors the “system” is bound to fail since then it becomes about personal relationships. PRs will be entirely inconsistent and too often worthless and even harmful. I’m sure we all know examples where personalities conflict or are a poor fit or even toxic. For the most part these exercises are merely performative and dreaded by everyone involved. Have you ever heard of an employer who assesses the process and reviews the reviewer? Doubt it.
BTW I bowled in a league with my brother and Dad. We unintentionally used this early sandbag technique and won the league. Got to stand up at the banquet & get the ham while the serious guys shook their heads.