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Comment by eppp | Hacker News Reader

As near as I can tell, I could write literally anything on a self review and it would make no difference to anyone in any way. My first item has been 'stop doing performance reviews' on the 'what can we do to help you' section for years.

This is a useless exercise, raises come or not regardless of what is said or done.

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This is my experience as well. In 20+ years of employment, in both small and large companies, with positions from junior developer to startup CTO, I've never been anywhere where performance reviews weren't a complete waste of time.

This is not universally true, and if you're somewhere like this, you can and probably should move if you value being valued.

As someone who's in the room when we go over these, if you write "stop doing performance reviews" the whole room rolls their eyes, and is not very kind.

Maybe stop shooting yourself in the foot? Give it a shot, for like 5 years, see how it goes. It's about an hour of your time annually, so if even at a 20% chance of success that feels like a wise investment.

> It's about an hour of your time annually, so if even at a 20% chance of success that feels like a wise investment.

At my place of work it is common for people to spend multiple days on these things, with some people on my team spending a whole week. I'm told the process was substantially more heavy weight before I got here. Maybe you are just blissfully unaware of the true costs? I would give your right arm to waste only an hour every review cycle on this counterproductive insanity! I would happily accept no promotions or raises above inflation to not go through this were it an option.

Where, on the spectrum of time spent per year, do you think your company lies with regard to writing annual self evaluations as compared to other companies?

People that come from big tech companies seem to have no problem with it, and many people I talk to are thrilled with the process so we must be in a somewhat normal ranges. I think I have quite different goals. They are happy to play games and burn a week because it often results in raises and promotions. I'm intrinsically motivated and value happiness, and lack of games and politics above maximizing pay so to me it's misery.

Okay so you think "spend a week, doing nothing else, on your annual performance review" is a normal way of operating at a tech company?

Cool, no more questions, thanks for your time.

What kind of companies have you worked at?

It’s never only been an hour of my time anywhere I’ve worked. At minimum one day but if you are provided feedback with back and forth (and most of my managers have done that) and you meet about it at least twice a year you’re looking at 2+ days worth of your time.

Are sure it only takes your subordinates an hour?

An hour of my time? I wish. The fact that the work you’ve done in the cycle is finished regardless, but depending on how you write about it can impact your rating and compensation going forward really stresses me out.

They're not very kind because someone actually told the truth. Many of us roll our eyes when asked to fill out these ridiculous forms. One previous company had everyone rate themselves on a scale of 1 to 5 for various aspects of the corporate culture. How did you drive innovation to achieve corporate synergies over the past 6 months?

Most reviews are finely crafted BS. And it generally takes much more than an hour annually. If you have to do a full blown "360 peer review" process (which is very common) it can take at least a day+.

I've been through many companies (and many iterations of the process in each of those companies) but have never experienced a case where this takes only an hour annually. Even as an IC you're going to be spending at least half a day on your own self-review. This doesn't even include peer reviews, upward feedback, or talking about the results of this whole process with your manager. In my experience, the process also doesn't just happen a single time per year -- it's usually twice (plus 'check-ins' outside of that).

I'm no fan of perf reviews but I have no idea how you could even run a process at all if you were to only give people 1 hour to do the whole thing end-to-end.

It's closer to 4 hours a cycle, not including procrastination and stress, and it's usually at least two cycles a year.

I was rolling my eyes going into the article, but it was actually useful. Your perspective is kind of the starting point for the author- Analyze how the self-review is actually used.

I definitely read it. I have never worked at a place where it mattered. Maybe it would be interesting to work at a place where it did.

It's only useless if you do it at the end of the year like the author is suggesting. It's fairly useful to keep track of throughout throughout the year, including communicating to others assuming you're a above average performer.

I just copy and paste from the previous year.

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