Performance Reviews: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

I’ve never been a fan of performance reviews, or at least the performance review process used by the large majority of organizations in the world. It seems so outdated in this day and age to be measuring employee performance the way we do it. But even Google, the bellwether of innovation and one of the best places to work according to numerous surveys, still relies on traditional performance reviews methodologies to make HR decisions.

I recently came across a great post by Hillel over at Jackson Fish Market where he explains what’s wrong with performance reviews in his opinion. A lot of it resonated with me.

Here’s just a short passage, to wet your appetite:

Essentially, the performance review process incentivizes managers to always have only a small handful of super stars and a steady stable of bottom of the rung performers who can take the shitty reviews. There’s no incentive for having a balanced team of good performers. As a manager it’ll just screw you at review time.

At Slife Labs, we don’t have performance reviews. We are too small for that anyways. But if we decide to measure employee performance one day, I am pretty sure we will try lots of different approaches before we fall back to what’s commonly done today.

And by the way, if you like Hillel’s post, I recommend that you subscribe to their blog. I had a chance to work with him briefly at Microsoft and he’s got a lot of interesting things to say from software, design, entrepreneurship and lots more. And watch his new company too. I think they are onto something powerful there.