Who’s Who In The Performance Review?
When the only technical person in the room is you.
I’ve never been able to get past the way that middle-management, even now, regularly gets the job of reviewing actual technical people, specifically software engineers, in the modern corporate dystopia.
My feelings about the performance review process are already well known, taking up a sizeable percentage of all of my articles concerning the Grand Game of Software Engineering.
tl;dr Not only is it generally unfit for purpose, run primarily as a box ticking exercise by HR with a series of laughably unobtainable and unmeasurable goals, but it’s also enacted by those least able to perform the function of an objective, knowledgable designated reviewer too.
But I’d urge you to take a look anyway, not just for the attempted comedy, but also for the every present and startling cognitive dissonance involved in the whole affair.
Alas, of all of the deficiencies inherent in in this awful process — spying on fellow developers, being forced to make up arbitrary goals akin to readying a noose for your own neck, and suffering habitual indignation just to be in with even a hint of a pay rise — you would have thought that the person actually performing the process would at least have the vaguest inkling of what they’re actually doing.
