Why “360 Reviews” Are Worthless

Dr Stuart Woolley
CodeX
Published in
13 min readNov 21, 2021

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From pointlessness to collaboration, it’s all classic espionage without the sense of excitement or the actual results.

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

An Albatross around your Work Neck

One of the primary disadvantages¹ of permanent based work is having to put up with the burden of so-called ‘performance reviews’ or as they’re sometimes referred to, ‘employee appraisals’².

Usually as a permanent employee you’re promised a pay rise annually. That is, except in exceptional circumstance — of which there are many and frequent occurrences. You may also have to sit through quarterly reviews which contribute to an annual review, or if you’re really unlucky then do this as a 1–1 on a monthly basis with your ‘line’ manager.

Everything will be recorded, naturally, and you’ll be expected to sign things as a matter of course — even if you don’t really agree with them — just to get the meeting over with and not ‘make waves’.

Management, of course, will take a dim view of not signing straight away and may refer to you verbally as ‘not being on board with company policy’ and non-compliance ‘may reflect badly on your annual review’ and all the usual claptrap around essentially using any excuse to deny you a market rate pay rise.

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Dr Stuart Woolley
CodeX

Worries about the future. Way too involved with software. Likes coffee, maths, and . Would prefer to be in academia. SpaceX, X, and Overwatch fan.