Comment by timssopomo
Comment by timssopomo 10 days ago
I managed reviews like this as a team lead, manager, and director at three startups. There are a lot of misconceptions from employees about the process.
It's true that managers have a lot of latitude to read self summaries and either amplify or disregard them. The #1 thing you can do to avoid problems with your own reviews is to actually understand what your manager's and the company's priorities are and align your work to them. I have given poor reviews to people who invested lots of time and energy in projects and probably even did good work on them, because they were _completely_ off strategy and completed before anyone who knew better could tell them they were a waste of time and energy.
This isn't malevolent. It's because every manager is tasked with supporting the company's overall goals, frequently with very limited resources. Work that veers off into left field, even when perceived as valuable from the employee's or peer's perspective, is basically lost opportunity to do something more valuable. And that gets very expensive when trying to grow quickly.
If you want to get ahead, you and your manager need to work together to make sure the work delivers results, is aligned with strategy, is timely, and is visible to other managers and execs. Hit all four, and the need for recognition is obvious. I've seen execs argue against managers that individuals deserve promotion. Miss one, and you're probably relying on your manager's good will and clout to make the case.
If the work is not aligned with strategy or didn't deliver results but took a lot of time, your manager will look like a fool arguing that you deserve recognition for it.
Also, re: exceeding expectations, this comes up in every org and with every team. Everyone is always graded on a curve, both within your individual team and across each exec's organization. This is because the budget for compensation is fixed ahead of time based on assumptions about the percentage of employees that will exceed expectations. As long as each exec gets roughly the expected number of employees exceeding and meeting expectations, their recommendations for promotions, bonuses, and comp adjustments will likely be approved.
If the ratio for a given exec is out of whack, the only options are: 1) Get it back in line, 2) Take budget from someone else, or 3) Increase the compensation budget.
(3) frequently can't be done without board approval, so is not really an option. (2) is going to start a knife fight between execs over whose employees deserve it more, which nobody wants. This leaves (1). This is why alignment and upward and outward visibility is so important - it banks you social capital with the people who have to allocate limited resources.
With all due respect, outside of staff+ levels, if your reports are off in the weeds being productive building the wrong things, isn't that more of a management problem? Even very persuasive reports should require sign-off on how they spend large chunks of time. It's a hallmark of good management to push back and regularly ensure goals are aligned. Empowering employees is important, but that should be for the 'how', not the 'what'.
Your visibility is above theirs. You are regularly in meetings they are not. There is a distinct information asymmetry. It's your responsibility to convey what is important. Same with your manager to you, your skip to them, and all the way up the chain. No matter what the company's overarching goals are, at the IC level they may only have enough visibility to understand how valuable the business segment/team they're on is and read between the lines and move to another team.
Yes, really good employees can learn and bubble things up from cross-functional work or skip meetings to cover their supervisor's blindspots, but that's not a good look and could be potentially harmful, ie. could damage relationships if not handled carefully.
Being resource constrained is not an excuse. Hire or slow down. Business can't support it? Well, it's not a great business. Inmates running the asylum and all that jazz. Scapegoating reports for operational failings is toxic.