Nothing good will come out of working for a manager that doesn't like you. You'll get worse reviews than you deserve and worse raises. You'll get less exposure to other parts of the company: Every second you spend in that situation is a second wasted.
That said, I am absolutely not putting the blame on you here. A manager that doesn't like one of their reports should either get over it or do their best to ship them to a place where they'll be better appreciated. The tech industry is full of terrible managers though, and you are probably not going to make yours better.
So the real rule when looking for new jobs is to avoid places where they hire first and do allocations later, as your picture of what the company is at interview time might be completely different than what you'll find on day one.
The biggest career advice you can take: it never gets better, there is no good fight, and you should flee to save yourself.
I expect the parent post [edit: iamleppert] was blameless, but that won't save you in most companies. I dream of a company that actually gives a crap about the people writing their code, but HR / Management will always back the a??hole to preserve the company. Maybe instead of hiring widget managers they would find people who have "shipped" creative endeavors (TV Shows, plays, etc.). Don't know if it would work, but it cannot be worse.
This is demonstrably false since a lot of people like their jobs (that includes me and, anecdotally, most of the people I work with)
"If it's a bad environment -- it never gets better, there is no good fight, and you should flee to save yourself."
It's very possible to find places that are good to work at. It's highly unlikely for a shitty environment to get significantly better.
> It's very possible to find places that are good to work at. It's highly unlikely for a shitty environment to get significantly better.
Yep.
Oh hey that's actually a whole lot of big corps ... most prominently Google, isn't it?
Working there had its ups and downs. I will say, that company could actually produce stuff, unlike some places I've seen. It was also really, really nice to have a cubicle, but they were "compressing" those when I left. I have no idea if they've moved to the stupid open-office plan or not since then, but I kinda doubt it actually. I really miss having a cubicle... I used to think they sucked, but after years of other office arrangements, I now long for a cubicle again (though a walled office would of course be much better, just like it'd be nice to live in a $10M mansion and have a private jet).
Anyway, the interview process at Intel back then was grueling and ridiculous, with a bunch of managers coming in and grilling me with questions on all kinds of stuff, a lot which I had no idea about (like device physics). But a couple years ago I interviewed with Google. That was probably the worst interview experience I've ever had.
Lastly, I've interviewed at and worked with some other large companies. Their interviews were nothing like Google's.
Google's interviews are not like other companies', and are not representative of large companies at all. Google's interviews are unique to Google, and have been roundly criticized by many.
Just felt like going through the cogs of a machine that didn't give a shit, which really didn't give me incentive to give a shit in return. Big companies suck.
But as I said above, don't paint all big companies with the same brush. Google's interviews are not at all like the interviews I've done with a bunch of other big companies. In many big companies, the different groups work entirely differently anyway; when I interviewed at Freescale, it wasn't any different than interviewing at some small company really, and the small workgroup I ended up working in was a great team to work with, and again didn't deal that much with the rest of the company anyway. It was a great experience except for upper management screwing it all up after a couple of years.
Of course, there's other disadvantages to working for big companies. Lots of dead weight (see: that recruiter I worked with), lots of rules, a lack of trust, lots of bureaucracy... I'd do it if I have to, but the small company vibe works way better for me.
By finishing the process? I had other offers, and they waited the <one week it took to finish team matching with Google.
When would that take a long time? It was a quick chat with a few managers and then I picked.
If you are willing to make the fanatic choice; your the employee they want. They might be missing out on a lot of talent in the industry. But they do weed the candidates down to fanatics.
"Who did you have lunch with? Oh, some dude."
Try not to language police here. You're not bringing anything to the discussion.
Last week I got up from the table to throw the rest of my burrito away and offered to take my wife's as well by saying "Dude, are you going to finish that guy?" I understand it isn't "correct", and the English are within their rights weep for their language if they like, but it is not weird at all in coastal California.
"Do I plug this guy or that guy into the switch?"
This was in North Texas.
Interesting. I grew up in California and what I said is a fact, as confirmed by other people. What are you bringing to the discussion exactly besides baseless accusations?
The conversation was about the colloquial usage of the word dude and guy. Nothing was said about lady.
and I'm using 'lady' asexually. Is this triggering you?
Certain words mean certain things in certain contexts. If you want to start using "lady" as an asexual term, go for it. Be prepared for stares and weird looks when people don't know what you're talking about because it's not generally used that way, unlike 'dude and guy'.
What's your point exactly?
Project much?
> all I've done is address you by the wrong gender.
How do you know it's the wrong gender? Why are you making assumptions about my gender, without knowing if I identify as a female?
My original point was the the words "dude" and "guy" have lost all gender connotations in California at least. Try to stay on point.
All the mainstream European languages I've seen (Germanic and Romance) don't seem to have this capability at all, and it's a big deficiency. Formal English doesn't have it either, but colloquially we've evolved it, using "they" (which of course is bad because it's supposed to be used for referring to people in the plural sense, not singular).
So don't complain about a language having structural problems if yours isn't any better.
I would prefer mentalese over Vangelis' direct to be honest ;-)
"guys" became gender neutral sometime in the 70's, Rita Moreno: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_iGaQglnKg
This is an issue with big banks like Capital One. The management culture is absolutely awful there and they hold a tremendous amount of power and of course abuse that power as well as abuse the workers.
I've also not seen anybody leave the company on bad terms. Of course I'm sure that happens, and I'm sure there are bad managers here as everywhere. I'm sorry that you had such a negative experience.
I used to work for Capital One Europe, the UK side of the business that currently only does credit cards, until last year. I'd seen a mixture of some people leaving on good terms and some on bad terms, with no obvious correlation to performance. Personally, I left on good terms for a new role elsewhere.
I'd suggest when you're talking about a company of sufficient size; there are always going to be a mixture of those leaving on good terms and those not.
I get yelled at on a weekly basis. Belittling is comon too, such as being told "you're not that smart and this isn't rocket science". Managers are non technical managing a technical project and micromanagement is the norm.
If they suck due to non-malicious ineptitude, it's usually pretty bearable, and you can self manage your way around them.. if they suck as a human being.. wooo buddy, time to bounce.
A good manager is both a buffer and a lubricant. They pave the runway, and get out of the way.. and then make you feel good about what you do, while understating their own contribution.. ( and hopefully get their fuzzies from the business stakeholders, who see the productivity and progress gains. )
Shout outs to all the good managers out there! :D
Why demoralization? It ain't you, it's them. There will be more people you don't want to work for than that you do want to work for anyway. I thin you'll find that the good people are bright lights in an ocean of darkness.
Also and seriously - there are still people in tech who allow homophobia to affect their behavior to that extent?
Yeesh.
So everyone was either a 3 (meeting expectations) or 4 (exceeding expectations in some areas).
I did manage to persuade my line manager (the CIO) to give me a 5 on something but he then felt the need to mark me down somewhere else so I remained a 4 overall.
Utterly pointless exercise.
Then they insisted I move to keep my job. Since the move meant going to a better job market I went along with it and then quit after a decent amount of time.
Off-topic mini rant: This is something that pissed me off about college too. Grading on a curve just serves to mask flaws. Either the professor is shit, the course is shit, the test is shit or the students are shit. Shifting the goal posts so that the top score of 54 / 100 is now an A is just dishonest.
My experience has been that the biggest factor is your direct manager. If your manager hates you, then you have a serious problem, because no matter what kind of process (or lack of process) your company has, they can get you fired. On the other hand, a good manager can help you do your best despite any existing "cookie-cutter" process.
Your manager can say "based on feedback everyone says you suck" and you can't really do a whole lot to look into it. You don't know where the feedback is coming from, or if it's even valid.
At a smaller company a manager seems more responsible to look at performance democratically. So if they have a personal vendetta and they fired someone for it, it's much easier for other employees and other managers to see what's going on and call it out (so they might not act on it to begin with).
Of course that's not universal, sometimes at a small company you might have one person with consolidated power so it doesn't really matter (and can be much worse). And of course, at a smaller company peer pressure can keep issues under wraps because you're worried about everyone knowing that you're the one bringing it up.
So yeah, a performance review process needs to exist at larger companies because it makes sense logistically... but criticism of that process doesn't mean it should be thrown out entirely, it just welcomes the discussion about how it can be improved. There are middle grounds between strict performance reviews and small-company democracy.
First, nobody has an incentive to provide negative feedback except for serious cases (i.e. you cannot work with this person) or for political reasons. It's a prisoners dilemma with indefinite iterations, so each player's incentive is to provide positive feedback.
Second, in my experience, it's only reviewed by one person rather than by a management team, which opens it up to an array of biases on the manager's part. If a manager thinks that someone is a great team-player, and a reviewer says that that person is a petty tyrant, they're likely to doubt the reviewer's motives rather than updating their beliefs.
Peers supply the feedback, but one manager has the time/resources to review it... so basically they can interpret it however they decide.
This has the same result as the formal review system, but with a lot less overhead. More importantly, if you're denied promotion out of spite, you know that - they can't just say "well, it's not my fault, it's just how the process worked out".
Yes, good managers can definitely help cut through the BS even with a process in place, it takes time and effort for them - time and effort that could be used on something more valuable. And sometimes, no amount of effort is sufficient to buck the process.
From my experience, by the way, a formal competitive review system (buckets etc) makes it more important to have a good manager, because you absolutely need your manager to play the game well against other managers to yield good results for you, no matter how hard you work. If your manager is indifferent, or can't play the game well, they'll take away whatever was left on the table after the rest, and that's what you'll be stuck with.
Deming's 3rd deadly disease: Annual rating of performance. “It is purely a lottery”
More of a popularity contest than a lottery.
PIPs aren't really good documentation of bad performance; in fact, a badly-written PIP can actually backfire on the company because the wording is usually full of holes a good lawyer can drive a truck through. Basically instead of the company having proof you were a poor performer, you now have proof the company is lying to get you out the door.
A PIP is a lawsuit deterrent, not an actual legal defense.
If you work for someone else, I have bad news for you ...
† The reason may not be immediately evident of course. But when you unwind the bureaucratic logic, ultimately there's almost always a reason behind these phenomena.
However, there are usually two sides to a story. I hope you are also considering the possibility that it had to do with your work, your work ethic, your ability to work with others, your ability to take direction, etc.
Speaking as someone on the other side, I hate PIPs too as well as the institutional performance review processes. I wish I could get rid of low performers easily but it is pain.
As time progressed, I noticed that engineers who hung out with him often and discussed interesting topics such as good school districts, real estate, investments, sales at frys electronics etc. were rewarded not just with better work but also promotions, some of them undeservedly. When I finally decided to quit there was not even a "thank you" from him or his minions for my hard work. There were several disgruntled employees in my org who never kissed his bottom and they were all treated with similar nonchalance.
New team thought it was absolutely ridiculous I was on it, as did many members of the original team. I finished the pip just fine. I work at Large Transportation Company. Same shit over here.
Once I was working with a manager that loved the fact I'm gay, I do great work, stress levels are down (or at least, the stress incurred is the 'fun' kind of stress), etc.
I do agree the review process is ridiculous - I've never been in a company where they had them prior to this. We were told to choose 2-5 coworkers that were really involved in our day to days within the review period (6 months), and after doing so my manager went in and added the rest of the team (including coworkers I barely saw that I had one or two interactions with over the course of months), including other coworkers that had made very brash comments about my boyfriend/age or about gays in general.
Manager used that shitty feedback from three out of the nine total employees that reviewed me (that otherwise gave pretty glowing reviews) to initiate the pip.
There was a whole bunch of other BS with the situation - e.g. a manager and another coworker joking about satanic rituals against us in our team HipChat room - that I really don't feel like going into detail about that just added insult to injury.
What's worse, there has been no investigation into the matter much past asking the offending manager to "talk about things". Oh well.
A couple of decades in U.S. corporate life led me to conclude that such performance reviews are nothing more than paper/records generation to back up (legally, risk-reduction, etc.) whatever decision Management decides to make.
They have little or nothing to do with actually performance management and improvement. Well, if you are "favored" by your management, maybe some productive training/coaching will be reflected in them. If you're lucking and have good immediate management. But this is stuff that would have happened, regardless.
Performance reviews are an HR process. And any and all HR processes are about preserving the status quo. They have nothing to do with your personal well-being.
It was a very small startup. Oddly enough, that boss and I get along really well outside of work, and I'd still gladly go out for drinks with him or something, but I will never work for him again.
> that boss and I get along really well outside of work
hm.
Also, he gets irrationally angry when anyone calls out the terrible job done by his friend who he put in an architect position. One co-worker of mine at that company... he raised the issue and ended up being railroaded into quitting a couple of months later, and then I'd heard my boss slandering him behind his back a few times.
It's been almost two years since I quit, and I still have painful flashbacks to the way he would yell at people.
But he is fun to hang out with when there's no power differential involved and when he's wasted.
The "bad as a human except when he's drunk" is pretty interesting, considering it usually works the other way around. Keep that shit at arm's length.
In my case, I had a manager who simply didn't like me because I'm gay and used the performance review process, and eventually put me on an action plan and forced me to quit.
Most of the big tech companies will put you on something called a PIP, which is a "Performance Improvement Plan". It basically means they are preparing to fire you, but they give you an option: quit now, and you can have some severance, or you could try and stay and complete the PIP, but still run the risk of being fired for any reason, and in that case, you get no severance. It's exactly what happened to me, and I decided it wasn't worth the stress to try and stay and fight it so I just quit.
It was the most demoralizing experience ever, and really showed me that these processes are in place so managers can just get rid of people they don't want or like.