I was more or less asked to quit (coincidently I was planning to hand my notice in that day anyway) by the CEO. Never once had the CEO actually pulled me aside or talked to me about his perceived problems with me. He was perfectly happy with the quantity and quality of work I put out, but apparently there were cultural and attitude issues or something.
I was supposed to have a performance review/catchup every 3 months, I was very low contact with the CEO as he worked remotely and traveled a lot. I had never heard any problems from my supervisor before this final meeting with the CEO.
It was pretty shitty when he started bringing up things that he had problems with that happened 3 or 6 months ago. Things that I had never gotten more than a snarky slack message about.
Maybe if I had had those reviews, I would've worked on whatever issues he had, I may have been a happier employee and not wanted to quit, and he may have ended up with a nicer employee he didn't want to fire.
It really pissed me off and unfortunately (for both of us, really), I never got to tell him how I felt about the whole situation, as I wanted to get a good reference for my next job (which incidentally pays double what I was earning).
Terrible move from the company either way. Firing people is expensive, first you lose a whole lot of institutional knowledge, then hiring a person is expensive (especially if you use a recruiter), then you have to train a new person up, which takes about 3 months to get them up to speed.
The sensible option is to discuss options, such as working reduced hours (e.g. only afternoons) for a time. Of course, in many developed countries (the USA excluded), paid parental leave is legally guaranteed or even mandatory.
I can't imagine working in a place that yells at me - that would be the final nail in the coffin where I would that that person everything I think of them and their inaptitude to "manage". I guess that's why I no longer punch the clock.
I hate this so much. I hate it even more, because it's mostly true that it works. YMMV, and I'm talking of non-technical organisations or organisation where tech is a cost-centre rather than value-add.
Those who don't fully understand it (it being whatever technical disagreement or choice made), which is usually the majority, will side with you. The remainder are usually people who can see that the organisation is structured this way and either give up out of apathy or leave for greener pastures.
If someone literally yells at me, I'm out. Notice in that day, usually within the hour. If the organisation is willing to allow that behaviour, it's usually toxic. If I'm on contract (which I always am now), my opinion within that organisation will no longer be respected. Notice of non-renewal immediately.
Surely some clients do yell, and presumably if they think it is acceptable to yell, they would be surprised at an abrupt end to a contract!
On being yelled at, it's only happened once - and I'm pretty sure the person doing the yelling was having a bit of a breakdown. Getting yelled at is a very strange thing in a work environment.
As you have noticed, you can output the same quality of work and it can be seen as very good or not so good at different times, or with different people, because feelings.
That is so true. Probably why people leave every couple of years. I hate performance reviews. They try to be objective and yet so many personal feelings involved.
Finding a good manager is hard. Someone who understands tech and gives frequent objective feedback. That’s really really hard.
Most managers I’ve seen go into Management because they don’t like coding. They then want to be far away from it. That creates problems because they don’t understand why things are constantly regressing. They blame it on their engineers and start handing out shitty reviews when the actual problem was there is just a metric ton of code debt that they don’t want to hear about.
The other thing is they like being people managers. All the way up to Group managers (managers of managers). They truly enjoy re-orging people around. I guess that’s how they feel important. But they forget it’s the product that matters. As the org gets bigger, less and less people actually give a shit about the product as a whole.
I have yet to find a manager that takes code debt and product seriously. I’m on my Manager #10.
If you are a manager, I kindly urge you to listen both to your customers and your engineers. Get a reverse performance review. The world will be happier.
Unfortunately, I would bet the point is to do exactly the kinds of things that "really sucks" which this individual encountered. I'd hazard a guess that the multi-year review situation isn't consistent, either. It probably is decided "it's review time" when management has decided things aren't going well, so they use the reviews to crap all over staff. I wouldn't be surprised if this review cycle comes immediately before a round of layoffs/redundancies, as well.
My last review, the head of our division got really angry with me and gave me a very negative, punitive review.
What I am infuriated about is that never in that few years did I receive any negative feedback, and I tried to do exactly what our subdivision had decided as a group to do, and what the immediate superior had wanted. My last review was glowing, perfect. So I go from a perfect review to being treated like a failure, fireable, with no negative feedback in the interim.
Imagine if you in your area had discussed things, come to consensus decisions, you were willing to do everything asked of you, and then four years later someone higher up singles you out and yells at you for not doing what you're supposed to etc. As if you've been getting feedback that whole time.
The worst part of this is that I know someone in our area is close friends with this division head and basically complains about everyone except one person in our area.
So now I have this negative review, as if I were just being lazy, even impaired in my duties, and not doing my part when the whole time I just thought I was doing what we were supposed to.
It's depressing as hell to me, and also angering.