Performance reviews are just employers controlling the narrative when employees are underpaid

Right?
If you underperform, brutal negotiations ensue … prove your value or the deal is off.

Buuut, if you’re overperforming, you get gold stickers and praise, and the possibility of a pay bump through a process controlled by the employer …

instead of you telling the employer that *they* have to prove their value or the deal is off.

Instead over performing then becomes the expectation.

@workreform

  • henfredemars@infosec.pubEnglish
    26·
    1 year ago

    This reminds me of a previous employer that mandated strictly 20% employees must be rated as underachievers and get a 0% COL adjustment i.e. a pay cut in the face of inflation. But, my whole team was important to our successful year. Yet, someone is forced to take the pay cut.

    It’s a system predicated on the false assumption that the bottom 20% by some arbitrary ranking aren’t fulfilling their job duties nor instrumental to success. It exists to codify and justify whatever the employer desires, which was in this case and as often is the case–underpaying employees.

    In my experiences, performance reviews are 5% facts and data, 35% writing skills, 60% company predetermination of your worth and compensation.

      • henfredemars@infosec.pubEnglish
        5·
        1 year ago

        In every case I’ve been involved with so far it boils down to arbitrary feelings with only a slight correlation to actual performance. You get a good score if they like you.

        So, the system is simply you get a raise based on feelings. Why have the performance reviews? The performance system is used to backdate reasons for the a priori decision if required for legal reasons. It maintains the illusion that there’s something to be gained by working harder when that’s simply not true.

        In such a system, you re-roll bosses until you get one that likes you. Job hop. Move around laterally inside a company. Be a social chameleon. It’s much more effective to just ask more women on a date (bosses in this analogy) than to keep trying with the same one because people don’t generally change their minds.