should anything in a performance evaluation ever be a surprise?

by Alison Green on January 29, 2025

When the topic of performance evaluations comes up, you’ll typically hear people say, “Nothing in a performance evaluation should ever be a surprise.”

It’s right in theory, but it’s not that simple. At Inc. today, I wrote about why it can be more complicated than that, and what that means for managers (and employees). You can read it here.

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  1. TheBunny*

    I agree with this, with a caveat. If something IS a surprise the section in which it appears needs to be given a neutral rating.

    I’m one of a team of people who look over reviews before managers are allowed to give them (if you question why I do this, you’ve never seen the things managers think they can say in them) and I’ve seen things like an employee given a 1 out of 5 because the employee didn’t do something. But when I ask the manager if they have ever brought up the concern they say no. So while it’s not being done, you can’t give an employee a “fails to meet” rating in a section when the manager is responsible for them not meeting it.

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    1. Anita Brake*

      This was my thought, exactly! Also, if the manager is responsible for an employee not meeting an expectation, there should be no negative effect to the employee on raises, promotions, etc.

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      1. MigraineMonth*

        I vividly remember the performance conversation where my manager told me I hadn’t demonstrated the ability to complete a large project at a sufficient level of quality and that if I didn’t do so within a few months, I would be asked to resign.

        It came as an unpleasant shock to me, seeing as I had not previously been assigned any large projects.

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    2. Elbe*

      100%! This was my first reaction, too.

      People are imperfect, and it’s understandable that managers don’t always catch all issues in a timely manner. But, if that’s the case, they need to be more flexible about evaluating:

      1) The severity of the issue – anything that is allowed to continue for months is going to seem more severe than something that was nipped in the bud. Managers need to factor in the possibility that the employee would have corrected the mistake if they had known they were making it.

      2) The impact of the issue on the employee’s raise – even if the employee’s ranking has to reflect the current state of their work, managers should be more flexible when calculating the % raise. Docking someone’s raise for a problem that was never mentioned to them is a really bad look, and the feedback concerning the issue will carry a lot more weight when employees don’t assume that it was invented as a cost-savings scheme.

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    3. tina turner*

      I was overqualified so got great reviews — until owner’s son quit college & dropped in to work w/us. The next review was negative. Not surprising. But getting canned was. Sonny took my place. Owner didn’t admit anything but I should’ve expected to leave. THAT was the surprise. But it was a relief, he was awful. I had told him I was buying a house & asked if we were OK & he didn’t say no. BTW, he was elected to the city School Board & was a Guardian Ad Litem, posed as a mensch. Wasn’t. Monstrous to staff. So LOOK AT CLUES.

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      1. Reluctant Mezzo*

        This kind of thing can happen. Though it took the office I worked for (prior to being replaced by owner’s daughter) a year to collapse after I left, I was really surprised it took that long since I knew a lot of things about that daughter I’m pretty sure her father didn’t.

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      2. Not a Girl Boss*

        I am in middle management and had a coworker who would spend a significant amount of time every week complaining to me about a horrible employee he was trying to fire. Imagine my surprise when said employee told me he was taking the day off to close on a new house, which was a stretch but he was excited he could afford with this job. I mentioned it to coworker, who then admitted he’d never placed this guy on a PIP. YIKES. I gave him a very stern lecture about how it can really mess up employee’s lives if they don’t know where they stand.

        I am in a weird spot now where an employee’s performance rapidly and significantly declined in the month leading up to performance reviews. I ended up giving him a neutral rating since it didn’t seem fair to punish him without having time to come around, and also pulled him into my office for a heads up about what I was writing and to ask if he had any refuting evidence / things to add, before I hit submit.

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    4. the cat ears*

      what is a “neutral rating”? It seems like a lot of companies see anything less than 5/5 or “exceeds expectations” as some sort of horrible flaw. So I guess I’d add to your statement that it needs to actually be possible for some area of feedback to not affect the overall ranking of performance in order for this to work.

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  2. Jiffy #6*

    This is so fascinating to me. I had a direct report who I was providing some (very) constructive feedback over the year. After some challenges, I literally put the issues in writing. So they were formally aware of my concerns. And then we had our one-on-one meetings every other week, along with quarterly reviews that outlined how these challenges played out in real time/on projects, which routinely noted that I didn’t feel they were improving in the needed areas and they needed to take more substantial action. And also gave them recommendations of things they could do to help themselves, which they fought with me about. When their annual review came up, they were shocked. I literally don’t know how I could have been any clearer.

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    1. HonorBox*

      It sounds to me like you did everything right. If someone is shocked about information in an evaluation that has been discussed previously, I might take that as a sign to add some additional information to the end of the evaluation for discussion.

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    2. Adam*

      I mean, I’ve had reports where we’ve gone down the road of “you need to improve on X and Y by this date or we’re going to fire you”, with weekly updates on how much progress they’re making, and at the end they’re still shocked they’re getting fired. At a certain point, you have to accept that the problem wasn’t your approach. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink.

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      1. doreen*

        Exactly- I always wish that “Nothing in a performance evaluation should ever be a surprise.” was expressed differently. Maybe “Nothing should be brought up for the first time in an evaluation” but I can only control what I say or do, not how someone reacts to it. I’ve even heard people say their manager spoke to them about an issue previously but they didn’t think it would get into their evaluation.

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    3. NotAnotherManager!*

      I think this is a pretty universal experience for managers who’ve been doing it any length of time. When I say that there shouldn’t be surprises on a review, it’s not about the employee’s reaction of surprise, it’s about whether or not it’s novel feedback.

      I’m right there with you on the clear, directly, and written (and ACKNOWLEDGED) feedback still somehow being a shocker at year-end or when a termination finally happened. I currently work with really solid HR who will not even consider formal write-up/PIP or termination (absent a serious incident) without the manager having done their part and documented it. They are clear with us about how performance coaching must be handled and how to address and document your concerns, that they were clearly conveyed and when, what support/training you are offering to facilitate improvement, and your follow up.

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      1. ferrina*

        Exactly. doreen said it well above- nothing should be brought up for the first time on an annual review. But many of us have had the employee who is somehow still shocked that we are giving the same feedback we already gave.

        That’s where that documentation can come in handy. I’ve worked with managers who thought they were being clear when they weren’t. I’ve worked with employees whose managers were being extremely clear and the employees weren’t receiving the message. As a manager, it’s always important to do some reflection, talk with a mentor or someone who can give you feedback and figure out if there was something you could have done differently. The documentation can really help in this- you can check back through emails and documents that both you and the employee looked at and see what was actually communicated.

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    4. Sparkles McFadden*

      You did everything right. It is not you.

      We fired a guy after a very thorough PIP process. We told him he was going to get fired if he didn’t do the things on a bullet-point list. His union rep told him he was going to get fired if he didn’t do those things. The guy was given a paper by HR that stated “You will be fired if you don’t do the things on the attached bullet-point list” and he signed it right where it said “I am acknowledging that I will be fired if I do not follow these instructions.” At the final meeting when he was fired, he said “Why is this happening? No one said I would be fired.”

      There are just some people who only hear what they want to hear, and they rewrite events in their head.

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      1. Bells-at-dawn*

        I assume you responded by showing him the paper he signed, and I’d love to know how he reacted to that. I tend to second guess half the things I say, so these people baffle me.

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    5. spcepickle*

      I had a guy who was late to a job that you could not be late at (resulting in concrete pours getting delayed). I had a meeting after the first issue – explained why he couldn’t be late, went over what he could do to be on-time, made sure he knew that time spent waiting on site was paid for and I would rather pay him an extra half hour then have him be late. Second time – had another meeting where I told him point blanks and put it in writing that if we was late again I would fire him. Gave him the letter in the meeting and sent a follow up email. He was late a third time so I fired him – he was shocked! When I asked him what he thought the letter I gave him meant he looked me the eye and told me he never read it!

      You can’t be clearer with people who are just choosing to be dense.

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    6. Elbe*

      A lot of managers will be upfront about an issue, but won’t directly address its severity. If the employee thinks that this is something minor, then they could be shocked that it’s in their review even if it was mentioned in the past. Or, the employee pushes back on feedback and the manager drops it, so the employee is under the impression that the issue is resolved when it’s really not. But, if you’re already explaining consequences, then rest assured that you did everything that you could. It’s really common for this type of pattern to happen.

      I think a lot of people have the mindset that if THEY don’t think something is a problem, then it isn’t a problem and they don’t have to worry about it. Even as issues and consequences are laid out, their internal narrative remains something like, “This isn’t true/valid/important and they’ll realize I’m right eventually.” And of course people like this are surprised when the “non-issue” has actual, real consequences for them. This lack of perspective-taking is part of why these employees have performance problems in the first place – things past managers have told them never sink in and they never grow.

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      1. AcademiaNut*

        That’s a good insight – the employee thinks the threats are just that, threats, and empty ones, so they disregard it. It makes me think of the person who is shocked, shocked I say, when their spouse actually leaves them, after years of pleading for changes, expressing their discontent and unsuccessful attempts at counselling.

        I also wonder with some people if the lack of yelling and anger means that it doesn’t register as important. If they’re used to important conflicts involving screaming fights, and don’t register something as important unless it’s yelled, that could carry over to the workforce.

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    7. Also-ADHD*

      “Shouldn’t be a surprise to any reasonable person” is the guide — some people will be pikachu faced no matter what.

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    8. fhqwhgads*

      Yeah, that’s just the difference between “nothing in a performance review should be a surprise” and “a performance review should not be the first time you pass along any given piece of feedback”.
      He can be as surprised as he wants. He was told frequently, so you’re good.

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    9. Vique*

      Exactly this. I recently had an employee who did not pass their probation period. They had meeting with their manager (me), their peers, HR.
      For any sane person the meeting with HR to talk about issues would have alarm bells ringing. Not his person, they came back from that meeting and the first thing they said was ‘why did HR meet with me’. When the issues with their performance did not improve, they were let go.

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  3. Stuart Foote*

    I despise performance evaluations because they are always a waste of time. They usually take place months after the year is over so the feedback is no longer relevant, there are always like ten performance categories, even though most people are roughly the same level at nearly all of them and there is always a ton of overlap between the categories, most managers seem to try to give their employees good but not too good of scores (except for those companies where the manager has to evenly distribute 2,3,&4 ratings which are even more of a joke), and the review doesn’t seem to have much effect on raises or bonuses.

    Plus, managers tend to mail them in at the last minute and they have to be signed off by the head of department who generally has no clue what individual employees are doing. The only value is demonstrating that the employee in question is showing up at work and is not on a PIP at the moment.

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    1. Archi-detect*

      I think performance reviews are boring if you are in the good to not quite exceptional category- I have a similar experience

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    2. tryingToCode*

      > except for those companies where the manager has to evenly distribute 2,3,&4 ratings which are even more of a joke

      I’d argue my workplace is worse than that — Everyone’s a 3. No matter what. True 1s and 2s would have been fired ages ago, and 4s and 5s would mean a higher “merit increase,” so they don’t exist. That makes the yearly song and dance even more useless.

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      1. Mark This Confidential And Leave It Laying Around*

        Yup. High praise, “you saved my life” type feedback from the whole team all year and I get a 3 “for budget reasons.”

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        1. Reluctant Mezzo*

          And then the manager is shocked, shocked I say when the star performer starts to give a 3 level performance.

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      2. ferrina*

        or where the individual managers decide whether or not 5s or an option.

        I worked a job where I basically did the same thing as another person, but the two of us had different managers. Our performance was similar. When performance eval time came, my manager decided that I could not get a 5 in anything because “we all have something we could improve”. I got absolutely no 5s, even in the categories where I was setting the best-in-class standard. Meanwhile my colleague got quite a few 5s, because her manager decided that 5s meant “exceeds expectations”, and there were several categories where my colleague had exceeded her expectations. We compared notes later, and even in areas where I outperformed my colleague, I had either been rated lower or the same as her.

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        1. a fever you can't sweat 0ut*

          the years that i got 5’s, i only got one cola and the other year i didn’t get an increase at all since they said i had been promoted several months prior and that bypassed an increase. so i went 16 months without an increase as a high performer… suffice to say i’m not there anymore.

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      3. In A Green Shade*

        A few years ago our HR adjusted the ratings system to prevent people from getting merit raises. There were 5 categories with 2 above average, now there are 4 with only 1 above average. An above average rating in any category has to be justified by the manager (and sometimes they’re overruled by higher-ups), and mathematically you have to receive above average in almost every single category to get a merit raise.

        I like my job, but I loathe our HR.

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      4. I Have RBF*

        My company is like this. You have to be visibly doing important stuff to get a 4. A 5 requires you to walk on water. I actually got a 4 this year, but I literally added an entire person’s job to my portfolio.

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        1. Wilbur*

          This is my biggest complaint about the whole thing-to be able to get a decent raise you have to have the opportunity and it’s just not there for everyone. You can perform at a high level but not have the same opportunity to impact the business as someone else, even if they’re not performing at the same level.

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      5. MassMatt*

        I think “reviews are always a waste of time” is far too broad, yes they are often implemented poorly but if they are truly always a waste then there is something deeply wrong with the process and/or the organization.

        With that said, I have found the “enforced bell curve” issue to be a common issue at multiple organizations. People rated 1-2, unless they are new and/or on a PIP, should be on the way out. One organization basically described getting a 5 as the equivalent of winning a Nobel prize, and 4 was strictly limited, as in a handful in the entire organization. That doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for evaluation. This org explained this away with the standard “a 3 is very good because our standards are SO HIGH” spiel–well no, they very much weren’t. Good people who excelled were tired of getting the same rating–and raises–as mediocre employees, and left. Eventually I was one of them.

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      6. allathian*

        Sounds familiar. Granted, we have decimals, and in my last review my manager told me that my column of 3.5s and 3.25s across the board are among the highest in her team, on a 1-5 scale.

        Just for the heck of it I asked what it would take to get a 4 in the review, and she said it requires stretch projects that are outside one’s job description. In practice, nobody ever gets a 5.

        I work for the government, and my org uses both position-based salary bands, where you have to be promoted to get to a higher salary band, and performance-based salary percentages. I’ve been in my job for 17 years and during that time I’ve had 3, count them 3, merit raises, and they’ve been tiny, think 1.5 percent at most.

        Oh well, at least my current manager isn’t giving me worse scores *during our 1:1* to ensure that my performance rating isn’t so high it merits a raise that’s out of her budget.

        In our annual employee satisfaction surveys our salary system consistently gets the worst scores. We score high on work-life balance, opportunities for on the job training, and employee retention.

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    3. Can't argue after all*

      My initial response was to say you might be overstating it, but then I realized that I don’t think I’ve had a single productive performance review myself. In fact, I’ve had 2 that were just thinly veiled excuses to bully me. And my spouse has been telling me about the ongoing saga with their job, where a hastily rolled-out review process is causing tons of morale problems and upheaval. So yeah, I guess no argument here, seems like they’re just bad. Especially since most employers refuse to discuss salary during them, which doesn’t do much to shake the idea that they only benefit the employer and are a waste of time for everyone else.

      I do think feedback in the moment is very valuable though, and checking in with your boss or employees on a more informal basis (without a Permanent Written Record) on progress and patterns would be great if done well. Formalized annual reviews, though, no thanks.

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      1. I Have RBF*

        I worked for one company that did stack ranking reviews of a quarterly basis. The pressure was on to downgrade everyone who was not a young male so they could be fired “for cause” in a excuse to not have a layoff. Then they wanted people who were sacked to sign a severance agreement giving up the right to sue, and saying that any award from the EEOC would be given back to the company, and that said there was no discrimination or retaliation (there was, lots of it.) I refused to sign.

        Fuck stack ranking.

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      2. anotherfan*

        Our company just divorced our performance review from our salary structure. We get performance reviews twice a year now and our “merit” pay comes in April with no discussion, we’re just told we got X% in our pay checks, congratulations! And our pay increases were decided in January during budget time so no chance of someone getting more than the allotment.

        Allegedly the separation was to focus on performance and not on whether there’s some link between performance and pay because it’s all about the mission, right?

        That being said, there’s a lot of scope for abuse in the system. One of which is getting an evaluation from a manager who just started a few months before evaluations were due so didn’t have a year’s worth of anything to base an evaluation off and just went by their gut feelings that may or may not have been communicated to the employee during their own trial period.

        I also had a manager who didn’t believe in giving ‘exceeds expectations’ ratings unless you won a Pulitzer or something comparable, and felt that people who graded themselves as ‘exceptional’ were delusional (I was her second-in-command so we discussed evaluations at the time) because she felt anybody who did their job well should be happy enough with ‘meets expectations.’ She was a new manager and that’s how she filled out her own evaluations and couldn’t understand how people would think differently. And I’d come from a terrible employer who wouldn’t give raises at all to anybody who “merely met expectations.” Your self eval was averaged with your boss’s eval, so if you graded yourself lowly, you didn’t get a raise. That was the same place that asked you to turn in your self-evaluation before the manager did their evaluation and — what a surprise! — all the negatives in your self-eval (until you learned to game the system) were pretty much copied word-for-word into your manager’s ‘needs improvement on’ list.

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      3. Ace in the Hole*

        I’ve had useful performance reviews. When your manager gives thorough feedback, it’s a great way of documenting performance for future managers. For example, at my last job I went through four bosses (retirement, interim, replacement that didn’t work out, then final boss). It was really good to be able to point to positive written comments from the previous three bosses when asking for a raise.

        Performance reviews are also a good time to bring up professional development, promotions, raises, etc. My annual evaluations have always included some kind of goal-setting for the upcoming year, and that’s when I’ll bring up things like certifications/trainings I want to get, outlining a path for advancement, etc.

        It’s worked to get me a lateral move to a department I really wanted, a significant promotion, two very useful professional certifications (paid 100% by my employer) that boosted my career, and once even created a new role specifically tailored to my experience/interests.

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    4. NotAnotherManager!*

      My spouse is a fed and his managers are the grade-on-a-curve variety, and it drives us nuts. In the federal government, of all places, your performance should be rated on the scale against your actual job duties, not to rotate the “good” bonus between team members each year. When he got the 4 last year, he asked his manager what he could improve to get the 5, and they literally told him nothing but it wasn’t his “turn” to get it. Crazy.

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    5. till Tuesday*

      Or worse timing: I was once severely dinged in a performance review. The review pertained to the jan-dec year. I made a mistake the following Feb, and was denied a raise.

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      1. Ann O'Nemity*

        Timing trips me up every year. My organization conducts performance evaluations at the same time annually, but my team’s busiest period falls shortly after evaluations. As a result, our most significant accomplishments happen about 10 months before our reviews, while our slowest period—when there are no major wins—is right before and during evaluations. I understand why recent performance tends to get the most attention, but this timing seems to put our team at a disadvantage.

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    6. ferrina*

      My favorite way of making performance evals worse than useless- set the performance goals in January, dramatically change the goals in April. Have employees spend 9 months on the new goals, repeatedly telling them to ignore the old goals. At the end of the year, evaluate them based on the old goals (that they were repeatedly told to ignore). That’s a guaranteed low score.

      Even better- set team goals, then cut half the team and still hold the remaining half to the goals that were set based on having twice the people. Of course, still make sure to change their goals several times throughout the year. That way you can evaluate them on outdated goals they were told to ignore and were impossible to achieve based on the staffing levels.

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    7. Elbe*

      The value of performance reviews (like the value of management, as a whole) really varies from company to company. Reviews can be really helpful when done right. But, of course, lots of managers and companies have found a way to weaponize and manipulate the results to their own ends.

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    8. cloudy*

      I feel this… Last year I was directly told our evaluations were only used as a paper trail for employees that were struggling and that there were never actually any merit increases. All my supervisors have confessed to just giving everyone 5/5 on everything too. I’m not sure why they bother continuing to do them at all!

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    9. siliril*

      It’s strange, because I have never really had a useful performance review.
      Either I got weird feedback from from just one coworker, who my boss and HR then spend the rest of the session assuring me that is not their impression of me at all. Or it was done a month after I started, or two days before I leave, which is feedback I can’t rely on.

      But now that I’ve been WFH since the pandemic without any performance reviews, or 1 on 1 meetings with my manager at all. I actually really would appreciate a performance review? Like everyone says I’m doing great but I still want to know that officially. I think WFH really affects this because I don’t get the little water cooler feedback I use to. So I feel less certain of my performance than I really should.

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    10. MigraineMonth*

      Performance evaluations *can* be very valuable, they just very rarely actually are. Actually, in my experience, it’s rare to even receive an evaluation.

      I worked at a company that by their timetables should have given me at least 7 evaluations, and I received only two or three of them. I should have 5 evaluations from my current organization, but I’ve only gotten two.

      Every once in a while it’s fun to open up my 2021 “goals” and laugh at them.

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    11. An0nym0us*

      I HATE THEM! My last manager never gave us feedback and then when it came to annual reviews, we had to tell them what we did well and didn’t. They would write down what we told them we did well without comment, then focus on everything we did poorly. The goals they set were often unreasonable due to severe understaffing, something that they refused to do anything about. At one review they flat out gaslit me and told me that a former coworker told them I was the reason they left (boss was angry at me and being passive aggressive after I complained about problematic behavior to their supervisors after repeated requests to stop).

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      1. Anonymosity*

        I hate them too. At one old job where my boss retired, I had good reviews until the new boss took over the merge of our department into hers. My review before I was put on a PIP (and later fired) was dismal–suddenly, I did nothing right.

        To be fair, there were things I wasn’t doing well; however, I wasn’t getting much instruction for what turned out to be a completely different job. I asked repeatedly what was upcoming and was put off every time. When I was assigned new tasks I hadn’t done before, I asked for guidance or instruction, but this was categorized as “handholding.” Um, how am I supposed to know how to do X when I’ve never done X, because for three years, I was doing Y? The old boss was very clear about what my responsibilities were and how to do those things. The new boss did none of that.

        It was upsetting to get this review after reaching out and receiving little to no information. Once I had some distance on it, I realized how poorly the transition was handled. That part of it was not my fault.

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  4. Kai*

    I hadn’t yet graduated college but was hired for my first full time job in childcare.
    The supervisor who hired knew this.
    I had a 6 week evaluation, I filled out the same pages she did.
    Hers was scathing.
    Apparently one of my coworkers didn’t like how I did my job, at all. So she told the supervisor everything- while sitting in the office with the supervisor eating lunch together. All the time.
    So I was told I was downgraded because I didn’t go to the supervisor with my concerns and I should have.
    I didn’t know I was supposed to. Also, they été friends so how could I possibly do that.
    But I was 24 & didn’t know then what I do now.
    Talk about a surprise evaluation.

    I was eventually fired because I couldn’t ever recover that initial loss.

    From reading here I know my supers was horrible. Not only was I a new employee who she knew had yet to finish school, she offered no support & believed my coworker without even asking me or checking I was ok. She blindsided me & it was completely unfair & unprofessional.
    I got a new position & did well when removed from that situation.

    And the coworker was fired herself when the supervisor took a different position. The new supervisor knew who the problem in the centre was.

    Thanks for reading. This has been on my mind for 28 years now. I’ll never forget that feeling of reading my failures through the eyes of a coworker who just didn’t like me.

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    1. Archi-detect*

      yeah, nothing you could do in that situation, even if you had the list of things the coworker was going to complain about

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    2. ferrina*

      Former childcare worker here.

      Daycare is its own brand of madness (not unlike retail, academia and restaurants). Favoritism runs rampant. The politics are intense, and always over the most low-stakes things. The most competent and rational person is often blamed, because everyone knows that the competent/rational person won’t do anything crazy. I was only in it for a couple of years, but the stories I have….

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      1. Elbe*

        The most competent and rational person is often blamed, because everyone knows that the competent/rational person won’t do anything crazy.

        This is also a really common dynamic within families. It’s not surprising (but it is very sad!) that people are defaulting to these patterns when they’re in a caregiving role.

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    3. Saturday*

      That’s aggravating. It’s really hard to go through something like that – at any time, but especially when you’re fairly new to the work world. I’m glad you can put it in perspective now.

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  5. Targaryen*

    I’m experiencing this in real time — attendance is being used as a factor to influence bonuses/promos/etc at my company, and HR got the info to the managers too late. So while some have had their performance reviews, a major factor that will affect their overall review was introduced too late (and thus was a surprise)

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    1. TQB*

      Attendance – actually doing the work – is part of the job. I’m not sure i agree that employees should have to be affirmatively told that poor attendance will result in less favorable reviews.

      However, if this is an RTO issue where people are being penalized for WFH when other metrics are great, they can FO.

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      1. Targaryen*

        Our company has been crystal clear in its hybrid flex policy: three days in office, two days WFH. While employees weren’t told specifically “Your bonus, salary, and promotion prospects will be affected by this,” they were rained on with consistent messaging about adhering to the policy. So it shouldn’t have come as a surprise…but it kinda did.

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      2. Disappointed Australien*

        For salaried staff having attendance be important is often a novelty and needs to be clearly communicated. If my WFH job said “you have to be online from 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday I would struggle to comply. And that would be a *huge* change, right now I work “about 8 hours a day” with the only fixed time being a 930am Monday video meeting. And my boss occasionally rings me the instant I log on because he has an amazing new idea (and has been waiting impatiently since ~530am when he woke up)

        But I’ve worked in 9-5 offices before, once with no flex time, and I’ve also briefly worked somewhere that used time cards on salaried staff. That’s a recipe for salaried staff who walk out the door at 5pm on the dot no matter what.

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      3. Ace in the Hole*

        Attendance and “actually doing the work” are not necessarily the same thing.

        Attendance is a prerequisite to actually doing the work in a coverage based job – although it’s certainly possible to have perfect attendance and still not get work done.

        However, in many jobs attendance doesn’t really impact performance or ability to do work that much. For example in my job I have a list of tasks that need to be done by the end of each month, but can be done at any time in that monthly window. Technically, our hours are 8:00-5:00 and showing up late could be held against us as poor attendance. In practice, the time I arrive at the office each morning has zero impact on my work performance.

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  6. Robbie*

    Mildly related, but my performance last year was definitely an experience. At the beginning, my rep (who collects the feedback from appropriate parties to share with me) said “well we know all of the positives, so let’s see what we can do to improve”. And while the critiques were indeed accurate, it was only afterwards that I was able to read the feedback I originally got and realize that there was a lot of positive stuff in there. That was glossed over as she felt that it wasn’t worth looking into what is going well.
    I was only surprised in that it felt like an evaluation where I was raked over the coals when in actuality I am doing a good job and we were simply looking where I could improve. I checked with my colleague and she did the same with him, so it really was a personality thing.

    Reply ↓
    1. MigraineMonth*

      I’m one of those people whose brains will edit out all the nice things to focus on the criticism anyway. If I get a list of 15 things and all of them are going great except one, I will selectively remember only the problem area.

      Reply ↓
      1. Reluctant Mezzo*

        I just got through listening to Patrick Stewart’s MAKING IT SO, and after all his awards and accomplishments, he still remembers being dissed in earlier performances. This is normal.

        Reply ↓
  7. Get me out of here*

    I’ve been the person surprised by things raised in my performance review. Once I’d thought about it afterwards I asked my manager for another meeting, informed her of this and said from my point of view her communication needed to improve. She fobbed it off as her being solution focussed and didn’t dwell on issues, which I pointed out isn’t helpful to me in understanding that there is an issue. She then put it onto me to come up with a way for communication to improve. Needless to say, I no longer work there.

    Reply ↓
    1. OrangeCup*

      I had a boss who also liked to surprise me in performance reviews (and blame me for things people previously in my position had done), and she once told me she was too old to change who she was, so I had to change who I was so we could get along better. She was a narcissist and basically just wanted me to kiss her ass all day long which I had no intention of doing anyway. She passed away and a colleague and I cleared out what we called her “crazy files” where she wrote nasty notes about us so she’d always have something to bring up on our reviews so the next manager would never see them.

      Reply ↓
      1. DramaQ*

        That was my latest review. I was taken completely off guard and told I had no idea that we had reached that point with any of this nobody ever talks to me and I wasn’t given any indication in my 1:1s that I was doing this badly.

        As it turns out our new head of department who has no clue what any of us actually do for a living decided that now reviews must include an equal number of 2,3 and 4s so guess who they decided to sacrifice?

        Any time I’ve tried to address things and fix things the goal posts get moved on me.

        I am actively looking for another job just nothing has panned out yet. I am so done with the mixed messages and secret manager/review meetings where we don’t get to see what went into our reviews. We’re just handed them and told to sign/agree with it.

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  8. Judge Judy and Executioner*

    I’ve always believed that positive surprises are okay, like giving someone a higher rating than expected in a self-evaluation. But having been on the end of negative surprises, I wish my manager at the time would have communicated things to be more timely. One time, I found out I did something they didn’t like, which was ELEVEN months ago. When I became a manager, I vowed to only allow good surprises in performance reviews.

    Reply ↓
    1. NotAnotherManager!*

      I feel like I should be telling my folks how they’re doing, good, mediocre or bad, regularly. If all they ever hear is the negative/constructive stuff, then I feel like I do get self-evals where they’ve downgraded themselves undeservedly (usually the people who are already hard on themselves).

      Waiting months to tell someone they need to do something differently is one of my big pet peeves. They are going to continue to do it the “wrong” way in the interim if they don’t know the difference. I tell our folks that it’s not like school where the grade is your feedback at the end of the class, the feedback is to help people do the job better on a daily basis (and make our customers more satisfied in the process).

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    2. Also-ADHD*

      Positive surprises are definitely okay to give, in that you should express them *but* it does mean you missed opportunities for supportive feedback earlier, so still isn’t ideal (like you shouldn’t hold all your praise for a review either).

      Reply ↓
      2. Judge Judy and Executioner*

        Completely agree! In the example I mentioned, the process was for associates to self-evaluate first. I had a high performer, and they were incredibly hard on themselves and would often rate themselves “needs improvement.” While I provided regular feedback, both good and bad, the employee was still surprised when I told them I rated them as exceeded expectations. Because they had exceeded my expectations and did the best they could in the situation. They thought not meeting their goals meant they failed and were surprised by the higher rating.

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    3. Disappointed Australien*

      Back when I was a student doing random student jobs I one took great pleasure in replying to a review point “me doing that has been fine for the last six months, I don’t see the problem”. I was shocked that they didn’t fire me on the spot.

      Pointless performance reviews are hard work. I much prefer managers who tell me what they think when it comes up. “please wear clothes in video meetings” (my boss was traumatised by a very hairy employee (not me!)) or “wow, that’s awesome, it works even better than I’d hoped”. Not “On the 23rd of April 2021 you were 74 seconds late to your desk”.

      Reply ↓
  9. Weepinbell*

    I had a review once in the midst of a very stressful project (my company had way overpromised and the client was really on us about it). While I was not a perfect performer in the situation, I generally was a great performer, and expected a not amazing but not terrible review.

    I was taken to a restaurant for the review by the CEO and my two direct bosses, who then proceeded to rake me across the coals, I think to take out their project frustrations. The stress of the past few weeks caught up, and I started to cry, which was not normal for me.

    Did that stop the review we were doing in a public place? Nope! They ignored my reaction and kept going. I just put on my sunglasses and the review continued while I blubbered through my responses, trying to address the feedback as professionally as I could through the tears. I had to take a bathroom break to WEEP, came back to the table, and continued to cry, because they continued the review and I had no time to compose myself.

    The waitress was mortified, I was mortified. If my reviewers were mortified, they never showed it. These were generally kind people I would expect to have the sense to end a review if a reviewee was getting emotional, let alone openly sobbing. I can’t fathom what was going through their heads, even now, many years later.

    Reply ↓
    1. Weepinbell*

      Oh, and relevant to Alison’s post, almost all of what I was hearing was new to me. I’d had no negative feedback all year before the project, and the only heads-up I got during the project was “why are you leaving on time when there is so much to do?” (reader: they were not letting me do much, they’d retained most of the ownership of the project. I genuinely felt I was doing everything I could in the situation.)

      Reply ↓
    2. NotAnotherManager!*

      This is awful! What on earth were they thinking??!? No review should be delivered in public, even if it’s glowing. I’m so sorry that happened to you.

      Reply ↓
    4. SurpriseReview*

      Oh my goodness, I had the same experience! You didn’t happen to work for a public interest law firm that’s no longer around, did you?

      Reply ↓
      1. Weepinbell*

        Oh no, I’m sorry to tell you there are multiple sets of bonehead managers out there…creative agency over here. (Sorry you went through that, I know how wretched it is!)

        Reply ↓
  10. Jonathan MacKay*

    Negative news should never be a surprise….

    But what about positive news? A performance evaluation may (emphasis on may being subjective to circumstances) be a good time to tell an excellent employee such things.

    Either way, most of the time people will be able to tell which way things are going during the leadup.

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    1. Arrietty*

      It shouldn’t be a surprise to them that they’re doing well – you don’t want employees who are terrified they’re doing a bad job because they never get any feedback all year and have no way to measure their own success.

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      1. Marion Ravenwood*

        I’m one of those people that goes into every performance review with an expectation on some level that I’m going to be told I’m terrible at my job and to be gone by the end of the day. In reality that’s never been the case. I don’t know why it happens, but I never expect to hear “actually you’re doing really well” so it’s always kind of a relief when I do.

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    2. A*

      Sometimes you can get positive feedback to pass along that is a surprise—one year in my performance review my manager mentioned that I had gotten feedback for my attempt to get us more kitchen equipment (which is absolutely not my job but we were all complaining about not having what we needed, so I tried to fix it… ended up not being successful for infrastructure reasons). My manager hadn’t really been paying attention to the saga and was surprised by it being mentioned as an example of stepping up to do something that was needed

      Reply ↓
    3. Lemons*

      I find positive feedback to be highly underutilized! I always make sure to let someone whose work I’m reviewing know what I actually like about what they did, as well as what needs updating. It’s not just nice to give that sort of feedback, it tells them “don’t change that part in future revisions, and do it again like that next time.”

      Reply ↓
  11. dulcinea47*

    My “favorite” review was the one where I got Surprise! accused of throwing things at some point during the previous year. Which I definitely never did, but you can’t defend yourself if you don’t know when/what supposedly happened. I’m still pissed about it.

    Reply ↓
    1. DramaQ*

      I got told I was speaking badly about clients and she even put that in writing. I pushed back on it demanding to know what I said and when because there is no paperwork proving I said anything and I have never received bad feedback from our clients personally.

      She walked by when I was eating lunch with a friend and heard one sentence of our conversation and formed her own opinion on what I was talking about.

      I still to this day don’t know what I said and she interpreted it as! It is insane to me that she can use something I said in private on my lunch break to give me a negative review and doesn’t even have to provide details about what she is accusing me of.

      When I went above her and even to HR they told me “Well your manager gets to decide your performance there is nothing we can do about it we have to trust her word about you”.

      The heck?!

      I am still so pissed off about it my eye ball twitches when I think about it.

      Reply ↓
  12. Zona the Great*

    I once had a terrible boss who needed everything, not spoon fed, but bottle fed to her. In my performance review right before I was about to leave after a resignation period, I got glowing reviews and high marks in all categories. Then she decided to offer some off-the-cuff “advice” that in my next role, I should really communicate more with my new boss. She over-emphasized how much she found I was not communicating enough with her and she never knew what I was doing. Odd that that wasn’t in any of my reviews. Since this little off-the-cuff advice was off-record, I took the chance to tell her that even if I was living in her home and sleeping in her bed, I couldn’t have possibly communicated to her any more. Then I made sure to write in my official response to my Performance Review that she said what she said and that I didn’t understand how a weekly 1-hour 1:1, a weekly journal sent to her outlining every single thing I did, constant copying of emails and updating of reports could possibly result in a lack of communication with her. A few weeks after I left, I got an official letter from HR assuring me that my performance review would not contain any message that I lacked communication skills. Then I saw that boss was no longer there after a while.

    Reply ↓
    1. allathian*

      Yeah, well, weekly 1:1s as well as weekly journals sound excessive to me as it is. How many reports did your ex-boss have?

      Reply ↓
  13. Metal Gru*

    My other pet hate in reviews (apart from surprises) is “recency bias”, where things that happened more recently are unduly weighted especially if they’re negative. I don’t mean things that are becoming a pattern, as that’s a genuine thing that should be addressed (although again, ideally not for the first time at the review itself) but things that are isolated in nature, but at the front of the manager’s mind due to being more recent. My counter to this is to keep a running list during the year of “if next month was review season, what would I talk about”.

    Reply ↓
    1. Anonym*

      Have seen this a number of times. A one off incident that otherwise wouldn’t meet the bar for inclusion in a performance evaluation should not be included just because it happened recently.

      Reply ↓
      1. We still have so much paper*

        People here at my company have a joke, “Don’t make a mistake in September!” we have reviews in early October.

        Reply ↓
    2. Ann O'Nemity*

      Yes, this. I posted about this flip side of this above – big accomplishments that happened at the beginning of a review period are forgotten or overshadowed when the focus is on recent performance.

      Reply ↓
    3. Kendall^2*

      I tend to keep a month by month list of the highlights, so I have them when review period comes around (my boss generally emails me the form with “get this back to me in a few days”, so it makes things so much easier).

      Reply ↓
    1. Hermia*

      I’m sorry.

      I’ve never actually had a performance review at my current job, but the other day I was called into a surpise meeting that turned out to be a negative performance review with request for improvement. I am also feeling awful and lonely right there with you. <3

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      1. Neptune*

        thanks. I just feel really bruised emotionally and I’m going to have to put ona professional face while going through this.

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    2. MigraineMonth*

      I’ve been there too. I’m sorry.

      I don’t know if this helps, but getting fired from that company actually did wonders for my career (and stress level).

      Reply ↓
  15. PTBNL*

    This is so timely for me because I had my annual review yesterday. I got knocked down a grade because of my reaction to certain events that when I pressed were two years ago and when I showed my manager the email he said oh there’s nothing wrong with that. I also asked why this hadn’t been brought up in my weekly check ins my manager just said he should have but the bigger issue is he knows the problems I raise are legit issues but I can’t ADMIT there are problems here.

    So I sent out some resumes last night.

    Reply ↓
  16. Nilsson Schmilsson*

    I took a part-time job for the insurance bennies, when I had been retired for several years. Probably a dozen or more people doing exactly the same job as I was, primarily inputting billing information. My input was usually 50% more than everyone else, and the managers thought it would useful to make it competitive, by posing results everyday (it wasn’t). Anyway, I get my first review, and I don’t really care about it, except when one of the managers tells me that my output could use improvement. Why? “Because everyone can always show improvement.” To top it off, when he gives me the copy to sign, it wasn’t even my review! And all he did was change my name and called it a day. If this would have been my career job, I wouldn’t have sat still. As it was, if you didn’t get fired, everyone got the exact same raise anyway. You could say I was surprised at the entire process. :)

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  17. Jennifer Juniper*

    I can see some boss saying “It shouldn’t be a surprise to you, Jennifer Juniper. Our metrics are clearly stated and you didn’t meet them. You’re supposed to track your performance.”

    Reply ↓
    1. Reluctant Mezzo*

      And this is why I did track my performance at OldJob, had a lovely spreadsheet for it too. Just in case the computer program accidentally lost all the results under my login.

      Reply ↓
  18. Peanut Hamper*

    I have yet to work for a company that does an even mediocre job at performance evaluations. At my current company we have both “goals” and “performance areas” and there used to be quite a bit of overlap between the two. But management would get pissy if we just copied and pasted from one area to the other.

    Right now, I bristle because every area is rated from 1 to 5, but there are a couple of areas they only do credit/no credit. You would think that means you either earn a 5 or a 1, but management insists that the highest you can get is 3. And of course, that depresses your overall score, which affects raises and promotions.

    Reply ↓
    1. MigraineMonth*

      I have a pet peeve for people who do statistics or averages without understanding mathematical reasoning.

      => Pass/Fail cannot be averaged with an A-F grade rating.
      => An “N/A” response is not the same as a zero rating.
      => Requiring improvement on a test guarantees failure for everyone who got the highest possible score the first time.

      Stop, think, then do math.

      Reply ↓
      1. Peanut Hamper*

        I am right there with you! Ironically, most of my job involves a heavy use of statistics, which those of us on the ground understand, and those above us….seem to not have any grasp of. Kind of tired of explaining linear regression to people who have no clue what that means. “Isn’t it just kind of an average?” they ask. No, it is not.

        Stop, think, then do math

        I may have to put this on a t-shirt! (I still bristle when I see YouTube clips of George Carlin–in most ways, a fairly smart guy–saying that half of all people are above average. Nope, sorry, half of all people are above the median. The average is….something else.)

        Reply ↓
  19. Jay*

    As a teacher in a yearly review by someone who does not teach my subject, I got told that new requirements for student work layout were being introduced, and that I had retrospectively failed them.

    You’ll be shocked to learn that I’m not in school teaching any more.

    Reply ↓
    1. Urban teacher*

      My evaluator this year brought in comments by a program specialist who has never seen me teach and who I was in 1 IEP with. I can’t wait to leave.

      Reply ↓
    2. Not a Vorpatril*

      Ouch. Our reviewers are fairly pointless (like most in these comments) but at least they give us the… well, they’re technically metrics, just rather wishy-washy.

      All I “worry” about is if they give a low enough score to put me under a PIP or something, which I have yet to see anything of the sort. Getting slightly above average tracks, IMO, and Imm fine with that.

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    3. Box of Rain*

      The worst review I ever had while teaching was with a principal who was an elementary PE teacher. I taught HS English, including AP Literature. He literally had zero understanding of what we were reading or doing with the text. His feedback: “You got them up from their seats (for a gallery walk). That was good.”

      It won’t surprise you that he moved from classroom to administration after only 5 years, which is the minimum to get a principal’s license in my state. I am also no longer teaching.

      Reply ↓
  20. Ms VanSquigglebottoms*

    This is great, and I think there’s another reason that performance evaluations can have surprises, or maybe it’s a variation on what Alison writes about. Managers sometimes point out issues when they happen, but employees don’t always see the bigger pattern. It can be hard in the moment as a manager to call out patterns–you don’t want to relitigate something that’s been previously discussed–but failing to do so can be a disservice to a team member who later feels blindsided by a review.

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  21. Joyce to the World*

    It was a total shock when I once got had a comment in my annual review that I was emotional. I cried once while on a 1 x 1 with her because I was frustrated. She was a horrible, horrible manager. She didn’t bring it up when we met to go over it. So, it was there when I went to acknowledge it. I entered comments in protest, but that was all I could do. A year or so later, same department, different manager- gave my exact same annual review to my co-worker. Didn’t even bother to change the name. That whole department was an awful joke. So, if you are a competent people leader, it shouldn’t be a surprise. Incompetent, you never know.

    Reply ↓
    1. Tea Monk*

      Yea, I feel that things like ” she’s too emotional ” or ” I don’t like his weird squeaky voice ” shouldn’t be in performance reviews at all

      Reply ↓
      1. MigraineMonth*

        I actually successfully pushed back on a comment in my review about my communication style being too… aggressive? brusque? bitchy? Something like that.

        At this point in my career I’d probably point out how gendered that criticism was, but at the time I asked for examples so that I could improve. To my manager’s credit, he did remove the comment after he was unable to come up with any specific example.

        (Somehow that piece of feedback has managed to follow me for a truly absurd amount of time. As in, my former manager felt a need to pass it on to my current manager as “something mentioned by one of her references that I’ve seen no evidence of” during the transition meeting.)

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  22. AnonyMouse*

    I feel like I have been surprised this year and it’s not a good feeling.

    Long story, long:

    Early last year, when my day job was quiet, I agreed to take on a project in an area that would be a stretch for me. I scoped out the project and put together the information request to go to external stakeholders. Between sending out the request and the deadline two things happened:

    1) My boss told me that he was struggling to find “chunky” projects for a more junior member of the team who had recently returned from secondment (reluctantly coming back to our team when he had been vocal about wanting to do something different) and was applying unsuccessfully for promotions.
    2) I found a lump where there should not be a lump and entered the whirlwind of medical appointments, tests, biopsies and eventually a surgery that that entails.

    So I thought it was “win-win” to pass this project to the junior team member and concentrate on my day job and my health. Everyone seemed happy (though to be fair, the project seems to be behind schedule because I haven’t seen an outcome, which was meant to be before end 2024).

    Then my annual review came around and about 1/3 of the write-up is how I failed to complete the project. The write up mentions that I was dealing with “challenging health issues” but I don’t feel like it should be mentioned at all. My boss seemed happy when I gave it up in favour of the junior colleague. In our review discussion, he said that it was something that had come up when the managers at his level had discussed staff at my level (which is a standard part of our review process). But I really felt blindsided. In my case, this probably had some impact on my bonus, which was never going to be great because I had a good one last year and my department doesn’t believe in giving people a good bonus two years in a row, but it’s really disappointing that extra work, that I took on voluntarily and gave up in good faith when I thought I might have cancer is being used against me.

    Reply ↓
    1. Disappointed Australien*

      That’s really terrible. Ideally you should have got credit for coming up with the project and getting it off the ground then even some “good on you for turning your medical issue into a win for your coworker”.

      I hope the lump stays dealt with!

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  23. BadWordler*

    I was one of those people who just didn’t see how much trouble I was in, and when the hammer came down I was shocked. But even I knew upon reflection that I shouldn’t have been shocked at all. Although, when I asked if I was on a PIP my supervisor told me I wasn’t. But still. I can laugh now, because it was such the wrong job for me, but it was hard when it happened.

    Anonymouse, I’m so sorry that happened to you.

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  24. Janeway, Her Coffee In Hand*

    I’ve gotten surprise bad feedback before and I’m still mildly irritated when I think about it! The manager docked me because, in her opinion, I yawned too openly in meetings. She’d never said anything about this before and never followed up on it after. Just popped my streak of positive evaluations with an absolutely petty complaint that had nothing to do with my actual work!

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  25. Polly Hedron*

    What if the employee had made a huge mistake so recently that the manager had no chance to discuss it until the review meeting?

    Reply ↓
    1. Peanut Hamper*

      Oof! Those should be two separate meetings. And really, the review should be just a bit past that timepoint. A 2024 review should occur in January, maybe February at the latest.

      A huge mistake just yesterday though? That really needs to be a separate meeting.

      Reply ↓
  26. mreasy*

    I once had a review in which, looking at my measurable and expectation-exceeding accomplishments over the year, I asked for a raise. My bosses then shut that down, telling me that everyone complained about working with me and that I had a terrible attitude. I had never received even a hint of this, nor was that the feedback I got from most of the people I worked with on a daily basis. I was regularly sworn at by people I worked with, both internal and external, and tried to handle even the most difficult interactions with aplomb. They wouldn’t cite any incidents or even make up anonymized examples of my behavior. I continued to excel in the role for several more years, never receiving more than COLA despite bringing the office I worked in accomplishments they had never before received. Maybe they just didn’t want to give me a raise? I was making about half what my peers leading other divisions made. Did I mention I was the only woman in my senior exec role? Anyways, the shocked Pikachu faces when I said I was leaving!

    Reply ↓
  27. Lab Snep*

    I once had a job that did not mention dress code. It was a creative job, and I was dealing with what I recognize now as dysphoria.

    I dressed creatively. Wore clothes that were kinda casual but no more casual than the men wore. Graphic t-shirts. Jeans. Nice sneakers. The women wore nice clothes but I figured that was their preference.

    Nobody came to me and pulled me to the side and said “hey snep, i don’t know if you realize it but you need to dress up a little more”

    Instead, at my review, apparently my shirts (usually brightly coloured) and my more youthful style (I was in my 20s) had upset one of the creative directors so much that at the beginning of my review he said “Stop dressing like a fucking teenager”.

    Like I said, there had been ZERO feedback.

    Not only that, but I cleaned it up and wore nicer, but still masculine, clothes and it was not enough.

    The men could wear t-shirts. I could not. I am a man, but I was a man in denial.

    The fun thing was about a week after my review I slipped on my bathroom floor, jammed my foot under my door and thankfully didn’t break anything, but severely bruised the top of my foot.

    I had to wear sneakers. Boss pitched a fit (he was wearing sneakers by the way).

    I took off my shoe and showed him how purple my foot was and he said he didn’t fucking care.

    I should have left that job before I was let go (able to get ubemployment) but it was my first job out of college and I came from a dysfunctional family so I just thought this was how the world worked.

    Lawl no.

    Anyway, long story short, if there is a surprise please don’t be an asshole about it to your staff.

    Also do not assume your staff will pick up on non verbal cues. I am super neurodivergent. I did not know anything was awry.

    Reply ↓
      1. Lab Snep*

        Oh, it gets better.

        I was in charge of making newspaper ads look nice. There was one for a job posting for our company, which wasn’t a surprise because we had an empty office and were looking for someone else.

        It ended up being an ad for MY job.

        I was let go the SAME DAY THE NEW GUY STARTED. He was HORRIFIED and according to a client, 6 months later, they had not been able to keep ANYONE in thay position.

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    2. Peanut Hamper*

      do not assume your staff will pick up on non verbal cues

      This needs to be on page 1 of every “how to be an effective manager” manual ever. Use your freaking words.

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    3. Polly Hedron*

      I came from a dysfunctional family so I just thought this was how the world worked.

      Alas, much of the world does work that way. I’m glad you went on to the functional parts.

      Reply ↓
  28. Poppy*

    My first 3-month performance review ended in a PIP. I had been given no inkling that I had been doing anything wrong and no training.

    At the review I was told that I should know how to do things by instinct, and when I asked why I hadn’t been told that I was under-performing, the manager said that I was being given enough leeway to prove myself and that someone they’d actually wanted for the job had done much better. (?!)

    By the time I left at the end of six months I was one of the veterans at that place.

    Reply ↓
    1. Lemons*

      We worked at the same place for sure! I was actually forbidden from giving new hires training materials because boss wanted them to just ‘figure it out,’ and figure it out FAST. You know how they’ll figure it out fast? By reviewing copious training materials! I always just sent them behind boss’s back and made it super clear to the hires that I was a resource for all questions, and even then the boss was never happy that new hires didn’t instantly understand everything.

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      1. MigraineMonth*

        It’s never actually the same place. The horribleness we hope is unique is actually pretty widespread.

        :-(

        Reply ↓
  29. Tech worker*

    Would be curious for others’ thoughts on this situation:

    I am a manager. My fellow manager has a direct report who is very clearly not meeting expectations. However, it seems this manager has not actually told her that she is not meeting expectations. Based on my past experience with the manager, I think he will continue to avoid doing so. But then once performance review season comes around, it’s very likely that she will get a bad rating because despite what her manager thinks or what he has told her, the ratings need to be fair across the organization and so they usually get re-calibrated if the manager’s rating does not feel fair. It could very well end up being a surprise rating to her, but unless someone convinces him to actually deliver negative feedback to her, I’m not sure how to avoid it? Certainly other people could also deliver the feedback to her, but I feel like she needs to hear it from him.

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  30. Righty Tighty Lefty Loosey*

    A few years ago I got a “does not meet expectations” annual review that was a complete blindside. It was my manager’s first year in a position with direct reports. He tried to make me feel better by telling me he also got a does not meet expectations from his manager because he didn’t bring these issues to my attention earlier. Needless to say it didn’t make me feel better.

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  31. InTheTumbleWeeds*

    I also don’t think you should penalize people for things out of their control or beyond the scope of the goal. We had a manager who gave two staff members “Didn’t Meets” ratings on a training goal provided to them, but then funding was cut for. Manager didn’t tell them to try to find anything that might work for it or offer solutions and didn’t remove the goal, but months later told them at their evaluations that they couldn’t get credit because they didn’t try to find a class on their own (and pay for it, apparently) so their merit increase was less that year.

    This manager would also try to pit people against each other in their annual evaluations. Your goal might say “Complete X number of Y this year” for a “meets” or “Complete more than X number of Y this year” for an “exceeds,” but if you exceeded your goal and someone else on the team had more X than you they still might not give you an exceeds. You could also provide proof you met the goal and if they didn’t want to give you a meets they’d do anything they could to discredit or exclude it. It was all so very arbitrary and they couldn’t figure out why moral was low or why people quit trying to get anything except meets.

    This manager also frequently declined to pay mileage between sites where staff might be hauling company equipment in personal vehicles, ignored problems with favorite staff and if an issue arose in the group would keep bringing it up at staff meetings in such a vague way no one knew what the problem was. We kept asking direct questions and all they would say was that there was a communication problem in the team that needed to be addressed. The problem was that there were 4 of us and when we talked amongst ourselves everyone said things were fine. It wasn’t until one of the team left and word vomited their disdain for the rest of the team in the exit interview we even knew what the issue really was. Turns out the “issue” was something that was a direct request from the manager that wasn’t relayed to the upset staff member. If the manager had just addressed it head on things might not have blown up.

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  32. Box of Rain*

    Best advice I ever got was to approach performance reviews as a genuine celebration of what the person has achieved over the past 12 months. They’ve become much more enjoyable for both of us.

    AND that advice was coupled with the suggestion to have monthly 15 minute check-ins dedicated to the performance review when we look at the goals and make notes together.

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  33. The_artist_formerly_known_as_Anon-2*

    One thing I saw = how to recover from a bad review, especially if it’s an unfair and “ambush” negative review.

    Sometimes you CAN’T. And it might be time to move on. I was fortunate, because in the IS/IT world there are a lot of opportunities to advance yourself by jumping ship and going elsewhere.

    I once was put “on probation” (sort of) and I opted to bail out. A very happy day, it was… and I didn’t have the fear of firing hanging over my head. The odd thing is that they attempted to throw money at me in an attempt to stay, less than a month after the horrendous review and warning letter.

    In one place – I had an ambush review – and I refused to sign it. HR had a sit down meeting with my director and me – I went in thinking I was going to be fired, and as the meeting proceded, it turned out my boss was on the hot seat!

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