Ever since I started there has been this high anxiety attitude around job performance -- specifically performance reviews. As an L3 I paid much attention to it but after a promo or two people started giving me advice that I should be prepared to 'really output a lot of impact' in order to make it. I have done quite well so far, but I'm getting a bit exhausted by trying to continuously justify my worth \ existence as an IC and ensure people perceive my work as good \ important.
As I've seen my friends move around to other companies I've gotten the sense that engineers at other companies don't really have to deal with this sort of anxiety as much, either because expectations are more concrete ("we need these things done\designed\scoped out and you're working on it") or because performance reviews are just not so intense.
With recent layoffs and the direction of the company I am thinking about trying to move around, maybe to a smaller company. From a personal perspective, performance culture is one of the things I have come to dislike most about this company, although maybe it's like this most places.
Is it like this elsewhere? Any thoughts?
Note: by IC I mean engineers that contribute to changes directly, not sure if that's a common term
This leads to a rat race where everyone is left to compete for “impact”. “Impact” is the word used by your manager to defer to yourself, and yourself only, the responsibility of justifying your existence because there’s not enough meaningful work for everybody. In a functional organization, whose staffing grows along with the demands of the business as opposed to political empires, it should be the other way around.
This ultimately causes horrible changes in behavior from the ICs themselves, who have no other choices than playing the game: extreme competition, backstabbing, stealing of ideas and credit, comical self-promotion (e.g., you fix a trivial bug in one hour and then waste a week writing a pointless 10-page doc about it so that you can use it at perf time to justify how much you did or send it via email to your management chain), etc.
I’ve seen so much of it that I was thinking of starting a blog or a $4.99 ebook sharing all the situations I’ve witnessed during my tech career.
Actual innovation is quite wasteful and you wind up going down a lot of dead ends where all you can really say at the end is "well I guess thats one way to not make a lightbulb". This is a land for obsessive nerds.
But if your goal is the next promotion or more headcount you can't afford to take that kind of risk. Instead orgs wind up optimizing for pretend work that makes a great powerpoint at the end of the quarter. Remaining energy gets spent on trying to backstab or downplay other projects - competing for a perceived limited pie, rather than trying to make more pie.
You have tens of thousands of brilliant and motivated engineers striving to find something to make better so... why are all the things so.... not-that-good?
I found Meta wildly more work than startups (just one datapoint). I feel in the industry at large when we say 40 hour weeks we mean "35-40 hours in front of the computer per week, average, with 90 minutes minimum of distraction per day." My experience at meta was like straight 40-hours and I was still always feeling like I was behind.
Also at non-faang the idea that you'd hide broken things from coworkers so you could do all the work yourself would make people laugh out loud.
Then the whole Performance cycle and "4 axes" of performance is really a non-issue at startups. At a startup you just excel for a few months, and then basically the whole company knows you're awesome and you're rarely met with skepticism from then on (which is good). I feel like getting a good review at non-meta is a non-issue mostly for someone in your situation.
The hard work didn't drive me nuts, but the fact that I felt like people weren't building the right things did. The idea of working that hard toward a hacky system made my soul bleed.
This is so incredibly true, having been at both a FAANG and not. It’s insane (as I also described in my comment sibling to yours).
Here you go:
> they pay below industry standard
I think the specifics of each company’s performance review system have a lot to do with it. At google the level definitions are so prescriptive that it is like a checklist to get good ratings and promotions, and doesn’t leave much room for people to do good work in ways that are unique to them. At Microsoft you do not receive a formal rating, and the level definitions are very vague and mostly come down to just doing well at whatever your team needs at least at lower levels.
1. Be on good terms with your manager
2. Be on good terms with your team
3. Work on some things that are higher impact
4. Make sure your work is visible publicly
That’s it. There are a ton of optimizations that people talk about to “game” the system, but if you simply do the things above you don’t have to worry about it. If you’re trying to get extra bonus or a promotion, you need to optimize those areas, but that’s completely up to you. PSC is completely overhyped
The ambiguity is a big part of what drives anxiety, and it's totally unnecessary.
This is the first time I didn't take PSC super super seriously so we'll see how it goes. I put in quite a bit of effort still, but I'm not spending 8+ hours like it seems some other people do.
Also, you see individuals bring these attitudes to an org. All it takes is one manager, or a couple, to shift the balance. I was getting this bullshit in an industry much less known for it. My boss quits, and things go much better.
That makes me think to some extent the problem is we have had little continuous feedback from these leaders or even much concentration on goals/expectations. That makes it really tough because you just have to keep outputting and believing it's enough until the end-of-cycle feedback comes in. I've managed to succeed in this environment anyways but it's certainly stressful.
I've spent some time this cycle trying to mention this to our new manager, so we will see how/if things change.
Can you please share here - rather what else you prefer?
Sometimes even when there are multiple managers and your line manager is ok, one nearby person in the org chart with enough influence over who is kept is enough to make everyone in their sphere more fearful and paranoid - and perversely, perform less helpfully to the organisation, in order to protect their jobs.
1. we agree on xyz to be done and a time estimate
2. work on xyz within your 40h/week
3. if it is not possible to finish within time estimate for some objective reason (higher priority work coming in, unforeseen technical obstacles, etc.), let management know asap and rediscuss time estimate.
Never have I had fears for my position or job, except for external reasons (bad economy, for instance).
I don't think I've seen anyone else worry about performance reviews. I assume this is why the US visa system is structured like this.
A lot of people in tech are just massive losers, I wouldn't want to be around the work version of their soul (usually they are much more normal outside of that context). They come from half assed bootcamps or self learning or non relevant majors, and have intense inferiority complexes. This manifests in this type of behavior. A lot also come from more "legit" backgrounds and have intense superiority complexes. It's a shit show from top to bottom. Couple all this with the 10x engineer mantra and stuff, and the general male dominant/new age yuppy lifestyles, it's like the last type of person you'd ever want to be around.
I've been all of these things and more, and I'm disgusted with myself. Here's my tip:
They say one form of meditation is to be cognizant of meandering thoughts. Watch as they show up in your head, acknowledge it, and let it pass by you. Don't react. Do this at work. When you see the system you hate, and the cosigners of the system (your coworkers) dancing to the tune, just go "heh, oh, you are doing that thing", and let it pass without reacting.
And a follow up to that tip addressing the solution you proposed of finding a smaller company:
It's the same shit at smaller companies. It can be even worse. You'll just run into another egomaniac that thinks they are king shit of that small company, or will find you threatening, or whatever. Again, it happens from top to bottom, so you will see the inferiority/superiority complexes in the devs down to the fucking office secretary.
You won't be able to run from any of it.
“Where would I find enough leather To cover the entire surface of the earth? But with leather soles beneath my feet, It’s as if the whole world has been covered.” ― Shantideva
Cover your feet with foam, there isn't a company that has nice soft carpet. But, be honest with yourself. If you embark on this new attitude, you must first acknowledge all the ways you were a shithead yourself that did much of the same things.
People being arrogant or submissive is not necessarily a “complex”. Being passionate and opinionated is sometimes stated positively as “strong opinions loosely held” because it’s a demeanor that allows the best ideas to bubble up in a smart group. Under qualified people definitely find their way in everywhere but in my experience software engineering chops are orthogonal to where you went to school, bootcamp and self-taught are often just as good as CS majors from respectable schools. In short, I think your observations are accurate but your disposition and interpretation is needlessly pessimistic.
Self loathing is not an issue I have with who I am today. I absolutely hated who I was before, and get annoyed at anyone that reminds me of me from then. In other words, I have no love or empathy for that version of me.
Whether that’s healthy (it isn’t) is a whole other can of psycho mumbo jumbo.
My general abrasive disposition is something I want to work on though.
Edit:
I do think it’s worth examining the types of personalities involved because this is not as simple as saying X company has X culture and therefore people act like shitheads. I want to know more about the individual shitheads and what makes them vulnerable to this type of archetype.
And yes occasionally I would clash with a single individual out of 50 to 150 individuals. But that’s to be expected whenever you have a large group of individuals working together.
* Lots of talk about making work visible and self promotion
* Lots of advice to devs that they should promote the business value of their work, cost savings etc. (although this should have really been defined and measured by someone else..)
* Like another commenter alluded to.. I've seen people take a problem and dramatize it. Then when they complete it they bask in the glory of having completed such a challenging problem.
* Lots of politics. You could be doing great work but it doesn't matter unless <main boss> thinks you're doing great work. So in the end people spend their time on powerpoint slides instead of work.
The only difference I see is that if you don't do it.. not much will happen. You'll get an average review but you won't be looked down on or in fear of losing your job.
Same applies to job performance. You give your best, there is no 110% that's just bullshit corporate mantra. If you are confident in yourself and your abilities then your motto should be: "I give you my best, you try to push me, I show you my finger."
In fact there are some companies out there that my friends have moved to that don't have formal performance reviews like Meta etc, but rather continuous reviews that are low-stakes. They make more than I do now.
