Reviews

It is currently review time at Microsoft. We're actually at the tail end of that time because as of September 15th, if your manager hasn't given you your review, you'll find out what "your numbers" are anyway, as you'll get a paycheck that reflects the changes. The "numbers" consists of a review score, a stock award, a raise, a bonus, and perhaps a promotion. Review scores run from 2.5 to 5.0: 2.5 if you're about to be fired, 3.0 if you are considered a weak performer (although there are exceptions, like for people who just joined a team and despite HR discouragement of such a policy often get a 3.0,) 3.5 for reasonable good performance, 4.0 for great performance, and 4.5 or 5.0 if you had great performance and get lucky (or something.)

My group is running late. No one on my team knows their numbers yet, and that's kind of exasperating because we're two months into the next review cycle and don't have a clear idea of the rewards for the past review cycle. I should get mine tomorrow, though, and that will be at least one huge relief because I really don't need additional areas of uncertainty in my life right now - I have more than enough of those already.

Reviews also include a sort of essay by your manager about your performance was over the year. This may or may not correspond to the actual review score since usually your manager doesn't have any direct control over the score you get. For example, my last review reads like a 4.0 review, but I actually received a 3.5. In my experience, reviews, even good ones like my "tracking to 4.0" review mid-year (where some groups give a "tracking to" score that may or may not mean anything during the actual yearly review) are basically demoralizing. Such reviews usually include a basic statement of the good things you did, without going very deep on the subject, followed by a detailed and excruciating picking apart of what could have gone better. As such, I generally dislike the review process, despite getting continually better reviews since I started at Microsoft.

If I were to go back to my small business and have employees again, this is not how I would handle reviews. I would fall back on Peter Drucker's suggestions to keep reviews positive and save the negative stuff for coaching sessions along the way. Peter Drucker is one of the world's foremost experts on management and I trust his opinions on things of this nature.

One last thing I'll add is something Trevor said to me and others about writing reviews, gleaned from some study he's done on writing good reviews, something that makes darn good sense: "When writing a review, you should try to include words like 'expectations.' You should avoid using words like 'idiot.'"