Developers don’t need performance reviews
Why do we spend so much time on a process nobody wants? If you’re doing it right, the performance review process should be unnecessary.
This article was originally published in Infoworld, and can be read it it’s entirety here.
I’ve never been a big fan of annual performance reviews. Frankly, I think they ought to be utterly unnecessary. No one enjoys the process. I’m at a loss why a company would spend all those person-hours on a process that no one really wants.
Any competent manager should be meeting regularly with all of her direct reports, and should make sure that each employee knows clearly where they stand and how they are performing. Continuous and timely feedback is vastly superior to annual reviews. If a manager provides continuous and timely feedback, then the performance review process should be a complete waste of time.
Companies should foster a culture in which the standing and progress of every employee are transparent, making performance reviews an unnecessary exercise in redundancy. Managers who have direct reports who are not totally clear about where they stand should themselves be told that they are not performing up to snuff.
