Performance ReviewFollow

No pun intended I'm sure...

Laddering is a poor review method but at least your company HAS a method. Mine really doesn't, though I have managed to identify a pattern and take advantage of it.

Reverse schmoozing is the ticket. I don't tell anyone to p1ss off but I have better things to do than to socialize with the big boys and I let them know it. Thus far it appears to be paying off; time will tell.

Pat, I do hope the old chap gives you excellent reasons why you are unpromotable. Hmmm, rephrase time.

Pat, I do hope the old chap can't give you any reasons why you are unpromotable and bumps you a few rungs.

Better.

This is based on the assumption that budgets shouldn't go up if profits do. The fact of the matter is that profit is very directly connected to employee performance.

Better performance means that everyone should prosper, not just the people who decide which 4% get to keep their genius rating. If 100% of their employees actually EARN genius ratings in their performance, then that's how everything should shake out. If it doesn't, I suggest that the people running the show should be replaced because they aren't performing up to par themselves.

Give me that many genius performers and I'll turn enough extra profit to give them all raises and have more profit left over in the end than I would with a bunch of mid-level performers.

Fixeded.

Huh? No. It's not based on that assumption at all. You're assuming it is. Not me.

Budgets are set each year based on the projected profits of the business. During "good years", raises, bonuses, and promotions occur much more frequently then during "bad years".

The pool they have to work with comes from that budget. It'll be larger if they had a good year (ok. if the projections say they'll have a good year, which is based on the previous few years, but you get the point). Regardless of the size of the pool, they have to divvy it up. Some people will get raises, some wont. Some will get promotions. Some wont. That's the way it works.



Again though. If your budget for this year says that only 4% of the workforce can recieve promotions, then that's the percent that can recieve promotions, no matter how well they did. Hopefully, if you've got fair management, that 4% will actually be the top performers for the review period.

You are assuming that the 4% figure never changes over time based on the performance (profits) of the business as a whole. You're assuming it's an "unfair" percentage. But there's no evidence to support that assumption. 4% may be exactly the right percentage for this company based on their average profit rate over time. You don't know differently, so automatically assuming that someone's being screwed is an unfair assumption.



Ok. But you haven't shown that this is the case here. You don't know the makup of the laddering done in Pat's company. You also very obviously have *never* been involved in a budget or review process at a large company. Performance inflation is a common problem in a business. No manager wants to report that his team all performed poorly, right? That reflects poorly on him. The natural result of this is that performance as it's reported by each group inevitably ends up appearing higher on paper then it actually is.

What's funny is that you seem to make the connection between high performance employees and company profits, but seem to completely miss that it works the other way as well. If your profits aren't any higher this year then last year, then you can't justify increasing the rates of raises and promotions no matter how high the performance reviews appear on paper. Clearly, the reports are higher then the actual performance, right? The "real" profitability of the business is the ultimate determinant of how well you're doing. You can't ignore that.


That's not to say that in this particular case Pat *didn't* get screwed over. It's entirely possible for a business to do very well but decide not to reward its employees. It's also entirely possible for a business to do poorly in terms of profits despite very high performance by the employees (bad decisions high up, or just a bad market). But you can't assume from this one case that the method of budgeting raises and promotions based on pools of available funds is "wrong" or "unfair". That's the way pretty much every business in the world does it. Heck. That's the only sane way to do it. You absolutely can't give people raises that you can't afford to pay them. Budgeting those things is pretty much a requirement if you don't want your business to go bankrupt.

Sorry Gbaji, but I'm calling ********* What you say would be true perhaps if trickle down economics were more than a fantasy.

In many companies, raises and bonuses occur once per year, regardless of how well or poorly business has been or is projected to be. The size of the raises is often rather static also. At least that's what I have been repeatedly reading for the past 8 years or so.

What goes up is not the salaries and promotional opportunities for the work force, but the size of the compensation packages of the highest level executives.

Gbaji, as I said "I call bulls[/b]hit". Just as my experiences bear out what I say to be true and typical of the industry in which I work, perhaps (only perhaps) your experiences are true for you.

They are not true for the entire work force.

Gbaji wrote:

Or just assume it doesn't happen because you've heard from a bunch of anti-business people that it doesn't?

So you've made the assumption that I am not part of the work force and thus have no experience or contact with others also in the work force? You're the one making assumptions, and the ones you're making are wrong.

Yes, I work for a large company. I've always worked for large companies. Perhaps small companies are more generous.

Gbaji wrote:

C'mon. I can directly link the relative size of every raise and bonus I've gotten to the relative performance of the company I work for. Always have.

Lucky you. Too bad all people don't work for the companies you've worked for and share your experiences.

Incorrect again. Good heavens, this could become a habit! In the mortgage banking industry (where I spend my days) pay absolutely does not go up commensurate with the profits. We're making record breaking profits and have been for years, yet the raises, across the board and fairly industry wide are stagnant. Except, of course, for the executive compensation packages, which are staggeringly generous.
Oh isn't that cute? You have nothing left so you're resorting to personal insults? Tisk tisk. You assume that I wasn't one of the people who got one of the "generous" raises and bonuses in the department. I assure you, I did, and it was small. I also know what kind of raises my associates received, the ones who got good reviews and mediocre ones. It's typical for this industry to ignore past or projected profits at raise time. The excuse is usually that the company had so many expenses (like stock options for the executives?) that there simply wasn't much money available for raises.

Edited, Thu Aug 18 01:14:14 2005 by Yanari

Sounds to me like you got screwed for working on only a couple of big projects instead of multiple little project and therefore got laddered down by the people who did not know you. I wish you good luck, feel bad that you will have to break you *** for another year in order to have another shot at this promotion.

I say send out your resume you will probably get a salary jump by switching to a new firm.

Pat

It's a game.

It has rules.

You lost.

Shi[i][/i]tter ain't it.

That was a little wordy, wasn't it?