Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Your above average intelligence brought you here. It deserves above average absurdity. This is The Last Show with David Cooper.
Do you hate performance reviews at work as much as I do? Well, good news, in some places they're disappearing, but bad news, they're being replaced by constant feedback discussions with your boss and even AI judging you at all times. Sounds fun, sounds dystopian. Let's discuss it here with future of work correspondent at Business Insider, Tim Paradis. Tim, welcome to the show. Thanks, David.
I, every quarter as a manager, I had to write performance reviews. I don't know what was worse, going through them myself or writing them. Let's start here. Why do corporations even need these things? I feel like in small scrappy businesses, they don't even do them. But at large corporations, it's just like this slog you have to get through.
Yeah, I mean, a lot of places use them for things like deciding who gets a pay raise, who gets promotion. They want to be able to show merit.
Chapter 2: Why are companies rethinking performance reviews?
They want to be able to keep themselves from getting sued if they say, you know, so-and-so got promoted over me and I do better work. So they do want some, a lot of places do want some form of
documentation and accountability but uh they're definitely not a fun thing for either either side of the equation why do people hate them so much is it the reflection is it the feeling so exposed is it the being judged by your boss in a room alone with them with a piece of paper with bullet points about how you performed in the last quarter i'm saying all this with no experience with these i swear right why do people hate them
Chapter 3: How are constant feedback discussions changing workplace dynamics?
Well, all of the above, for sure. I think the people who get them, you know, often they come with the self-evaluation, right? Where you have to write about yourself and other things you've done well. So most people don't like talking about themselves that way. They're like, oh, I nailed this thing and I did this thing. It just feels weird, right? So it feels too self-promotional. And then...
The boss has to come in and then try to offer feedback in a way that's kind of constructive. But then some of the times they don't want to put down something that's maybe too negative because it'll be memorialized forever in this in-house review system that they're using. And so then they're always a little bit, at least oftentimes, a reticent about, you know...
gee, I don't know if I want to say that about this person. So then they kind of beat around the bush a little bit. It's just an awkward conversation from both sides, really.
My favorite technique is the sandwich when you give good feedback, bad feedback, good feedback to try to like obscure the negative stuff. There's so many weird coping mechanisms, but let's put the reality of them to date aside. How are large corporations shifting the performance review? At first, this seems like great news, like I was saying when I first introduced you.
But in reality, what they're doing instead might be worse. I don't know.
I think it's hard to say. I mean, on one hand, this isn't new. Companies have been trying to, you know, they've known for a long time that workers don't like reviews. They can take a lot of time. You know, again, there's the ick factor to it. Then there's also, you know,
This idea that they want to have regular recurring feedback, which is a good thing versus this sort of big sit down, especially now, say once a year or even twice a year, especially now in theory with business changing so rapidly.
The idea is we're going to give you a little bit of feedback, you know, as we go along so that so that this isn't really that big of a deal if we have to do once a year or that there aren't surprises because I've had that happen before. You know, where you get a review and you're like, wait, what? This is this is not good.
And that's clearly from all the management folks I talked to is like, that's a big red flag. If you've got somebody who's surprised by the review, then you're doing your job wrong.
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