3 working weeks ago I had my annual performance review on a Thursday. The Thursday after (last week) the company had its quarterly in-person all-hands meeting. In the week just past, all of my attention has almost entirely been focused upon the fallout of others’ annual performance reviews. And so, with everything that has gone on, I find myself reflecting back upon my own performance review and what went so terribly wrong.

Upon joining the remote call, there were a few moments of small talk before a 2-page PDF was presented to me.

It is surprisingly unnerving to have 700 words be thrown at you for your review and consideration whilst someone watches you expectantly. Let alone try to retain crucial talking points and moderate your emotions - so as not to come across as some irrationally angry, self-absorbed type that cannot take the smallest piece of criticism.

I typically find feedback to broadly fall into one of three categories.

(1) Stuff that you agree with so completely that it borders on the obvious (2) Stuff that is objectively wrong

and

(3) Stuff that makes you pause for thought

The trick is trying to identify the stuff that feels objectively wrong, but might actually have merit, and should be reflected further upon. Trying to see your own blindspots, is obviously quite challenging - but that’s likely where the real growth comes from.

Immediately, I took significant issue with the fact that the language throughout was that meek mannered - sanitized to the point of sterile - that can only be achieved through ChatGPT. Over the last decade or so, I have become better at calibrating to the North American sensibilities of feedback where anything even vaguely approaching criticism must be sandwiched between two points of high praise. The dancing around a issue, and shadow language, used to not possibly offend. But this, this prickled my bullshit detector of obviously not written by a human.

Further, the suggested points for improvement felt notoriously - nothing.

Sort of worse than nothing. Pleasantries and platitudes more akin to that of a self-help seminar involving a lot of crystals.

Improved communication

I distinctly recall being encouraged to create “circles of trust” with “inclusive communication”. Gross.

Then there a few points, where I specifically asked for examples because I didn’t understand the feedback. This resulted in a “Oh! Let me check my notes, errrr…” and eventually a bit of a wet duck example, or an example that was so obvious circumstantial that it didn’t make much sense.

Back channeling

For instance, this year there was one particular crunch period where a client was at the point of threatening to sue us for breach of contract (but that’s a whole different story). Leadership on my side had to be talked out of cutting a multi-million dollar cheque to make the problem just go away.

It was at this time that my project manager and client liaison just decided to go AWOL, leaving me to largely fight for myself and organize the team.

During this period, I took to the habit of sending a twice or thrice weekly email to the leadership team with a few bullets highlighting how the situation was evolving. Given that this was my view of the situation, and some of the reports involved obvious performance issues and challenges of an absent project manager - said project manager wasn’t CC’ed into the email thread.

Apparently, this made some of the leadership team feel awkward - and they couldn’t understand why the usual communication channels weren’t being used. Why wasn’t the project manager involved? Obviously, the answer, is that I’m a political operator seeking personal advantage.

The raging inner monolog, at this point was already screaming “FINE! Next time I won’t give you any heads up about the impending lawsuit”

Priorities

Similarly, around the start of the year, due to a series of unfortunate events the golden rule that team leads are only staffed on a single project had hilariously broken down to the point where I was running FOUR.

Apparently, given the circumstances, some of the project managers weren’t entirely sure as to where my focus was on any given week or two-week sprint. Yeah! No shit. I didn’t know what I was going to be doing that day when I opened my laptop at 9 AM. What was going to be the most on fire that day?

Now that the anger has faded on that point - I can understand and take the point. If I was that crazy, then trying to schedule anything around me would’ve been a nightmare. And I’m not even sure if those comments were entirely given as criticism or rather as just a response to something akin to “If you had to say one thing that he could improve upon?”

Promotion

Given my decidedly average year (I only delivered two of the most challenging clients that no one else wanted to touch, with a total contract value that paid for half the salaries in the company), I was told that I wouldn’t be getting that promotion.

No big surprise there. Expected even at this point.

I mean, I keep being told that titles are meaningless and not attached to compensation.

I was reminded that we don’t do mid-cycle promotions (except when we do), and then skipped straight to “Wellll… maybe next year”.

Which means, definitely not next year.

Okay. Great. Fine.

I’m fine. Honestly. Fine.

Never mind the fact that I turned down a job for more money and less headaches back in December based upon the council that I’d be foolish not to hang around and grab the title in 6 months.

“Stay a year and leave with the title on the résumé” they said! “They’d be stupid not to give it to you” they said!

So for my own personal target setting then, what exactly is the acceptance criteria that I need to fulfill to actually qualify for that Director title I’ve been chasing?

“Oh! Well that’s easy” I’m told, as we stall for time.

We’d need unanimous and enthusiastic support from all the VPs and the CEO.

“Oh great!” thinks I, “I only need to get the unanimous support of 9 people that never agree about anything.”

For me, it reeks of having made a decision and then desperately scrambling for reasons to back it up. I don’t know why I’m surprised it’s almost word-for-word the same excuse I was given last year. Why should it be any different this year? My acceptance criteria are a bunch of undefined, nebulous features defined by a cohort. Not some tangible or measurable quantity.

The future

In perhaps the biggest sting of the whole interaction, I’m then proceeded to be told that my future lies “outside of the engineering organization” - whatever the hell that means.

If I am generous, it sounds like my progression within the organization is increasingly dependent upon being useful to other departments, whether that is further up the sales funnel, marketing or some as-yet-to-be-defined product strategy and development.

I’m told that I should establish for myself a 3, 6, 9, 12, 36 month career development plan, to be shared with my line manager.

In of itself, it sounds mostly harmless. Perhaps even strategic. But am I given a template? Am I given any support? Am I given an example of a good career plan? Or even where to find resources on how to form a good one? No. As per usual with this organization and laissez faire management style, I’ll just do all of the heavy lifting myself, and if it works out, then it will become the template for all others into the future. If it doesn’t work out, then that’s obviously my failure. But the reality is, they know, I know, everyone knows, it’s something written as an action item for the report, knowing that no one will ever mention it again… until the next performance review.

Compensation

With the bulk of the time we have scheduled together passed, the time has come to discuss compensation.

Now, to be fair, at this point in time I have absolutely no envy for the other side of the table. Compensation conversations are a tightrope walk. There’s a promise of an excellent outcome on the other side, but the reality is that it is a perilous walk, and there’s no clear strategy that could yield any better outcome.

My own feelings on compensation are complicated. During my years as an academic, I signed multi-year contracts for barely-cost-of-living amounts. My PhD was a fixed month rate, every month for four years.

Similarly, in my first position in Canada, I was working for a cancer charity where my salary was approximately half market rate. The people that worked there did so out of love or desperation. A love for science. A love for someone passed. Or desperation in the job market. The idea of an increased pay cheque there was laughable. Heck, even when I got promoted to team lead, it was worth 21 cents an hour (before tax).

So then, to say that my own personal history is… complex.

However, when I look around at the disparate data points that I do have. The company added 50 people to headcount in the last year - a growth of 50%. We have more contracts than ever, and all of the contracts that we do have seem to be renewing. The CEO got up at the Xmas party and said that it was our most profitable year yet - we even have nearly $100M in cash (allegedly) from a government innovation fund just sat there waiting to be invested.

All of that being said, I didn’t have high expectations.

I know from my own position in minor-league leadership, that the founder’s favourite consulting company had passed along a report saying that inflation was in the low 2% range this year.

Where that 2% number comes from is anyone’s guess. The official StatsCan number from the government says it’s 4%. A government bond, on federal debt is over 5%. Meanwhile the government official CPI numbers say things like fresh fruit and vegetables went up 3.5% THIS MONTH. Housing is up 9% on the year (but that’s nationally, so assume that city prices are much, much more).

As a father with a family, the number that matters to me is simple and obvious. 2 years ago, a weekly shop at Costco cost me $400. Now I can’t walk in there without spending more than $600. This week it was $750. Was there a little lifestyle creep in that time, perhaps, but not that much.

Anyway, returning from that tangent, given the two point something official report on inflation, the boss in their infinity wisdom and generosity gave each department head 3.5% to play with. How that money was divvied up between pay equalization, promotions and general increases was up to each VP.

Meaning that for each person getting a 4% increase to “catch up”, there’s someone tenured getting 3%.

In my case, due to my senior position, and relative higher starting point, I was thrown a low 2% number or in absolute terms ~$4000.

Quick math, tax man takes half, so I “see” $2000. Divided by 26 pay cycles is a little over $75 per pay cheque. So every pay cheque isn’t even worth a Dominos pizza for the family.

In a word. Laughable.

No scratch that. Offensive. I’d actually prefer to receive nothing. If the messaging was clear, and the message from up-high was “sorry boys, times are tight and we need to save every penny” then I’d get it. I’d happily accept no change.

But to get a 2% cost of living adjustment, when we increased prices to our clients 15% - because, “inflation” - just feels like gaslighting. Plain and simple.

Leaving the call

I left my performance review pissed off and under-appreciated. Yes platitudes had been said “we really love having you here”. But they rang hollow.

In the last year, I’ve had an existential crisis, run away, questioned my marriage, stopped speaking to parents and had two kids labelled as disabled. All the while dropping nothing at work. Not just dropping nothing. Taking more on. Taking 4 projects on. Stopped us getting sued. And delivered $13 million dollars of contracts.

All of this, and I’m told that I did an average job. I “met expectations”. Fuck. You.

You don’t even have the decency to skip ChatGPT and write me a performance review.

I was pissed.

Reflecting back on it now, I still am.

The aftermath

I fumed the rest of the day and unproductively wallowed in my anger. I didn’t work the Friday. I skipped it. Instead I took a long weekend away with the family to try and regroup the week after. To come back and decide what I was going to do.

The Tuesday of my return, I was stoned-faced and sullen. I had nothing to say.

In the engineering leadership call, I sat there, uncharacteristically silent. Starring daggers and quietly raging.

The all-hands

Roll on Thursday and the all-hands meeting. During the course of the meeting several promotions were announced, of which, one of the folks that made director last year, became a senior director - a newly minted title, and a slap in the face to all the excuses I had for the denial of promotion last year about “time in position” and “setting precedents”.

However, the real enlightening moment of the meeting was when, for the first time, we had real numbers put on a slide to describe the finances of the company.

In the last financial, the company had made $30M in revenue to $20M in expenses. A profit (in a non-profit organization) of $10M.

In a highly educated audience, full of mathematicians with postgraduate degrees the mood notably chilled as 100 employees collectively did the math on how their bonus compared to ten million divided by one hundred.

There was some mumbling about needing to build a “rainy day fund” (ignoring the huge cash stockpile previously accrued) and then an attempt to simultaneously reiterate that it was a record breaking year, we’re very profitable, and yet we can’t afford to make any meaningful adjustments.

Needless-to-say, that day I was asked, independently, by four different folks if I would be a reference.