This kind of thing is why I hate working for larger corporations.
There’s a tipping point where an organization grows large enough that you can no longer trust your colleagues.
It’s a weird inversion where managers advocate for employees that act favorably towards them when everyone else in the trenches know they are awful or incompetent.
I get the point that the author is making, that any given employee's work is more complex and difficult than you might guess from a short summary, but... Well, that's the case for everybody? At the end of the day the company still needs a way to judge how valuable any given employee was.
The article complains that managers end up competing on who plays the calibration game better, yet a lot of suggestions at the end boil down to "managers should play the calibration game harder".
excellent write up
advice ultimately boils down to work harder in judging talent.
everyone wants a single word answer oh sally is great, john is okay.
the truth it’s hard work to right level people.
no one gets it right.
systems get co-opted by ruthless people for personal gain.
only hard and consistent work by leadership can reduce, but not eliminate the harm
Cannot agree more. And it's also surprising how much of this information about the calibration process in its own is unknown to people in the org.
This kind of thing is why I hate working for larger corporations.
There’s a tipping point where an organization grows large enough that you can no longer trust your colleagues.
It’s a weird inversion where managers advocate for employees that act favorably towards them when everyone else in the trenches know they are awful or incompetent.
> In theory, calibration is supposed to be the sanity check that keeps us from grading on a curve, but too often it’s just performance review theater.
Performance reviews' primary value to a business is to defend against lawsuits.
“Don’t blame the players, change the game.”
I get the point that the author is making, that any given employee's work is more complex and difficult than you might guess from a short summary, but... Well, that's the case for everybody? At the end of the day the company still needs a way to judge how valuable any given employee was.
The article complains that managers end up competing on who plays the calibration game better, yet a lot of suggestions at the end boil down to "managers should play the calibration game harder".
I'm not sure there's a systemic solution to this.