I understand your frustration. MRX ratings can be flawed. They often lack actionable insights and anonymity can lead to unhelpful comments. Effective communication within teams is crucial for genuine feedback.

Exactly. I don't know why companies still use vague instruments?

Software Architect

I feel MRX ratings hold no value and should not be barometer for a manager's performance.  1. It doesn't provide any actionable insights to a manager.  2. The layer of anonymity is a double edged s...

Welcome to Software Engineers's Private Community

I feel MRX ratings hold no value and should not be barometer for a manager's performance. 
1. It doesn't provide any actionable insights to a manager.

2. The layer of anonymity is a double edged sword. People can write anything without giving any actual thought defeating the whole purpose of this exercise.

3. If the team members are not calling anything out in their 1-1 discussions and only highlighting in MRX feedback. It shows bad communication on part of the to team rather than the manager.

What are your thoughts?

MRX ratings are shit

MRX ratings are shit- Grapevine

Welcome to Office Gossip's Private Community

Name 5 things which is the worst about corporate culture nowdays and needs a revolutionary change?
I think about below what are your thoughts ?

1. HR Roles and responsibilities are of not much use to employees and needs to revamped
2. Financial numbers are not transparent 
3. Performance ratings and promotions are mostly biased . There is nothing professional, it’s all personal.
4. Projects are running without any management 
5. There are no leaders in actual. One who try to become are killed by manager mentality’s.

White Collar Black Sleeves

Founder

Just wondering if the things we write in bi-annual or annual review against objectives or in general - is read by anyone? I have been told in the past that no one bothers reading it as long as manager is clear about your work. Maybe if you’re up for promotion then it’s possible that the things u wrote are read. Although peer feedback + manager feedback (verbal) takes more precedence. 

So is this writing down just part of evidence collection?

Does anyone even read what we write in performance review?

Software Engineer

In the recent performance review, shitty manager gave bad review.  Though worked very hard the last whole year. Brought this to skips  notice, but he's not ready to hear what I have to say, just speaks what  manager has to say ( probably not to hamper his relationship with the  manager). This manager is very careless and has no idea what's going on  in the team.. Other colleagues who did less than equal to work as mine  got better rating than me due to their manager being good.   

Lost all hope and motivation to work. What should I do?? If I quit  now the market conditions are too bad. Did not learn anything much in  this shit company..   

Looking for advice..

Bad rating inspite of doing good work. Next steps?

Software Developer

Welcome to Indian Startups's Private Community

The job market has not been good for the last 12-15 months, but organisations around are offering good severance to their employees and aiding them for their next steps. But UC conducts "performance reviews" twice a year, which is basically a platform for managers to wage a personal vendetta against the "low performers"(read: people who don't suck up to them). And hence, they strategically 'ask people to leave', in return of making sure that terms like 'fired', 'laid off' would not be associated with them. So, people put in their papers, and serve the one month notice without working, and get that salary as their 'severance'. 

Leadership team goes on to boast the fact that there hasn't been any layoffs in the company. Well, fair, because one needs to own the fact that they've laid people off, and funnily enough one of the UC values is 'ownership', and managers do OWN the indifference to the sudden absence of a certain team member from meetings. 

Apparently, people perform fine till the time these half yearly reviews are conducted, because there isn't any concern about their performances in the regular one-on-ones with the managers, but cometh the review, cometh the concerns with performance. Managers nit pick over employees not responding within 15 minutes to their messages. Also, there isn't a 360° view of performance, so your peers, who work much closer to you don't have a say in your performance.

UC brags a 'meritocratic' culture, and rightly so, where ones merit is their ability to show their work as 10x of what it actually is, appearing to be busy with a completely packed calendar, and always saying yes to whatever manager says, even if it means bending over backwards for them. 

<Continued in comments>

Urban Company - A spineless org with hypocrite leadership & incompetent middle management

I don’t know who needs to hear it, but do not blindly trust good glassdoor/ambitionbox/others ratings. In this bad market every company is working well below what their  rating portrays. Now it could be 5/5 in one team but 2/5 in another in general sense. However, now the top to bottom trickle of pressure, politics and such is ensuing. You might think you’re seeing good people in ur next job, reviews are mostly good, work/role looks fine and jump into the company - only to realise that soon good people are being removed or they’re moving.

See if u are not able to get honest feedback from someone in the company or ur new team before u join - be prepared for harsher reality. Like Swiggy was really good 1 year back or more but no longer. So it’s in ur best interest to get the current ground reality before joining somewhere in this economic condition.

PSA: Do not join company based on too good Glassdoor rating

Glassdoor really isn’t a trustworthy platform. Think of it in this way, not many people would post good reviews about anything, be it a product, a service, or a company. Always check the negative reviews, understand whether they sound legit (the legit ones are usually well explained), and speak to ex employees of that organisation/team.  
  
 Also, most good reviews are fake and written by the HR Team. Two of my previous employers used to do it.

Growth And Strategy

Almost 50% of the org got no increments
People with "exceeds" rating got single digit increments
Only promotion cases have got early to mid double digit increments
Promotions have been significantly fewer this time, max people have been told to hold off their expectations of promotions for another year

The reasons cited were economic slowdown, other companies like Microsoft, Flipkart, swiggy, Amazon doing the same and cost cutting. I think things are getting toxic and the majority of employees have been left disappointed.

Razorpay increments - sad state

Somehow in india all the product startup’s have adopted the most toxic and worst translation of what it’s being like as a product manager and engineering management. Both these roles have become nothing but fear mongering, power grab, and most being extremely bias towards almost everything. 

So your success is very much dependent on how your manager is and the opportunity that they provide. So if you want to avoid toxicity sooner, it’s the right step rather than stick and fail in the long term. Once again, I am talking based off of my 10 yoe. You may have a different experience and I’d definitely wanna learn more.

Toxic Leadership in Engineering and Product

Engineering management is pure dumb in India for US product companies. Non contributing managers and directors who won't even pass design interviews. These are parasites who'll latch on new host, one of the reasons keeping India down and also talent leaving

Housing.com (REA India) ranked 3rd in the GPTW survey this year. They provide several awesome perks like, laying off without any notice, fucking their reviews just so that they could justify the lay offs, and threatening actions if anything came out on social media. 

10-15% of the whole tech team was laid off (mostly freshers) apparently on the basis of low performance.  It was all carried out by the higher management, not even the managers had any clue about the lay off happening. 

The performance rating was rigged by the higher management who had no interaction with the tech people. They had this awesome idea of getting reviewed by people who we had never interacted with. Managers were merely bystanders who had no say in the performance review whatsoever. 


PS: A note for the management -->
Housing.com would be an employee friendly company only if you guys would give two fucks about employees, instead of Caring so much about the GPTW ranking like conducting hands on sessions and literally forcing people to put in good rating.

Mass Lay-offs at housing.com (REA India)

The rigged performance rating and the secrecy is so true. I got to know about my colleague getting fired when I opened his slack which was deactivated. Upon calling, he said it was all done in 5 mins, Forceful resignation, No Severance and was asked to post nothing on social media.  
  
 From my team alone 2 people have been laid off both freshers.

Thought I will make this revelation. Smart Managers deliberately continue to keep ordinary people in their team and these people are given a decent hike too so that they can stay in the company until there is a layoff scenario. This generally happens with product based companies that undergo periodic layoffs regardless of economic slowdown.

So if you are an ordinary employee & continue to get encouraging feedback from your manager plus a decent hike every year, beware! This might be a smart-trap laid by your manager.

Managers deliberately keep non performing employees to use them in a layoff scenario.

1. You joined the corporate world 
2. you realised you need to work hard to make more money
3. you became a high performer
4. You 'exceed expectations' during appraisal
5. Yet didn't get a good hike 
6. You changed the company to make good money 
7. Now you are a high performer who makes good money 
8. You are now fired in the next round of layoff cz you make good money and the company needs to cut the costs
9. Now you are confused if you should be working hard to be a good performer or not

Layoff cycle

Product Manager

People in my organization recently went through performance appraisal and like every time, the manager does not reveal employees’ rating. This is most likely a scam as the employees are rated and the ratings are recorded in the system but not revealed. Is it how we have in other organizations? Add your comments.

Ratings not revealed during appraisal. A scam?

Not trying to be a critic here, nor trying to tarnish the reputation. But just wondering why does employee friendly policies like these change so quickly?

Do investors and leaders get FOMO? Hey Amazon has called everyone to office so let's do it too. Or does the Work from anywhere policy was temporarily to attract good talent?

FYI, this remote policy was scrapped within 1 year of implementing it.

Meesho 2022 vs 2024

Analyst

Need help with the office situation.

Our team recently(10 months back) onboarded a new Engineering Manager. Initially he showed some red flags but the team decided to give him some time to settle in the role. Now he is making life hard for junior employees. He doesn’t have enough insights around the product and keeps on fighting with the employees and keeps updating the leaders around the resistance being faced from the team. 
I am pretty sure he is working on this philosophy that just make old employees helpless enough so that they leave and he gets to be the new king of the team. Currently he struggles to get respect from the current team.
Any help around how this situation can be remedied?

He has built good repo with the VP and director. The leadership doesn’t seem to care for what’s happening at the ground level.

Tried providing feedback via anonymous channels, now the VP is setting up one on ones with each member and just bullying around what’s the problem. If you mention anything then it will be established as your problem otherwise if you don’t share anything, it would be asked why such negative feedback

New EM making old employees life hard

Managers and above are in this platform to keep an tab on the trend, SDE 0-4 are here venting out pros and cons about the company, work and what not. All these while these pricks in lower/middle/upper management are getting the data

Its all a sham

Computer Operator

As the title suggests, does it make sense to talk about a colleagues’s inability to deliver to my manager. The colleague’s incompetence to take ownership is very evident now to everyone and the manager is not taking any steps on it. Others have to basically cleanup and babysit him. Worse part, this colleague gets paid the highest in the team. At this point it’s just breeding resentment across the team. How to handle this situation? Any tips. Early stage startup, the manager is part of the founding team.

Should you confront your manager about a colleague’s incompetence?

Do not get involved. Try to minimise your own additional work due to that colleague. In one-to-one meeting with manager, let the manager know. Use the words: I just wanted to bring your attention to one more matter. Then describe the challenges that you face. Not your team. Do not gang up, do not conspire or collaborate. Do not mention about how other colleagues feel the same way. If your manager takes a negative opinion of these activity, you'll be fucked, because such a thing would create a negative impression. If the manager is not inclined to go by your judgement of your colleague's competence, you'll lose face. But it's much easier to control the narrative and restore your manager's confidence in you in a one-on-one conversation, than when it's a group mutiny. No matter what others tell you, do not get encouraged. People often sound like they're with you, but they often are not. They won't back their statements, and you'll be alone holding the bag. And moreover, if you stay out of it, you'll be able to carry the high ground of being above the fray, out of politics, and being balanced. Don't do netagiri of this sort. Conserve it for initiatives for which getting consensus is harder. It might be possible that you're the only one feeling so strongly about it. Then you may be in need of a weekend, or someone to vent to, or even therapy. But get your hate in check.

Generalist

I recently started a new job. I would like to share some of the experiences I have had with my manager. I am wondering if these are red flags or if I am maybe being paranoid or thinking too much.

It was quite difficult for me to get into this company and this job. The company is quite great and I was quite excited but some of the experiences I have had with my immediate manager have made me a bit apprehensive.
I would like to share them and hear opinions about it.

Here are some things which have happened which I have not liked so far - 

1. I speak to a Senior Engineer one day and next day my manager asks me if anyone asked me to speak to him. 
2. I shared an insight about a new tool which we can use on a deployment pipeline on the overall pod (under my skip manager). My manager immediately called me and started asking my status update and replied 'Discussing 1-1' in the group to prevent anyone getting visibility of the idea. 
3. My manager pings me whenever I go offline and recently he asked me in a passive aggressive way, 'Please monitor your Teams status. It was away for most of today.' I now feel kind of paranoid to never get up as I feel my Teams status is being monitored.

Is my manager too much of a micromanaging red flag ? I started a new job and my manager monitors my Teams online status.

Yes this is straight up micromanagement and insecurity. 
  
 Just stand up to him man. The more of such things you allow him to do, the more courage he will get and more he will fuck your life.  
  
 Just stand your ground for a few times and he'll understand that you are not the guy he can do this to.

MRX ratings are shit

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