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Does anybody have experience with bouncing back from a negative performance review in a software engineering job?
Just had mine recently and was somewhat surprised to receive a “Needs Improvement” rating. I can see some of my manager’s points but I mainly feel a bit blindsided because I constantly asked for feedback and only rarely received areas of improvement. He would give me certain things to improve upon, but during later check-ins he would say I’m back on track etc.
I don’t think my job is the type to treat this as a formality before being fired, but I would appreciate some advice from other mottizens who may have gone through something similar.
I do like the job and it pays well so I’m going to try my best the next few months to perform and constantly check in and be more explicit about asking things like “do you still think I’m underperforming” etc.
I am going to echo @Mantergeistmann and tell you to talk to your manager. Tell him you were surprised to see the rating, as he hadn't given you any reason to think you were underperforming. Ask him for more detailed feedback so you can improve. If the manager tries to handwave the rating away or refuses to sit down with you for a proper feedback session, go see what LinkedIn has for you. It's better to quit than to be fired without a warning.
Of course, don't actually quit. But start leetcoding/pulling on network strings, so if the axe does fall, you collect severance and quickly find somewhere else.
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I bounced back from a few mediocre performance reviews, the most effective way I've found is to switch managers and/or positions.
A lot of the performance review is going to be about how you are perceived relative to the other employees under that manager. If you are with a bunch of high performers you're screwed. If your manager just kinda doesn't get along with you as well as their other direct reports, you are also screwed. Not "screwed" as in doomed, but just that you are getting screwed over by your circumstances.
Also many tech companies do a sneaky and kind of bullshit thing where they pressure their managers to "normalize" reviews. So if a manager has 5 employees the HR department might imply something like "we expect you to have one good employee, one bad employee, and three mediocre ones." Managers can push back on this if they are competent at office politics, if they like their whole team, and they have a backbone. In the 9 managers I've had in my career I've only ever seen all three of those factors converge one time. I'd say only two of them had the political acumen + backbone combination.
My overall advice is it is a good set of habits to ask for feedback and try to improve yourself. But performance reviews are 25% about you, 50% about your team/manager circumstances, and 25% about your company.
Do what's best for yourself and try to align the 75% that's not about you to be in your favor. Try not to beat yourself up too much. If they aren't giving actionable advice on how to improve there might be nothing to improve.
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I have experience yoyo-ing with the performance level. I can attribute the negative reports to not putting in enough effort, ignoring tasks and emails, failing to show up to meetings and taking forever to finish projects. The upswings were a bit more surprising since I just felt like doing my job as I should have the entire time. I never got to the point of being put on a "performance improvement plan" which I understand is half literal and half a formality before being fired. My last review was negative but I do expect the next one to be positive again.
I should say that performance review at my company is based on (anonymized-to-me) peer feedback from fellow engineers, product managers, etc, and my direct manager only gets to deliver the news. This makes it a bit harder to be reviewed well just because you're likeable, which I'm very thankful for.
I think this is the right attitude. I would also ask peers that your trust, if they think the performance review was fair, and more generally what they think you can improve on.
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One thing to keep in mind is the review is often of your performance the entire year, not just of you as you stand today. You mentioned that your manager gave you things to improve on, you improved on them, your manager said you were good now. If that's the case, it sounds like "needs improvement" sums up the last year well.
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I'd go straight to the source and talk with your manager. Let him know how you feel: that you understand where he's coming from, but at the same time, you had the wrong impression and would have appreciated better, more timely feedback so you could correct. Every single manager I've had has been very clear: if the first time I find out my rating is "needs improvement" is at my performance review, that's a failure of theirs to communicate and help me correct it.
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