OMG stack ranking! I haven't heard that term in a while. I remember that working in big tech. And you're so right that our performance ends up eventually becoming a negotiation. I remember being passed up for a promotion because it just wasn't in the budget. It had nothing to do with my performance.
Stack ranking really belongs in the corporate trauma vocabulary archive.
And that promotion example is exactly what I mean. So much of what gets framed as “performance” is actually budget, politics, timing, calibration, and who is willing to advocate for you in the room.
Tomide, I so appreciate your thinking and this piece. I read this essay and then went on to begin packing my kids' lunches for the day, but the question around a piece of feedback you received that stayed with you kept bouncing around in my head. The honest answer is that there actually isn't a piece of feedback that has stayed with me...and isn't that kind of the problem? We put so much stock into performance reviews, but at the end of the day, what are we really even saying, good or bad? The fact that I'm at a loss for a piece of feedback that really left an impression among all of the pablum of performance reviews is quite telling. I have, of course, received off-the-cuff feedback at other points throughout my career that has left an impression (slow down when you talk, here's this weird thing filler sound you make when you're thinking, etc.), but all of that was outside of the construct of performance reviews.
Thanks again for this and for provoking me to think a little more deeply about, to use your words, "the absurdity of performance culture."
I think you named something important. So much performance review feedback is strangely forgettable, even when it’s positioned as this very official, career-defining thing. Meanwhile, the off-the-cuff feedback, the specific observations, the things people say when they’re actually paying attention, those are often the comments that stay with us.
Maybe that’s part of the issue. Performance reviews often try to summarize a person, while good feedback actually sees a person.
Thank you for reading and for thinking with me on this.
OMG stack ranking! I haven't heard that term in a while. I remember that working in big tech. And you're so right that our performance ends up eventually becoming a negotiation. I remember being passed up for a promotion because it just wasn't in the budget. It had nothing to do with my performance.
Stack ranking really belongs in the corporate trauma vocabulary archive.
And that promotion example is exactly what I mean. So much of what gets framed as “performance” is actually budget, politics, timing, calibration, and who is willing to advocate for you in the room.
Tomide, I so appreciate your thinking and this piece. I read this essay and then went on to begin packing my kids' lunches for the day, but the question around a piece of feedback you received that stayed with you kept bouncing around in my head. The honest answer is that there actually isn't a piece of feedback that has stayed with me...and isn't that kind of the problem? We put so much stock into performance reviews, but at the end of the day, what are we really even saying, good or bad? The fact that I'm at a loss for a piece of feedback that really left an impression among all of the pablum of performance reviews is quite telling. I have, of course, received off-the-cuff feedback at other points throughout my career that has left an impression (slow down when you talk, here's this weird thing filler sound you make when you're thinking, etc.), but all of that was outside of the construct of performance reviews.
Thanks again for this and for provoking me to think a little more deeply about, to use your words, "the absurdity of performance culture."
I think you named something important. So much performance review feedback is strangely forgettable, even when it’s positioned as this very official, career-defining thing. Meanwhile, the off-the-cuff feedback, the specific observations, the things people say when they’re actually paying attention, those are often the comments that stay with us.
Maybe that’s part of the issue. Performance reviews often try to summarize a person, while good feedback actually sees a person.
Thank you for reading and for thinking with me on this.
Hey — I came across your writing and really liked how you think.
I’m exploring something similar from a different angle — writing about human behavior through a system design lens (like debugging internal patterns).
Just started publishing on Substack. If you ever get a moment to read, I’d genuinely value your perspective.
Also happy to support your work — feels like there’s an interesting overlap here.