Re-evaluating the Evaluation Process

Annual performance reviews are where good intentions go to die. We've created a system so fundamentally broken that both managers and employees dread it equally. That's actually impressive - it's hard to build something that universally despised.

You know where I've seen this before? The Indian education system. We spend 12+ years training kids to crack exams, not think. Then we wonder why our workplaces are full of adults who optimize for reviews instead of results. Maybe, just maybe, there's a connection.

The Current Circus

Here's what we do now: Once a year (or if you're "progressive," twice), we sit people down and rate them on arbitrary scales. We pretend we can quantify creativity. We assign numbers to collaboration. We rank humans like we're sorting cattle.

The process usually involves:

• A self-evaluation where you either undersell yourself (imposter syndrome) or oversell yourself (survival instinct)
• A manager evaluation based on what they remember from the last two weeks
• A 360 review that's either a popularity contest or a passive-aggressive bloodbath
• A rating on a scale that nobody understands but everyone's career depends on

Then we tie it all to compensation because nothing motivates people like knowing their mortgage payment depends on whether their manager remembers that bug they fixed in February.

Why This Is Insane

Recency Bias: We evaluate a year's work based on the last month's memory. It's like judging a movie by its credits. Remember board exams? Twelve years of education judged by three hours of panic-writing. We've just renamed it "annual review."

The Bell Curve Betrayal: "We need to force-rank our people. Only 20% can be top performers!" Cool, so we're literally designing a system where 80% of people are told they're not good enough? That's not math, that's morale assassination. It's the same energy as "Only top 1% will get into IIT" (India's most prestigious engineering colleges). We're creating artificial scarcity of success.

The Measurement Problem: We measure what's easy, not what matters. Lines of code? Tickets closed? Hours logged? Congratulations, you've incentivized busy work over breakthrough thinking. Just like how we measure students by marks scored, not concepts understood. 100% in Physics? Great! Can you actually build anything? Who cares!

The Feedback Famine: We save feedback for special occasions, like it's fine wine. Meanwhile, people are wandering in the dark for 11 months, hoping they're doing the right thing. Sound familiar? Study all year, get your marksheet, realize you've been doing it wrong. Rinse, repeat.

The Education System Echo

The Indian workplace evaluation system is just school with paychecks. Think about it:

• Annual exams became annual reviews
• Percentage scores became performance ratings
• Rank in class became stack ranking
• Rote learning became process compliance
• Coaching classes became "interview prep"

We graduated from memorizing formulas to memorizing STAR interview responses. Progress!

The same kids who spent nights memorizing answers are now adults memorizing KPIs. The same parents who asked "Sharma ji ke bete ko kitne mile?" (How much did Sharma's son score?) are now managers asking "What percentile are you in?"

We imported the worst parts of our education system into our workplaces and act surprised when innovation dies.

The Purge List

Things that need to die:

Annual Anything: A year is too long. In tech, that's like three lifetimes. Projects change, priorities shift, entire companies pivot. But sure, let's evaluate based on goals set when we thought NFTs were the future.

Forced Rankings: Stack ranking is social Darwinism with spreadsheets. Microsoft killed it after it nearly killed them. Let's learn from history.

Numerical Ratings: "You're a 3.7 out of 5." What does that even mean? Am I a hotel? Am I being reviewed on Yelp? Stop reducing humans to decimal points.

Surprise Feedback: "By the way, that thing you did six months ago? It was wrong." Thanks, that's super helpful now that the project's shipped and the team's disbanded.

The Good Stuff We're Missing

Continuous Conversations: Imagine if feedback was like breathing - constant, natural, necessary. Not a special event requiring calendar invites and HR forms.

Growth Focus: Instead of judging past performance, what if we focused on future potential? Less "you failed" and more "here's how you level up."

Context Awareness: Different roles need different evaluation methods. Judging a researcher by the same metrics as a salesperson is like comparing fish by their tree-climbing ability.

Team Success Metrics: We worship individual performance while preaching collaboration. Pick a lane. Better yet, pick the collaboration lane.

How to Actually Fix This Mess

Weekly 1:1s That Matter: Not status updates. Real conversations about growth, blockers, and aspirations. Make them sacred. Cancel other meetings, not these.

Project-Based Retrospectives: Evaluate after something meaningful ends, not after the Earth orbits the sun. "How did this project go?" is more useful than "How was your year?"

Peer Recognition Systems: Let people highlight each other's wins in real-time. Not forced, not structured, just "Hey, Sarah killed it on that migration" when Sarah actually kills it.

Skills Matrices Over Ratings: Map what people can do, want to do, and need to learn. It's actionable, not judgmental. "You need to learn GraphQL" beats "You're a 3."

Compensation Decoupling: Separate pay discussions from performance discussions. Money makes everything weird. Let's talk about growth without the salary sword hanging over everyone's head.

The Implementation Revolution

Start small. Pick a team. Kill their annual reviews. Try:

• Monthly growth conversations (30 minutes, max)
• Quarterly skill assessments (collaborative, not judgmental)
• Real-time feedback culture (normalize giving and receiving)
• Team OKRs over individual KPIs

Document what works. Share the results. Let success spread organically. Revolution through evolution.

Society If We Actually Did This

Imagine workplaces where:

• People know where they stand daily, not annually
• Feedback is help, not judgment
• Growth is continuous, not episodic
• Managers are coaches, not judges
• Teams collaborate instead of compete

Now imagine schools where:

• Students learn concepts, not just crack exams
• Teachers guide discovery, not force memorization
• Assessment is continuous, not concentrated in March
• Understanding matters more than marks
• Collaboration beats competition

See the pattern? Fix evaluation, fix everything.

Productivity would increase because people would focus on work, not politics. Innovation would flourish because people wouldn't fear failure in February affecting their December review. Mental health would improve because we'd remove the sword of Damocles hanging over everyone's head.

We'd stop producing generations trained to game systems and start developing people who solve problems. The kid who understands physics might actually build something instead of just scoring 100/100. The developer who experiments might create breakthroughs instead of just closing tickets.

Companies would keep good people because good people stay where they grow. Bad performers would improve faster with continuous feedback or self-select out rather than hide until review season.

The Real Truth

We cling to annual reviews because we're scared of continuous honesty. It's easier to save difficult conversations for special occasions. It's safer to hide behind process and forms.

But easy and safe got us here - to a place where everyone hates the system but nobody changes it because "that's how it's done."

Just like we cling to board exams (nationwide standardized tests) because we're scared of trusting teachers to evaluate students. Just like we cling to JEE (Joint Entrance Examination for engineering colleges) because we're scared of looking at students holistically. We've been trained from childhood that evaluation must be painful, periodic, and punitive.

You know what's really hard? Looking someone in the eye weekly and helping them grow. You know what's really risky? Trusting people to improve without threatening their livelihood.

But you know what actually works? Treating people like humans who want to grow rather than resources to be optimized. Whether they're 16 and studying for boards or 36 and working for promotions.

The evaluation process doesn't need tweaking. It needs a viking funeral. Let's light it on fire, push it out to sea, and build something that actually helps people instead of just measuring them.

We need to break the chain. Stop importing academic trauma into professional life. Stop treating adults like students and students like exam-taking machines.

Because if we're going to spend time evaluating, it should make people better, not just make them nervous.

Revolutionary idea, I know. But then again, in a country where we've perfected the art of teaching to the test, maybe actually teaching might be the most radical act of all.