The Performance Review
Ahhh, the performance review. So hated and so feared. Or so loved, if it goes well. Years ago, I used to be extremely anxious about this moment and tried to compensate for the stress by drowning myself in data collection. I spent nights on GitLab downloading commit and push data, checking sample cards on Jira, reviewing threads on Google Chat (the tool we used back then)... a complete mess. In the end, I was lucky. I had a very strong team. So it wasn't difficult because I had to give bad feedback. It was difficult because I was afraid of giving too little to someone who deserved more and too much to someone who deserved less. But the real problem was something else. I suffered from what's called 'absolute fairness'. That is, the idea that there must be an exact point where everyone gets exactly what they deserve. Unfortunately, absolute fairness doesn't exist. So if you act like I did, it's time to stop torturing yourself: you'll never reach that perfect po...