Performance Reviews in Tech with Rustam Alashrafov & Jethro Sloan

Hi everyone. My name is Patrick Ochio, and if you're interested in performance reviews, this episode is for you. We share stories on what we've seen, discuss the pros and cons, and ID 8 on the most perfect system we can think of. Joining me today, Friends of the show, Jethro and Rustom. They're the perfect people to have this discussion with, so enjoy. Yeah. One of the things I was thinking

of lately, and it's also been a discussion within our team calls, it's performance reviews. And when you're talking about, let's say that diverse team where you need to accommodate for people's different backgrounds and accommodate for that diversity in there, is there then a way in which you've seen performance reviews done well?

Because for me, any type of system in performance reviews, I've always seen the upside and the downside, but people usually just don't look at the downsides and say this is the system we've always had, so this is the system we're going to go with. What have you seen kind of work well in performance reviews when it comes to systematic implementations? Yeah, that's a very good question.

So in my experience, what works well is having more conversations with your team, with the with the people in your team. Because with the traditional kind of performance review, when we have performance review once a year, when we gather all the data right throughout the year, get some feedback at the end of the year, maybe, hey, how did it go with this client or how did it go on this project?

You gather all of this and then you assess it, right, To give a review of the performance that's too late. That's the same as when we talk about giving feedback to people, right? If there is behaviour we need to change, the feedback needs to be timely. It shouldn't come three months or six months later after the things have happened. So I see that what works very well is having those performance review much more often, right? We are in consultancy, so we usually work project based.

So in my opinion that for us we need to at least have performance reviews, let's say after every client work, right. And if of course their client work is longer than half a year or a year, then of course we need to implement that. There's some performance U happening in between. So we, I worked at Deloitte previously and that's where we had quarterly reviews. And those quarterly reviews actually helped a bit with with this process.

They were, they're fixed to certain dates, which I was not a big fan of because sometimes you, yeah, let's say in April you have a performance review, but you just started the project in the April. What are you going to discuss? Because you were on the bench maybe for three months, right? And that's not great. But maybe having a bit more floating reviews would be better. It was already a good step forward to have them four times

a year rather than once. But having that good, better timing would be even a step further. Yeah. But four times a year, with regards to, let's say, management and having that overview, gathering all the feedback and then actually making decisions, would people actually see change in their salary or what they would earn in those quarters? Could you see four changes a year for example? No. So that's unfortunately another thing that didn't happen there. And that's an idea that floats

in my mind recently. Why don't we reward people for their performance based on the project or based on a quarterly in this case? Yeah, that did not happen in my times at Deloitte. Maybe they've changed this. I, I don't know, haven't been there for a while. But no, it, it, it was not really happening. So the actually the reward that you get would be, let's say, averaged out throughout your performance over the year,

right. You they would collect the data from the 3-4 performance reviews every quarter and then they would give a reward. So it was not really. Yeah. Finally, let's say.

Is that in line with your thinking as well, Jethro, when we're talking about, let's say, the ideal performance review system? Yeah. So I think working in consultancy, we have a model that means that our, how do you say our compensation is kind of in ratio with how much we charge externally, right? So that is the, the raw numbers of how, how, how bake works for

most consultancy. And I think in general, when you look at work, people always say what's the output versus how much has been compensated versus the output. And I think in our case, the main issue I see is that the output is not proportional to what's being brought in for everyone. So that's the hard part. I would say if you looked at like a traditional manufacturing plant where someone was producing 10 times as much as the other person and you're selling that, that's an easy way

to, to map that. But it doesn't work in our, in our industry like that, right? It's quite difficult to, to put that into metrics, especially because we're working at different clients. So in, in my opinion, I think we need to figure out how we can make that transparent, because in order to have that journey of going from where you are to where you want to be, you need to know what that angle looks like. How can you, how can you directly influence the amount that you want in your in, in

your life, right? That's what I would think is, is the most important. So giving people the power to directly influence that would be, would be the step one. I don't know how to achieve that. That's quite a difficult question to ask. And then the second one, I agree with Ristam about having chickens more often. I think the way I would see it is from more of a like a supportive leadership in, in a sense that people in my team, for instance, they want to

achieve more. So how can I help them achieve more? And in order to do that, it can't just be like one big grading or one big test at the end of the year to see how much you've done right? That that doesn't work. If you look at even in schools, if you put one test that's worth 100%, people just generally cram study at the last minute and then they write the test right. And that's not really good for their growth.

I would say it's probably better to do work throughout the whole year and trying to prove yourself step by step because consistency leads to results. So if you know if you want to be consistent, then you you need to be making sure that you're doing all the things that you want to do to get to that point. And I think leadership can help you by saying, OK, this is what you want to achieve. How can we get you there? What are the steps that we can take together?

What are the steps that you can do? How can the company support you? And I think in that way, it turns from, OK, you want to just get the most amount of money. It becomes a partnership between leadership and the employees and you work together to achieve with the result. Because if we all increase our our cost per hour, for instance, then that means that everyone's going to get more salary.

So what can we do to make sure that we are supporting the goals of the people and achieving the goal that we all want to achieve? Yeah. So our ideal system would have, let's say more frequent reviews than just once a year, could be twice a year, could be quarterly plus enabling people in achieving certain goals. So defining milestones together and making sure people are in a position to achieve those milestones.

Then it's similar to what I've seen also comparing with ING. What they do is they said OK Rs and OK Rs people always say it's outcome driven. So you focus and you define OK Rs on a project level where you are actually helping, contributing in whatever way in that team and also on a personal level. So what do you want to achieve as an outcome? Do you want to be more assertive when it comes to your communication? Do you want to be more handy when it comes to certain cloud

technology? I do think only focusing on outcome also as a downside, because if you don't focus on kind of the output of that, then how can you reach the outcome, right? Outcomes are always outcomes based on your output basically. So it needs to be a combination of those. But what would you say then? A good metric would be defining what you need to do to reach certain milestones. Or how do we enable people to then be the best version of themselves? I'm actually curious about the ING.

So just to make it clear, you said that they set the team goals and the personal goals. They set for one person within a team, they set team goals. So how do they contribute to certain goals that the team has? That would be their personal OK Rs all. Right. Yeah. And how do they then improve the collaboration within the team? Like doesn't it create the competition between the people and the team? No, because it's still a team aspect, right?

It's it's their personal OK Rs. But people might have the same personal OK Rs to contribute to because they need to be in alignment with what the team is contributing to. And they also have team OK Rs. I don't mean I have product OK Rs, let's say. Yeah, and what happens if you reach as a team your product? OK, RI. Haven't gotten to that point yet.

We define them quarterly and the previous OK Rs actually got already wiped because of new senior management and different definitions of OK Rs, maybe a different vision as well. But I think it's just, I don't even know what happens. We'll find out in a few months. Yeah. It's also interesting, right. You just mentioned that the OK Rs are defined quarterly. Yeah. Then the team and the personal KRS are often rewards are yeah

defined in once a year. So always interesting, right, that we do it better like we are more agile with the projects than with the with the people in in in those projects. No, the, the personal ones are a combination. So I, I work with people that are abroad and they have a different system also than the people in NL. So abroad has once a year and then I have the conversation of, but we do quarterly and you do once a year, like there's a

mismatch there. And then I think NL also does quarterly or they do half yearly. So it's one of those, yeah. I haven't seen the system in too much effect nor do I know kind of how they're going to measure what the outcomes were or what the person's contribution in output was. But I do know that's the system in place and they are kind of happy with it, or at least experimenting with it. But back to your question, what

would be a good or KR actually to define for people? I think it's really dependent on the nature of the work we do. It should I really like that they are related to the project goals. So I think having them fluid and changing them over time depending on the project you are in, right would be very useful. So aligning the goals basically of the company and the project with the goals of the people will create a better coherence, big cohesion between personal

goals. So people are even more motivated to maybe improve their skills, maybe learn something that is related to the project. And also, if it opens the possibility for people maybe to say that the goals of these projects are not aligning with my personal goals, I should, those people should be able to maybe change to a different project where they will feel much more motivated. I think Google does it very well.

And we heard a lot of stories how people join Google and then they sit there for a long time without having a concrete role to do. And that's the investment from Google side, because they really believe in the freedom of people choosing what they can do. They give them a lot of freedom.

They make their life in the office as easy as possible so they they can focus on the projects they really care about because they really believe that when people align with their personal goals, that's where the most innovation and most productivity happens. However, of course, we also heard some stories where people never found their passion. And then that's I. I guess that's the risk Google takes. Yeah, then you're in limbo. Limbo in the system, yeah. I think Google is also a big fan

of 360 reviews, right? Where within your sphere of influence you ask not just the people that you like and that will give you a good review, but everyone that you've kind of collaborated with. And I don't know if it's everyone, everyone or if it's just random based on kind of the project or the collaborations you've had, but I do like that system. We don't have anything in place currently for a review process like that. No, it's all optional. No, there are, there are some

very interesting examples. I think I was also reading about this and either 3M company, this company to you know from tapes and the gluing or it was about the sale sales force. So whenever they're on the project that actually the team gives the review for each other, they basically select an MVP of the month or of the quarter and that person is being rewarded.

So manager's completely not involved in the process is the team collaboratively decides who was the most valuable person for whatever the period of time is. And that person is rewarded sometimes financially, sometimes by giving extra free time or any other benefits. And I thought that's a very interesting idea actually, because then you can still reward people. You imperve collaboration and then people decide themselves who who deserves this time the

most and benefits. What do you think about that idea? Yeah, I didn't know that.

One of the things I do know about Salesforce is that it prides itself in promoting people often. So when you're there within a year, probably you will reach a promotion, or at least that's how it was. And now I think it's within a year or two. But comparing that to other companies, you might go three years and not reach a promotion. I mean, in in our organization, we don't even have promotions. We just have the same level and then we talk about performance. But at least Salesforce then

correlates it to a promotion. And it's one of their distinguishing factors. If you come work with us, most of the time within a year you'll get a promotion. And I think that might have to do with them kind of how they review. I don't know if it's an effect of the reviewing structure, but I do think it's a benefit and it's what draws people to Salesforce in that way. Yeah. I'm just wondering though, with the team of people, what about favoritism though, right?

Because if there's a people, a group of people, not always, but a lot of time, people form favorites and friendship connections. And if you have a system where people are self promoting inside of the team or have the team members judging and the team members, is it always going to be fully unbiased? So I also wonder about maybe they should also be an external party. I'm not saying the team shouldn't self promote, I think

that's always good. But I do think they should also be someone to have an object of what unbiased view over the situation because that's valuable too. Yeah, Especially when we go back to your point, Jethro, where you have people from diverse backgrounds that might not speak up as much. I think if you have like a really homogeneous team, then probably decision making is easier because you have that homogeneous mindset. But the more diversity you have, it's harder to then be very fair

in equality. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think that works. Not for every team, of course. And the size matters in this case. I think the bigger the team is, the easier it is to kind of mitigate the risks of people building like coalitions. Yeah, basically like democracy works. But indeed, it's it's a very good point and I didn't think about it. What happens if someone basically, yeah, is has prejudice against the people?

I guess that's, that's why you still need to have all the HR processes and managers in place, right, to make sure that this doesn't happen. And I don't didn't want to make an impression that that's the only thing they do right. But that's like one of the things how they promote or encourage collaboration in their teams. Yeah, I think the more, I mean not always, but more systems are

usually also a better outcome. Right now, if you do that within the team, plus you have your standard managerial performance review, it might contribute one to the other rather than what having one isolated one in that sense. Absolutely. I, I guess it's also trade off

with time investment, right? Because all of this process actually cost a lot of money for the companies because you need to spend a lot of hours, managers need to spend a lot of time on making sure that all this process are running smoother for the performances and stuff. So it's always a trade off. OK, how many? You can of course implement 1000 process in your team and say that it's, it's good to have as many process as possible, but

what's the cost, right? How many hours do we need to invest into actually implementing those process correctly? Yeah, is the cost is always an interesting one. And I think people overestimate the effect of cost because losing people because of let's say inequality or bad performance reviews or people

not feeling valued. It doesn't have to be even on a monetary basis, just the feeling of someone saying you did a great job and you get rewarded with either free time, a day off or actually compensation financially gets underestimated. And then the recruitment fees of getting new people in the the contribution of the rest of the team and educating that person. Them just landing within an organization might take a year for them to find their groove. That's a way bigger cost, at

least in my head, yeah. Yeah, I think so too. I think we really need to value the people that are inside your team. And what this conversation is bringing to my mind is that there's your question earlier was that what's the perfect system? I think that with everything like in all systems, there is no such thing as a perfect system, right? There is always negatives and positives to any implementation

that you that you choose, right. So this is for software systems, this is for, yeah, team systems or whatever kind of system you would like to look at. And I think with performance reviews, you need to really look at the team that you have. So for instance, you mentioned homogeneous team. That's really nice if you have teams deciding for themselves, for instance. But maybe in a different team you need to have a different system.

So I think what you need to look at is how the system will affect the people inside of your team and what you're trying to achieve, right? Why are you, why are you doing performance reviews? It's not something to, to motivate people or is it, or what is your actual goal with having performance reviews? Are you trying to make sure that everyone feels safe and comfortable and happy and that

produces their best work? Or are you really trying to grind out as much results out of people as you can? And I'm not saying either one is wrong or right. I think that you need to look at yourself and the, and the company that you work in. And you need to make a decision on what's best for, for your situation. And that needs to be a, a discussion, right?

It can't just be a one person from the top saying this is how we need to do it And, and I don't care about any other decisions or any other one else's feelings. I think that's where a lot of the time it goes wrong because people don't feel like they fit into the system. And if you make it an open conversation, you may come to the same decision, but at least people have been included in the conversation so they feel like they're heard and they're on board. And I think that's important.

So what you're saying is that having people feel heard, even if it's not compensation wise, just just the fact that you're listening to what someone has to say already validates them inside of the company because they feel like my opinion

actually matters. And I think that's what really that's that's really important inside of the decision that you need to make about compensation or performance reviews or however you want to see it. Yeah, I think that might be like the human touch that is sometimes missing when we're talking about performance reviews. Right. When you said, OK, why do we do performance reviews, what sprung to my mind is businesses have

goals and especially in let's say tech landscape where competitiveness is, you can find it everywhere. Basically, if you don't innovate or reinvent or deliver within your own organization, then your competitors might, might outpace you. At least that's the, let's say, doomsday thought in that way. So then you get paid to contribute to the company goals and you get measured also in how much you contribute to that. That for me is kind of the definition of a performance review.

But it goes beyond that, right? Because people want a place where they feel valued, they want a place where they feel belonging. It's not just a an organization with a specific systematic goal. It's a group of people trying to achieve something. And whether you get paid financially or in a different way, you also have non profits. It's a sense of fulfilment that you need, which is not always

monetary. Yeah, I think if you look at we spoke about Google and they did the Project Aristotle review of all their teams and there's three points, I can't remember them exactly, but it's the last three points that they basically came to. All three of those points basically speak to purpose, like value of work, how valued you feel your contributions are to the company. Those two things feel like purpose to me and they sound exactly like purpose. Right.

And are you, are you looking at that when it comes to performance review? Because I feel that Google's a good example of this. They don't necessarily look at what your output is. They look at how how they can make sure that you're the happiest person or the you have the least barrier of entry to be able to contribute to the organization. Right. I hear stories about even they'll do their, your laundry

for you. You can bring your laundry to work and they'll do that for you just so that that's one less thing that you have to do in in your private time. So they're really trying to maximise the happiness and the people's ability to contribute. And is the business looking at it from that perspective, right? Because it's easy to say, yeah, OK, performance reviews. Here's the people run as fast as

you can, right. But are you, are you making sure that they have the best running shoes or are you making sure that they have the best training? Are you making sure that they have all the necessary tools to achieve what you're you're expecting them to achieve? And I think that part is often missing.

It's interesting because there's a difference between, let's say, organisations focusing on the outcome, or in your example, what Google does is enabling people, making sure their output is as effective and efficient in whatever they're doing, and then trusting in whatever output comes out of that is the right output. Because you, I mean, you invest in the people, you should allow them to think of their own. And then whatever outcomes comes out of that, that's the trust

you put in them. Yeah, I think I've worked in five or six different countries now and many different offices. I've been in consultancy twice in my life already for over half my career. I have never really been an organization where someone comes in to try and destroy everything and, and burn it to the ground, right? That normally if they're unhappy, that, that that is a side effect. But I think people's motivation is, is always to do the right thing.

Even when you have conversations with people and you see technical discussions that become heated, it's not because the other person doesn't like the other person or, or thinks bad thoughts about them. They're just very passionate about their, their opinion and they want, because they want to do the right thing, right? Passion comes from wanting to do the right thing. And I think most people have

that. And we need to trust people to to believe that the passion that they have will translate into the work that we need. General, I agree that most of

the people have good intentions. However, I've I've personally seen teams where there is a couple of people on teams who are not as involved with the project with the team as the rest of the team is. So they're kind of freeloading in a way on the other members. Have you seen that and what's your experience with it? Yes, I think that there is no perfect way to say that I'm I'm I'm using a blanket statement

like everyone. But OK, maybe I should rechange my statement to the majority of people come in to do the right thing. There are some people and some outliers. Of course, they always are. Maybe I was too dogmatic in my in my in my words there, but I meant that majority of teams that I've worked in the majority of people want to do the right thing.

And I think in that way, if you have a culture where doing the right thing is how you create your team environment, then if there are people that are not contributing, they'll see it themselves and either up the game or feel like they don't fit. And that's, that's what I've seen happen. If you, if you really create a team that's focused on delivering value. And I think that's what we all need to look at, right?

Everyone wants to deliver value or that's we should all strive to do in our work because else what's the point? If you're doing something that no ones using or that doesn't, that doesn't make anyones life easier because we're software, right? That's normally what we do is try and make peoples lives easier. And that's often what people forget at the end user, you're really just trying to make someone's life easy without IT or that software, people can do their jobs.

But if you putting a system and you really want them to to make their life easier and you're trying to help the business go forward. And in that way, you need to make sure that you're focusing on delivering that. And if you have a team whose mentality is to, to deliver value, then I think the people who are not in line with that

value will maybe drop off. Or they'll realize that if in order to be successful in the team, they need to get aligned with the value and they'll, they'll, they'll shift the, the temperament to that. Is that also what you've seen

this time in in that people either, let's say, hop on board with the enthusiasm and energy of the team when it comes to achieving team goals, or they realize that this environment might not be a good fit for them? You know what, what I've seen multiple times is people get comfortable in the position they are. Maybe they they're not as ambitious, maybe they're happy just with the whatever they get and they want to do minimum amount of work and just mean like be in the team.

So I've seen that and I think the, the challenge is there to recognise us. So I, I, I believe that we still need to track basically somehow the performance of individuals.

So, and when we talk about promoting the whole team together and making sure that people collaborate and work as a team, team, we still need to see and someone needs to be able to recognise and those people which are losing their motivation, maybe not following up. So I think like when they attended the leads, when they talked to the lead seminar, there was another presentation where they said that in their company, I, I forgot what company it was, but they, they

have a very flat structure. Everyone in the same role makes the same amount of money and we expect everyone has great performance. So we don't really judge. You don't get any bonuses or any rewards for your extraordinary performance in team. So we're all very curious how that actually works in practice. And I was thinking about this examples, right? OK, what if not everyone in the team that already got in that position? What if they're not interested in?

And I'm very curious how they do it. But I really believe that individual performance still matters. And we do need to look at it and recognize those signs earlier, right? And often, I think Jetta, you mentioned that that people start to lose motivation. And we actually, yes, we need to recognize it and go and see what can we do to help them gain their motivation again, to help them get back on track.

Because often this like once people lose their motivation, then it turns slowly into, OK, I'm not interested in this. I'm just sitting here just to get my salary. And yeah, let's say float with, with the team, right? It doesn't usually happen over overnight. So there may be some bigger issues behind it. So we do need to recognize it and try to help the people.

Has one of you experienced that were you kind of were in your position and maybe not as motivated as the beginning, more so trending towards coasting? Because I, I feel like if I look at my own kind of journey, the times I changed just briefly before that or even maybe for a longer period that I would like to admit I was kind of getting bored or getting fed up with this routine and then obviously at some point made the change to spice things up again. But it does happen, at least for

me as well. Has one of you experienced that as well? Absolutely, I think happens to me quite often. I get bored in my role, but that's why I'm in consultancy and I actually have. How do you say it? I can choose when to end my assignment luckily and go to the new one. But I've noticed it. And indeed, usually it means that we are not in the flow anymore and the assignment today gets too easy, too boring or it's too repetitive, which is

kind of the same thing. And then I often try to look for new challenges within the client, right within the project I'm in. And if that does not happen for extended period of time, then I look start to look outside. Yeah, what about you, Jethra? Yeah, I have the exact same thought as as Rustom. I am motivated by challenges and the the bigger the challenge, the greater the motivation for me. So I recognise that in myself. That is the main reason why I'm in consultancy as well.

It's because I like to open up new domains I need to, I like to dive into difficult situations. Normally in consultancy, we don't get the easy assignment if everything is going nice and smooth. They generally don't call in consultants normally when things are not going so smooth. So I like this challenge and I think that's what's really important for me is what motivates me is, is the

challenge itself. So I try and focus in on those things and I do the same as just them, look for challenges internally. Normally I stay on a project for no longer than a year. That's generally my time frame because I feel like 6 months is enough to get on board and start making contributions. But then I think the six months after that is almost more important because that's when you can see the the fruits of the labour that you've put in in

the first six months. So if I leave before then, then I feel like I've shortchanged myself because I don't get to see the the results of the hard work that I've put in. So I really like to feel the like, see how things are going. So I like to choose a year. And in that way, I think I also

agree with Ristam that not everyone is always going to be the Super motivated person to, to do things. That's important to note, but also it depends on what kind of person they are, right? Because not everyone is super motivated and some people just like to come in and, and do the work that's required of them and, and leave at the end of the

day. That's also OK. I think the performance reviews are good for that and if someone is doing that and expecting to get the best performance review ever, then I think you need to have a serious conversation with them because if they're just doing the bare minimum, then they can't expect anything more than the bare minimum, right? That's I think a bit unfair on on their expectation side for

what the company can give them. If they want to go above and beyond and, and, and, and make sure that they're nailing everything, then that's going to require a bit of extra effort, right? It's not going to you're not just going to be able to come in and pull some tasks off the backlog and finish those for the day and then leave. You probably should get a decent compensation for that The that

they've agreed upon. But if you really want to move forward, you need to be doing something different. You can't expect to to get something different if you're not doing something different yourself. And I think taking responsibility for your own situation in those cases is what I would say is the best way to, to look at it because you need to say, I'm the one that's in the situation. What can I do differently to

achieve that? And then look to the company to help you achieve anything that you want to achieve. So you can say for yourself, I want to do this different. How can the how can the company support me in doing this different thing? And I think that's that's the way to look at it. I wonder because the trend in

the industry is to make sure that your people are developing and yeah, learning and evolving over time, right? So I wonder if there is place for people who don't wanna develop in, in, in, in the industry, right? Because if you look at like companies like Google and stuff, they put a lot of emphasis on the development and they put a lot of effort into motivating people to get out of the boundaries, motivating them to learn new skills, etcetera.

So I wonder how do those companies, would they agree with you? Like, is there actually a place for people who don't want to develop or don't want to be? Yeah, when they're happy in the place they are and they do their jobs, they finish the task, but they're not interested in the next promotion. They're not interested in the bonuses or anything extra, and they're just there to do their

job and stay. Like, is it good investment from the company side to have these people on board and to keep them? And at least they are. The, the only example where I've seen that is with people that are like close to their pension or that have been in the industry for a long, long time and that are like, OK, these new technologies, I stick with what is established. Also, knowing the organization, they're probably not going to move if the organization doesn't lay them off, basically because

they're grounded there. They know a lot just by having been in the organization. So their value is also the knowledge of hierarchy, politics, dynamics, culture, and they can leverage that. So they might not have to put extra emphasis in learning new technologies because their time here is not going to span, let's say, another 20 years.

That's the only example where I've seen that and where an organization also says, OK, this is you have people that are super fast and eager, more so younger of age, and then people that are more steady. But without those people, things would also collapse. For me, it's not only about

technology, right? I think you give an example of the people who don't want to learn new technology, but they still contribute a lot by their culture virus, but by the normal organization and they probably still play a vital role within the organization. Would be more interesting to see like where I think talking about the people who are, let's say, in in a similar position, but they're doing their mean mean the bare minimum to be there, right?

So it's not only learning new technology stack, but also being involved within the company helping the new people. Maybe, right, Maybe they don't want to do that. Maybe they just want to like finish the task board that we just talked about, right, Finish the backlog for, for, for today can be done. And not being involved with the other people, not sharing their knowledge, not participating in the culture and not improving in those ways either.

I don't, I cannot think of a situation where that was the case. There would be kind of the same situation where the people didn't want to learn new technologies. It would be the same for like new organizational structures or they would be more so, let's say negative towards either positive change or just experimentation, experimentation in general and also processes where they would be like, OK, this is how we've always done it, why do we need

this new thing? So rather sticking to what let's say is effective and has proven itself rather than trying out new things to improve. Yeah. What about you, Jethro? What have you seen?

Yeah. So I think it it's about two things, right. So first of all, we spoke about technology. So if you look at polarizing example, we mentioned both of them already in this talk. So Google would be the the forefront of of making sure that they're in front of innovation, right. And then you look at a bank, which some banks still use COBOL developers, right? And if you think back to 20 years ago, everyone was like, Nah, I don't want to do COBOL anymore. I want to progress my, my, my

career. But imagine everyone did that and there was no more COBOL developers. Some banking systems would have to stop because they could not, there's no one to support those systems. So there's always going to be a need for a guru in the, in certain kind of technologies, right? So it's not necessarily a bad thing that people don't want to learn new technologies. If you're really happy with one and you want to be an expert in that one, I don't think that

that's necessarily a bad thing. I think there's room for that in the environment or in the market. The second point with Google is that if you're one of those people who wants to contribute to bare minimum, you probably won't lost at Google. They're an American company, so they could probably fire you just for firing's sake. So you're probably not going to lost at a company like that. And maybe it's not the right environment for you.

There might be some environments like a bank, for instance, where your your expertise are valued and that you're probably not going to change your expertise in the next 1020 years because they're always going to need those expertise. And that's probably a better situation for you to work in. So I think it it comes down to the person and recognizing what kind of situation they want to be in, right?

They need to take responsibility and say, I want to be on this technology and I want to be the the guru and the technology and stay and stay where I am. Then you also need to assess, am I in the right environment that allows me to do that? You can't expect Google to all of a sudden stop innovation just to make one employee happy, right?

That's not the company. You also have to understand the company that you work for and if you align with those values and want to continue in that company, you also need to be part of that company and contribute in the way that the company sees meaningful value. And I think this comes down to the roles and responsibilities that you have, right? So if you're a senior and it's expected of you to coach juniors and now all of a sudden you're not coaching juniors, you're not

even doing the bare minimum. You're doing less than the bare minimum because it was always expected of you. All of a sudden though, if you have a company where it was not expected of you and now it is expected, that would be, I would say a situation where you'd say you I was not expected to do this before, but now you're asking me to do this.

You have two choices. You can say either I should be compensated for, for, for the new work that I'm doing because I think that's fair, or you say I can maybe this is not the place for for me anymore because I don't really want to be doing that. So I think those are the kind of situations you need to look at. So it's more on a company by company basis. Have I seen this kind of situation on a personal level, Not really.

Most people who are gurus or domain experts, let's call them on certain parts of organizations are generally happy in the role because they're needed, right? Everyone knows who's the person to talk to about the shopping cart and that gives them a high sense of purpose. So I don't really see these people feeling unfulfilled in in

those kind of roles. It's more on the technological side that I see people dropping off because they don't want to progress in a different technology than that what they're comfortable. Yeah.

How is it kind of working with the people that are either ghosting or not as enthusiastic, let's say, as other people in the team or even you as an individual? Because I feel like I have a hard time with that sometimes. And then especially with the letting go part, because at some point you realize you can't really change someone's ways. You can try and try and try, but if you fail then yeah, at some point you have to let go as well and have a hard time with that.

Yeah, I absolutely agree with you. I have a very recent example. So the clients, we also had the person who was, yeah, very noticeably distant from the rest of the team and maybe was not as motivated to, yeah, to kind of move forward with the team, right, to upscale the skills and just participate culturally as well with the team. So we had that example and we, as as you said, we tried and tried and tried to get the person on board.

I think we did very well by learning what's going on with the person. We learned of course, that there was some personal reasons person was more focused on their personal life and that that showed in the calibration of the team. You there was a lot of missed days of, of the team days when we were all gathered in the office. They were not there. The, the coffees were less right.

The, the mini chats were gone. And you could also see it in the performance, in the pull request and everything else. So when did the rest of the team evolved? They did not. And there was a personal reason for it. And we tried, well discussed this. We tried to see what could be done differently. But at the end we just had to

let go of the person. The the the team agreed that it would be better for the team to not drag this person with us because we didn't see the contributions as a matching the level. Let's say that what needed, which is always a very hard decision to make. As a team, how did you manage that? Because it we're still talking about a person here that has their personal circumstances and that might not be a good fit now, but could turn it around maybe in a longer period.

Like I'm you can see I'm very hopeful and then letting go is like one of the last thoughts. But yeah, sometimes it needs to be done. How did that affect you? It was a very difficult conversation and it's something we're talking about span of six months when the decision was made. So there was a lot of attempts to discuss this, a lot of attempts to change it.

There were even like direct conversations that hey, this needs to be changed because this is how the team goes and we expect, these are the expectations, right? This is what is expected from your role. So there was a lot of conversations and it was very difficult, of course, to do it. And this, I think it's a decision that shouldn't be made lightly by one person.

So helping, talking to other people, getting the feedback from other people, working with that person, seeing how they experienced with them helped us make this conclusion that it's not only our perspective, right? It's a shared opinion of multiple team members that this person is not performing.

And even then, with gathering all of this data points, having the discussions, having the conversation where you have to pull the trigger and tell to the person that, yeah, this is going to be and was still very complicated matter. But I really believe that it was a good decision in that case because we saw that by letting go of that person, we could go

much faster. Further, we don't have to spend time as much time explaining, fixing maybe the things that were not done correctly and it was overall better. Also, what happened is when people are, let's say, not happy with someone's performance, they start being a bit annoyed, they start to gossip during the retros.

So we had sprints every two weeks and during the retro people would point out the things that should be different talking to the whole team, but it was always directed to the person that was underperforming, right? And you see that this is becoming a problem and team and a lot of negative conversations. And once that problem was solved, the conversations changed into OK, what can we do better? What can we improve? So things are now going as we wanted.

What are the next steps we can look into because now the whole team is on board and we can actually maneuver much faster. Yeah, at least there was a very individual approach in trying to

fix the situation, right? And in the end, it might not have been, let's say, I mean, you didn't reach the outcome you wanted you, you had to come to the ultimate one, which is to let go. But it's a different experience than what sometimes hits the news is that people just get laid off and we're talking about thousands, 10s of thousands of numbers, which then the individual approach is just gone. Just apartments are cleaned up. And it's being said that, OK, it's not in the strategic, I

don't know. I mean, it doesn't contribute to the company outcomes, I guess as much as other departments do. So then they justify thousands of people, mostly engineers nowadays, being let go. I read this morning it was Tesla 12,000 which I thought was insane. Yeah. Crazy. Yeah, I think for me, I, I have a little bit of a problem with the word let go because I think it's just a fancy way of saying you're fired, right. And I think when there's two kind of conversations that need to be had.

So the first one you're speaking about with Tesla letting go 12,000 people, that's people being fired. That's not really anything to do with the relationship. That's just like we're we're the one person and we're we're breaking the the relationship. And that's what I would say is A1 dimensional ending to a relationship is one person just says, OK, I'm done and walks away, right. That's the company saying we're done with you and, and goodbye.

The second one. That we're discussing right now when you having a conversation with someone, I wouldn't really say that that's a let go in my opinion. I would say that's more like ending the relationship in a mutual way because if the person feels bad about being let go, then they still have some motivation to be there, right? So if that's the case, then you've missed the opportunity to capture that motivation and to repurpose it inside of your team

as a positive, right? If there's no hard feelings between the the relationship being ended, then I think that that's a mutual ending of a, of a relationship and that's not the same as being let go. So that's what I would like to say about the word let go. And I think in your kind of situation, it sounds like it was more of a mutual termination because the person you really tried everything you could to get the best and to motivate them again to find value with

them inside of the team. And that just didn't happen. So there's no other way to move forward other than going separate ways. So was it. Was it mutual? Would you say that? Yeah, I'm trying to think about this. I do believe that the person would still love to because we haven't. We we had a fantastic team at the time and team is still fantastic. I'm just a part of it, don't get me wrong.

Yeah, so I do believe they would still want to actually stay in the team and be discussed this, but it just didn't work. So what will happen like after the conversations, multiple conversations, we would see the productivity, the interest, the motivation increase. However, due to some probably personal circumstances, it will always drop back. So you could maybe actually argue that we've failed to harness that motivation and to get them back on board.

But we really tried. So and I think it's yeah, it's it's easy to say that we need to try our best to do this. However, it's very hard to see when is it that you've tried everything you could and all the best, right? We could probably argue that we could have tried for another year or so to get them back into motivation, maybe without the period when their personal situation changes and they can focus back on their work and be fully present for the team,

right? We could also argue that, but somewhere that decision had to be made, right? And in this case it was a very tough decision and I think for the person it was a very disappointing decision from from from their point of view, but for the team it was a good decision. Yeah, You'll never know the other side of it. Like if you would have tried longer, maybe the personal life, the issues would have been resolved more so or being put behind them.

It's a really hard decision like at the end of the day, but it is very individualistic in the approach, in the attempt. A span of six months is not nothing, especially when it affects the greater team of that. And then in contrast, you have the indeed, like you mentioned, Jethro, the very one sided approach where the personal touch is just not there. It's a department or multiple departments being let go based on the fact that it's not in

alignment with company goals. And here in the Netherlands, you cannot do that as easily. But in the US it's just, yeah, that's it. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I think it's important for what you're saying. I don't think any relationship has ever ended without bad feelings on other side. So that's also important to note, right. So he may, the guy that you mentioned may feel some negativity towards the situation, but I think the company is not only responsible inside of a relationship, right. Like I said earlier, people need to take responsibility for where they're at and try and change

the situation themselves. So if you're unhappy, you can't expect the company to do every little tiny thing to make you happy. You also need to say what can I do as a person to make myself happy in the situation? Yeah. And then that's a partnership. So if you're expecting A2 sided conversation, but you're not putting any input in, then it does become a one sided

conversation again, right? You need both people at the table talking about the situation, speaking about how they want to improve the situation. If only one person's coming to the party and, and, and speaking about that, then unfortunately there's probably also going to be a A1 party ending the, the conversation because you're not going to be there forever waiting for the other person to show up, right? We, things move too fast.

The, the world doesn't stop spinning just because you're, you're not committed to, to changing your situation. So it's also another important factor, I think in the situation that you described, right? People need to take responsibility for where they're at and how they can change their situation. It's not just the company has to do everything for you and you're just a bystander who stands around waiting for things to happen. In my in my opinion, if you stand around waiting for things

to happen, they seldom happen. With people taking

responsibilities, it kind of ties in one of the last thoughts I had for performance review, because performance review is one thing, but you also have, let's say, corrections and inequality. I have no clue when new people come in, what their salary is. I don't really care. But as soon as I find out that compared to other people that I'm a lot lower with regards to what I'm earning versus what I'm contributing to, then for me becomes a problem.

And then definitely I have to do something to the point where either it's a conversation with managers and it spans indeed multiple periods, or I leave because that's I, I no longer have an option. Apparently I'm not valued for whatever I'm delivering. And the way people find out for me is also interesting. Like on a personal level. Your exhibit, we have the the holidays, right? You have Scubia and Skibia, summer holiday and a winter holiday. And if you earn below a certain

amount, you get a discount. You have to pay half of the contribution for the vacation. That's how I found out. Actually the first holiday, because it was a conversation topic and I was already on the holiday and people were like, yeah, and so and so. And if you earn below the threshold, then you get half. But I mean, not everyone does that. And I was like, what do you mean? Not everyone gets that. What do you mean? And they were like, what do you

mean? That's how it came up that kind of I was earning below the threshold. And that's how it started. And then maybe this is me, but that little little drop, that little seed is going to grow until it becomes a problem. And then indeed, with taking ownership, I had to do something. Have you ever had a situation with that as well? And then especially I'm interested in how you handled it. Yeah, I think for me it's it's just, I think you did the right thing.

By the way, it's about speaking about it, right? It's a conversation. I think you've spoken about this the whole time. It's always a conversation between anyone, any kind of situation is generally between people, company and people. However you want to see it is always starts off with communication, right? And I think if you have open and transparent communication, that's something that can always lead you in the right direction. It's always, I would say the starting point for that.

And I, I would do the same in your, in your, in your shoes, I would have had the same conversation and said, not necessarily the responsibility part is I think having the conversation, but it's the next step as well. After that. If you think that you are as valuable as someone else in the company, then you can find out what you're not doing. So you can take it as it's unfair they're getting more than me. Or you can switch that around and say, what am I not doing in

order to be at that level? And if it really is nothing, that's great. Then you say, yeah, then I then I should be here. And here's the proof that This is why I should be here. But there may be some things that you can also be doing yourself to making sure make sure that you're at that same position where you think you should be. And I think that's where the responsibility comes in. And question from me, I'm, I'm,

I'm wondering what do you guys think, Should then the salaries be a public open or should they be hidden? Because it's also a very cultural thing, and I think Netherlands is a culture where they strongly prefer not to talk about our salaries. Have you been in a culture where where it's more open? Because I've only been in this one. There are so in Sweden it was much more open to discuss the salaries. They were much more open and it it didn't feel like it was a

secret. It's a delicate thing, right? And I like that you point out, Jethro, that whatever you're doing, whatever you're contributing to in your mind, it might be for the greater good, right? But if the company is not valuing that and by virtue of them not valuing that, it's skewed whatever you're earning versus what other people are contributing to and what they're earning, then that's a thing you can change because you, I mean, it's within your sphere of influence.

And having then public salaries at least opens up the conversation and creates the awareness. Because I had to find out through my colleagues and then I had to be like, OK, what is this? Because I, I put my faith in the system, right? I trust my manager. And in the end they did change things. So that trust is still there, but it's a trust that like gets a crack when you figure something out like that. And I do think public salaries

would help with that. I don't know the downsides though, because people are very individualistic. People will definitely point fingers and be like making comparisons that maybe sometimes they shouldn't when it comes to years of experience or actually impacting A-Team. Because it at the end of the day, it's very hard to measure, I feel like. Well, I know we spoke about ING. Have you seen on your, what's your title at ING?

By the way, mine's innovation expert and I don't know what that why it doesn't mean I get no admin rights. So it's actually a bit of a pain title because I have basically, I'm not a developer, but I need to do engineering stuff. So it's a bit of a pain to fight bureaucracy. But the, the point that I brought that up is there's normally a number that's associated to your title. Have you seen that there's a number after yours?

So if you look at on your user access portal or whatever you have, you'll see there's a number. And if you look at your team, there will be numbers for each engineer will have a number. Like financial salary. That is your, that is your hierarchy inside of your team. And as far as I know, because manager said to me, he said that you throw your title should be this and your number should be this based on how much we pay you as a consultant.

So I know that it is linked. So it's not this is how much you get, but I think it falls into a range and I haven't heard anyone really complaining about it. I don't know what the negatives are about that, but I do know that this is something that they can use to say, yeah, you're consultant one or consultant 6 or doesn't have to be a number, but that's just how they they rate it. Yeah. And those, those numbers, they're not financial numbers, but they're a number in like a level.

And when you get a promotion, obviously you level up and there's a financial and there's a financial. Gain for that, yes. I, I have seen systems like a lot of systems like that, but they're not not as much into the detail of let's say a number, but more so, OK, we have junior, we have media, we have senior. Then you become an consultant, even though you're internal at a product company, whatever that

means. And then you become manager, even though sometimes you might not even manage people. Those are, let's say, then the layers and there are like there's a financial component to that, but with a range that is so big that there can still be inequality within that. So then yeah, I'm not sure how much it helps. Yeah, I think this comes, this is an actual number that's like from 1:00 to 8:00 or something like that.

So that's a way bigger degree of increments then just three increments or 4 increments like you mentioned earlier. But still I had that system at the Lloyd and we still had quite a range, like it could be a couple of €1000, maybe €5000 a year difference, which is still quite a substantial change. Yeah, difference. What is your thought then,

because you have experienced, let's say, cultures where it's more transparent or at least to talk about it, to discuss it? Have you been in a situation or a system where it was like publicly available what people were earning? Yeah, I'm not maybe the first person to judge in the sense that I worked in Sweden, in Stockholm, but it was not for long time where I had to build my career.

It was a short term assignments. I just worked there and then I had to move to the Netherlands. So I wouldn't know how it would affect my, let's say, development within the company and my career growth. However, just being able to talk about it made the communication with your peers much easier because there was no secrecy like here. Every time we talk about this topic, it feels a bit sensitive. Like you, we always wiggle around. We try to like see if the person is open to talk about the

delicate. It's, it's a very delicate topic, right? And that I think creates A boundary. And often this boundary is even bigger between the people who are not the peers, right? Asking maybe a manager or someone else what's the salary? And that position is even more delicate topic. And I do feel pains of this right now. And I remember how easy it was to do this in Sweden because you could just ask and everyone was very open about what everyone is earning. And there was no surprise.

And you knew that. Yeah, if you get to that place, let's say, you could be earning the same or. Yeah, it was a bit more clear, which yeah, I found very reveal, not revealing what's the word for it, but like it was easier the the conversations was easier. It's not an extra weight. No, that was an extra weight. However. Indeed, I don't know what are

the drawbacks either. In in our ideal system then would we have let's say numbers and hierarchy which translate to a salary compensation or we go full blown transparency or kind of what we have where it's more a delicate topic and no one actually wants to discuss it. Yeah, look, I think there's a a common example that we can look at for full transparency, but no

real hierarchy. If you look at like a football team, for instance, you can go online at at any point and look at everyone's salary basically inside of a football team, even the fees that they charge to change from one team to another. So that's like full, full on transparency, right? And there's no real hierarchy. There's their seniority, obviously, but there's not like one position that's kind of can tell another position what to do, for instance, right?

They all have roles inside of the team and they will have to perform those roles, obviously, like strikers generally paid more because they're the one that put the ball in the back of the net. That's the the goal of the game, I guess. But if you look at it from that perspective, that's full transparency. And is there really many downsides to doing that way? I don't know. We could use them as a case study to, to investigate and see how it works.

I do know it does affect hiring though, because you have a wage structure and if everything's transparent, if you're hiring someone who's earning double with someone else's earning at the same position, it, it asks questions, right? And then you either have to not not hire that person or, or pull them into your team or raise the current salary of the people inside of your team. And is that a bad discussion to have? I don't know. It might be a good discussion, right?

Because if we're hiring someone external who's doing the same job as us, but we're paying them more than, does that mean that they're more valuable than us? Or does that mean that our value in the market has increased? So that's the that's the question you really need to ask. And I think that these transparent discussions open up those kind of conversations. And if someone really is a top performer, everyone's OK with

them earning more. I don't think that if someone is really like destroying it at the client and producing a lot of work extra, I think if you see the top performers, everyone kind of knows already who the top performers are and I don't see that people would have a negative feeling towards those. For me, it would be inspiring. I could say, OK, I'm here, this is what I'm doing and I could look at them again, taking responsibility. I can say what are they doing

that I'm not doing? How can I get to that point? And I think transparency, what I spoke about at the beginning of the the talk was how do you get to how you don't. You need to know the end goal and how what it looks like in order to achieve that. You can't just walk aimlessly in the dark and say, OK, oh, am I, am I in the right position now? Because you probably, you might be, but you probably won't be.

But if you know where that that that dot is or where that position is on the map or how do you want it, whatever metaphor you want to use for it, then at least gives you the ability to say, OK, if I take 1, two steps, one step in this direction today and I keep making steps in this direction, I will eventually reach my goal. And I think that empowers people. Yeah, absolutely.

I think the challenge comes into changing the system, right? Because now we can assume that if the Netherlands, lots of companies don't have this open structure, don't make the salaries publicly available. But then you have a lot of discrepancy in the team, right? And once you open this up, all this skeletons will get out of the closet, right? And then there's going to be a lot of conversations. So then in this case, I think what do we need to do?

It seems like we need to 1st, yet the salary's more, more or less into the same level, right? Bring the people who are earning less to the same level that everyone else is earning. And then having this conversation, OK, now maybe let's have this open and let the people know basically what's possible. What are the ranges? Yeah. And now it's all trust based, right. If you don't know the ranges or if you don't know other people's salaries, you trust in the

system. And that doesn't have to be a bad thing basically until something pops up where you disagree. And with football, it's very, it's very apparent kind of the contribution. I'm sure there's nuances there with attackers and defenders, but at the end of the day, if you score more, the outcome is you win the match, which means, yeah, you contribute more, which take it's very different and very delicate, I feel like.

And yes, when it comes to top performance, I I do agree that we can say, OK, these are those people and if they earn that much, then that's kind of the goal. And that's probably also right now the ceiling. But it opens up the discussion that, I mean, from a company perspective, they also have to trust the people that people don't just run away when they think either the ceiling is too low or they don't see how they can bridge the gap. Like I do like the transparency part.

I've learned that it's a personal value of mine and I do think it would contribute in in these conversations as well.

I also think if you look at it from the the top perspective though, right, because we're speaking about OK, we want to drive value. So our, our OK Oz, you've spoken about this before is to drive value, right, You need to achieve certain things inside of the team. But what is business is OK Oz is it too make the most amount of

money? And if it's to make the most amount of money, if it's if that's the OK R for the business, for the managers, for instance, then that's going to motivate them to hire people for less money because they can charge more. They can they can earn more. So what is the motivation from that perspective? Is it really to squeeze out every last dollar or euro from

each person? Because then that's going to motivate them to offer less and to keep the salaries lower because the lower they they pay people. So the less money out equals and then the the same amount of money in, but less money going out. That's profits, right? So is that really what we want to achieve as a company? It could be maybe you're a financial trading company and that's really your goal is to make as much money as possible. But is that the goal of the

company that you work for? And I think that that's the shared mission and vision. If the company wants to, the people in the company want to focus on delivering value and have happy employees, but the business is focused only on money. You're always going to have a mismatch. And business is the one that's going to win at the end because they're the business, right? They're the ones at the end of the day making the business decisions. So you really need to align on

both of these. So maybe you don't want to work for a company where money is the the bottom dollar. That's fine. That's that's your decision. But maybe you do want to work for the company. Again, it's your decision. But if this is not transparent and open for people to see, then how will they choose? And if they then, if they feel like management is being having hiding the salaries behind cloak and dagger, for instance, then there's that level of trust that's lost, right?

Because now you don't trust them because you feel like they're trying to squeeze the most amount of money out of us. But maybe that's not the case. Maybe that's not the OK at all, but how do you know that unless it's transparent? So I think the transparency across salaries is important, but also about the company purpose and what are the goals of the company. Yeah, absolutely, because I want

to thank you for this interesting conversation. I love talking about performance reviews. There's a lot of delicacy and I think, I don't think it's delicacy, it's very delicate and there's a lot of nuances there. I just want to give you the opportunity to share any final thoughts you might have, starting with you to stop. On the topic or. Whatever you want. The conversation, The topic in general. Yeah, I really enjoyed the conversation with you.

As always, thank you very much for hosting us with Jethro. Always nice to be with you, brother. Always sparring some thoughts. Yeah, Yeah. Thanks very much. Yeah, I don't think I want to share anything else shared. Shared enough. Enough. Thank you as well, Jethro. Yeah, thanks for having me. And again Rustam, it's always good to to do things with you, man. My brother in in crime, maybe in crime, but in knowledge sharing

and discussions always. Yeah, I think we've spoken about a lot of main topic, a lot of topics today and I think that the main one that I would like to leave is just take responsibility for, for where you're at. I think that's my message to most people is have the conversation, be open, be transparent and take responsibility. I think that that's can be the first step in leading you to where you want to be. Love that. All right, then I'm going to

round it off. Thank you so much for listening. I'm going to put the guys, the guys, the socials in the description below this time and Jethro, check them out. And with that being said, thanks again for listening. We'll see you on the next one.