SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for Bytram
Atlassian ditches 'brilliant jerks' in performance review overhaul
Atlassian says it will no longer tolerate "brilliant jerks" who deliver results for the company but make life hell for their co-workers as part of a complete overhaul of how the tech firm conducts performance reviews.
The $47 billion Australian software company, which was founded in Sydney in 2002 and floated on the US stock market in 2015, says two-thirds of every performance review will now have nothing to do with job skills.
Instead, equal weighting will be given to how each of its 3000 employees impacts others on their team, and to how they live the company values. Atlassian says the change will “more fairly measure people on how they bring their whole self to work”.
“Basically over the last 18 to 24 months we have totally changed the way we do performance reviews at the company globally,” Atlassian global head of talent Bek Chee said.
“We recognise things are not the way they used to be, yet companies haven’t evolved (from) 30 years ago when they were primarily made up often of white men. Tech standards have evolved, we have new ways of working, new demographics and generational change.”
Ms Chee said most companies “haven’t looked at their performance systems in a new innovative way”. “We wanted to make sure we were rewarding the right behaviours,” she said.
“One of the things we wanted to make sure we accounted for was the ‘brilliant jerk’ — people who are extremely bright and talented with respect to the way they execute their role but aren’t necessarily concerned with the impact they have on others. We want to make sure our system prevented that.”
Ms Chee said it was “not about people being shuffled out” of the company, but “what it has allowed us to do is really de-bias the performance system” by taking into account an employee’s entire contribution.
[...] Ms Chee said appealing to the millennial and gen Y and Z crowd was “a huge part of this”. “We know the next generation are very socially conscious, they have a different set of expectations. They’re kind of no-bullshit. They don’t want to hear a company say, ‘You can bring your whole self to work, we’re diverse, we’re socially conscious’, and not have that backed up.”
But she stressed that it was not about coddling millennials with a participation-trophy mentality. “Fundamentally this does not change the way we think about high performers. Our top performers we know nail it in terms of living values and being part of the team and delivering in their role,” she said.
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by epitaxial on Friday July 19 2019, @04:42PM (7 children)
He seems uncomfortable his company inviting more women than men for some reason. There is nothing wrong with that given the tech industry is mostly men. Now had the company hired people only on the basis of them being female than I would have a problem. Like the gaming community being a boys club and being upset that women are invading their special club. See this most recent example https://www.bleedingcool.com/2019/07/05/smash-bros-community-harasses-a-15-year-old-girl-for-beating-a-pro/ [bleedingcool.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Friday July 19 2019, @05:03PM (5 children)
Again, you're not addressing the post, you're telling me about the person who made it.
And I don't see how you could know anything at all about the person who made it, unless you are that person.
Again, did you post that?
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @05:13PM (4 children)
Well, he does seem uncomfortable around women. We could be dealing with an incel, or a serial rapist/murderer. Can't be too careful with ACs, you see.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @10:55PM (3 children)
Or we could be dealing with someone who thinks we should be hitting based on skills as a qualification rather than vaginas and tits...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 19 2019, @11:43PM
You mean a racist?
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20 2019, @12:04AM
First, you should not be hitting on anyone in a professional work environment, even if it is a pron studio.
Second, why would you sexually prefer skills over other qualifications?
Third, you are not actually referring to literally "hitting", as in battery? This may explain why you are so nervous around women.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 20 2019, @03:26AM
Then there would be very few men getting jobs.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Saturday July 20 2019, @03:44AM
And?
If so, then why segue into the nonsensical comparison to a boys-only social club for middle schoolers? Sounds like you think there's something wrong with that even if you claim otherwise.
I think the obvious rebuttal here is to switch around the groups so that it confirms different stereotypes. Should he be comfortable with his company inviting more men than women, more whites than blacks, etc? It's one thing for a company to distinguish based on characteristics that are useful to the company's business, such as skilled programmers. When they start distinguishing on characteristics that are a) irrelevant to business need, and b) you can't do a thing about, whether you have it or not, then there's good reason to be uncomfortable.