The fact that the bad performance review is a “surprise” generally indicated poor management. A manager should not wait a full year until performance review time to provide feedback that an employee is not “working at their level”.
I do find it odd that the OP has been working at the same level for 19 years at a Silicon Valley tech company. No promotions or new roles in almost two decades?
I don’t really know how to respond because I don’t know the OP, their relationship with their manager, the culture of the company, and what the performance issue was based on.
I can say that the OP probably shouldn’t talk to HR unless they have a particular goal in mind. Yes, HR is there to protect the company, but that doesn’t mean that the particular middle manager you report to represents “the company”. Part of protecting the company is preventing situations that puts the company at risk of lawsuits and bad PR.
A couple things to think in mind:
Is there any truth to the manager’s feedback? Keeping in mind that even at the same “level” there are different performance expectations for someone with 19 years experience vs 1-5.
Is this a new manager? Different managers have different expectations. If this is the same manager, what has changed in the past year or so?
Are there other examples of age discrimination? Have you witnessed other employees over 40 being unfairly treated or given less than desirable projects?
What are you really looking for here? IOW, explain how this isn’t just complaining to HR because you didn’t like your review.
About 4 people in my Wife’s department quit because of a new boss. About a quarter of the staff. They had been long, long time employees. My Wife for ~20 years. My Wife took over a 50% cut in pay to work somewhere else. That’s how bad she (and others) wanted out because of the new boss.
She did an exit interview with HR, which is standard, and someone was there on a laptop transcribing it. My Wife agreed that they could do it.
What TPTB would not do is give my Wife a copy of the transcript. Shouldn’t that be SOP??? We don’t know what’s in there.
I’ve been in tech my whole career, and it’s one place that I think that there’s some rationality behind age discrimination. The field changes so fast that decades of experience isn’t necessarily proportionally worth all those years to the company. The hot tech of today is vastly different than in the past that experience doesn’t always translate. It’s often better to have college newbies on a project with their fresh perspective and enthusiasm than to have old-timers who are more set in their ways. Now everything’s moving to the cloud with new scripting languages and new hassles to overcome. Ugh. It gets tiring after a while. I can remember when I was young being excited to learn a new language, but now I’m just tired of it all and I have to push myself to get stuff done.
I’m not sure if that’s your situation, but regardless, the tech environment is constantly changing and companies have to adapt to the market. If you are not actively and enthusiastically embracing that change, then the company can’t afford to have you around. The market won’t support companies which do things the old way. The market wants the new stuff and they want it now. I doubt that the company is giving you a hard time simply because of your age. Certainly your experience is valuable, but it’s not all that valuable in today’s ever-changing tech market. If you want to stick around, get enthusiastic about your product so your company sees you as valuable. Do not go to HR and complain about how you are being treated. That’s likely going to just make them think of you as more of a problem.
in 2019 I had to take a medical leave of absence for 90 days. HR was extremely supportive at the time. I came back to work in May, and had a normal review that year.
in 2020 I had three different managers. The second manager indicated he thought I was being less than positive about some of the work being done. Which was fair: my team ended up working on basically a bunch of “hey look, new feature here!” gee wiz UI stuff that was extremely time consuming that I didn’t think would benefit customers in the least, in the meantime not working on a big feature I’d designed that was the number one feature request – by far – from our customers. We finally did finish the big feature (on desktop and 2 mobile platforms) but I was dinged for not being supportive of the stupid stuff (which ended up being stupid and not helping us, as predicted).
Second manager leaves the company after just 8 weeks and 3rd manager, newly hired, is handed basically a mixed review from manager 2, and didn’t know otherwise so that was my review in 2020. So okay, I’ll work with new guy and things will get better, right?
Meanwhile I wasn’t given stock, though I did get a bonus. (It’s normal to get stock every other year if they like you; I’d never not had this happen.) I nicely asked why and this was the very first time I got the “not working at your level” talk from the Big Boss that all the managers (4) report to. I disagreed but what was done was done.
3rd manager turned out to be a micro managing (hell, nano managing) stress monster who seemed unable to give clear direction and changed his mind constantly and ran meetings that took 3 hours to do 30 minutes of discussion. I’d already been talking to Big Boss about other stuff and finally voiced exasperation, especially over lack of clear direction. That’s when things started going sideways.
Last week on Pearl Harbor Day I was told by Big Boss to shape up and if I didn’t start working at my ‘level’ soon I’d get demoted. He basically decided my issues with my manager were me being difficult.
Weird shit: I have no copies of my reviews so I don’t have a clear sense of what HR would even see. All my reviews have been verbal and I was not given a copy, just a letter with my raise % amount (last year was 3%).
Someone above asked why I’d been at the same level for 19 years. I’m basically at the highest level someone can be, and in fact they created this level just to hire me in 2002. (I was running a consulting gig and they ended up being 80% of my business, so this was sort of a buy out.) The next level is Principal Scientist, which is more a political job than an engineering one. I’d angled for that job before and realized it’s just not possible unless I traveled back in time and filed a bunch of patents.
Was someone just taking notes or was actual transcription taking place? And, no, we don’t typically share our notes with employees. I’ve had a few people ask me for copies but I’ve always refused.
Big Boss didn’t like that I took a MOLA = retaliation
Big Boss thinks I make too much money = age discrimination
And yes, they could just simply be legitimately unimpressed with my work. But some of this feels like “we told you to work on stupid shit, so how come you have so few accomplishments”? Straight up mismanagement.
It strikes me as curious that you would not be able to see your written reviews.
Since you say you expect to retire in 3-4 years, I’d suggest you focus your efforts on ensuring that you don’t get fired. The stock/bonuses would be nice, but the main thing is to keep that salary/bennies going till you are ready to leave.
I wouldn’t contact HR personally, but I WOULD send a written request for clarification as to what specifically indicated your failure to perform “up to your level.” Depending on how pissy I felt, I might observe that the only change you are aware of was different manager, and I’d express my assumption that the MLOA and your age had nothing to do with it.
They can fire you for no reason, but not for a bad reason.
You mean send that request to Big Boss or HR? The former feels like escalation, likely to backfire, but maybe I lack technique. Or maybe write that to BB and cc HR? Still feels like escalation. Hm.
I am far from a master of workplace politics. And I have no idea how your shop handles reviews and such.
But you say:
That impresses me as pretty significant escalation in itself. I doubt there is any correct answer - only the one that you are comfortable with. But if my boss said something like that to me, I would send him/her an email in response, just to create a paper trail should it ever get escalated further. It is such BS when mgmt does crap verbally which they can later deny.
If you wanted, you could phrase it BS positively, like, “I was disappointed to not be awarded stock this yr. I’m confident my performance remains as high as previously, and compares favorably w/ similar employees. I welcome the opportunity to discuss what can be done to ensure that I continue to perform at the highest levels for years to come.”
(Just off the top of my head.). Could go to your direct supervisor. Maybe cc: the big boss or not. But I’d send it with read receipt.
There may not be a written review - my husband’s actual review is verbal only. There might be some paperwork around “we had a conversation about my performance review on date” or " Your new salary will be $XXX effective date" , but not the actual review.
I believe a transcription. But it was someone else there just on a laptop typing away that my Wife agreed would be OK. I think it was a transcription of all said. Don’t really know if it was word for word.
It sounds like your boss is tired of you complaining to him. It’s a shame you didn’t ask any of them what “working at your level” means, what needs improving?
it’s not the “highest level you can be” if you have at least two layers of management above you.
I think in this case talking to HR is premature because I don’t really know if you are being “treated badly” (at least from what you described). You have two managers giving you negative reviews. And you would also seem to not have been provided written reviews. I think a first step is to talk to your various available bosses and Big Boss and get a consistent picture of what your actual performance really is.
Think of it this way. HR isn’t going to simple reverse your performance review just because you didn’t like it. In HR’s mind, your manager provided his opinion on your performance and HR wouldn’t typically have other information to dispute it.
People self reporting this based on their own confirmation bias. Literally everyone fired after the age of 50 is convinced it’s ageism. This means less than nothing,
You’ve reached the level you want to be at and have no interest in being promoted. That’s what you are saying. In almost every company you move into management eventually or you stagnate. Sounds like stagnation is a feature for you, of course management is going to tire of the status quo with you. These systems are not built for people not advancing. Every HR system sets goals and those goals are tied to the quality of your review. If your goal is to stay the same, that is definitionally a “doesn’t meet expectations” grade.
I’m getting more convinced that this has nothing to do with age and everything to do with attitude. If you’ve spent the last 19 years telling your employer “nah, I’m good” what did you really expect?