Super late to this party but when I saw the title I had to come in.
Ad nauseam HR is not there for you. Unless you have a union or if your company uses an arbitrator I would not do it if I were you. I’m not real keen on arbitrators however.
During my first career I had 19 years of solid gold star performance reviews. Then I got promoted to a different unit. The Captain and Lieutenant were furious that I got promoted to their team. They did everything to make me miserable, giving me the worst of the worst assignments. For a while There I was, a Detective working floor control at the county jail. And they took a hatchet to my reviews even though I did not deserve it.
But I had a union and legal resources to fall back on. Even though our union was sucky it still worked out for me. It sounds like you have no such luck.
Do you have the option of transferring to a different team with a better manager? Or at least, a manager who hasn’t formed a negative impression of you? That’s what I did when I had this sort of issue, and it has been vastly successful. I am now happily working part-time at a job I like, with the option to retire when I stop liking it.
I would not go to HR. I can’t imagine any positive outcome from that.
That BB suggested a demotion sounds like it’s something they’ve been discussing behind your back. I can’t imagine he just happened to think of it when you talked with him. That doesn’t mean it’s age discrimination. It might be that they feel you aren’t contributing materially more than people a grade below you. Maybe they are wrong, but it sounds like that’s what your chain of command believes.
Serious question: How big a financial hit would it be to you if you did take that demotion, and then retired when you plan to retire? Is it worth fighting it?
I’ve been trying to engineer a move to another group on another project and not yet been successful, but that’s not the same as being having another manager on this project, and I’ve totally pushed pushed for that. I mean I seem to be in a cul de sac here, I’ve been trying to find any exit.
That’s the thing: I don’t know. I do know my company circulated a memo that if you moved from California expect up to a 40% pay cut because you moved to a cheaper area. That seems likely what I’m looking at.
As others said above, HR is kind of a fulcrum. If you have nothing on them (the company) then you are screwed, but if you have something on them (the company) then you might win a small victory or a large one. Or not.
If this other team was a peer team, how did they have the power to force your team off task? Or did some higher manager intervene?
Nothing will kill a career faster than having management decide you are ‘difficult’. It may not be fair, but it’s reality. And it doesn’t matter if you were right.
First rule of career advancement - be an asset to your boss. If your boss starts to think of you as a problem, you’re toast.
In my organization there are 20 of us workers for every one director position. There are three directors. The director position makes about 10% more salary, and has 100% more shitty jobs. They have no contact with clients, which is the best part of the job IMO. Most of us at this level do a great job, and would rather have hot needles in our eyes than take on the paperwork and general shittyness of the director job.
This does not mean that 57 of us are poor performers because we don’t want a shitty job for 10% more pay and no contact with the actual human beings that we like helping. It just means we want to enjoy our daily work, and continue to be damn good at it.
That’s kind of the story of my team’s life on this product: another team was working on an Important Feature (so were we) and couldn’t finish everything, so we got borrowed by a Higher Power (the Big Boss ref’d earlier) for a few months to help them. Then told to finish our Important Feature and why were we so behind?
With some sub-specialties like QA Engineer, Design Engineer, etc. But there were really only those levels. And when you got rated at the end of the year, it was against the people in your band. Once your band is full of senior or staff engineers with nowhere to go, the competition for a good rating became fierce.
This never really panned out. There was only those few levels, and we only had one or two ‘Architects’. The rest of us crowded up to the ‘Staff Engineer’ or Senior engineer level, and there was no place else to go. So for example my last team was made up of four staff engineers and a couple of senior engineers, which meant you had senior engineers doing junior work like setting up build machines and doing low-level QA work.
These tech career tracks might work in some companies, but in my experience they usually work out like ours - there just aren’t enough high level positions for all the people who deserve to move up, so everyone crowds up below the top and stagnates. We had senior engineers and staff engineers who made that grade two decades ago and wound up stuck in the same role ever since. We also had a lot of turnover among senior/staff engineers who wanted to more high level work but were essentially stuck being team leads at best.
You describe how all my orgs have worked. I believe that this is largely by design. The company doesn’t actually want people to stagnate at the Staff Engineer (or equivalent) position, they want them to either excel to the point that they need to be made Architects, get frustrated and leave freeing salary and headcount so they can replenish with Junior Engineers or they switch to a different team or management role where there’s less congestion.
Organizations need change and the need new ideas and perspectives. It’s not ideal to have a bunch of very long standing people who have maxed out and are content there. It’s ultimately bad for morale and it leads to you being disrupted due to a lack of innovation.
This. I suggest the OP sit down and make a list of accomplishments during the last two years. Then make a list of the things that didn’t go swimmingly as intended. Which list is longer?
Now, about those items that were delayed, or not completed, why were they not completed?
These lists can be used in a discussion with the boss or HR regarding job performance.
If, upon reviewing, the lists show you that you are at fault for much of this (and yes, you must be cruelly honest with yourself by putting yourself in a management role as you read over them), then you would see your boss has a valid point. If so, you may want to take the demotion, but it would probably be better to ask your boss to work with you to create a performance improvement plan. If the boss would rather just demote you than work with you, the problem lies with management and you should put your resume into circulation or be willing to work at this lesser level. But don’t be surprised if the lower level means more donkey work and another opportunity to threaten you with a firing.
If, upon that cruel to yourself review, you still come up shining, then and only then might you have a reason to complain to HR.
I have a good friend who has been put on performance review three times at two companies. The first ended with her being fired and fighting back for her unemployment benefits, which she won by provoking the employer to admit that she “just didn’t fit” in front of the mediator. The second time, she improved and moved to a different and stronger role. The third time, just this last year when she could find no reason for her to have been put in this position by her boss, she did ask HR and HR did some review and - fired her boss. It turned out that the new-to-her boss only put female employees on PIP programs and, in every case, the female employee was prettier than her and the bosses’ complaints were a stretch. You never know.
This is so true. I had an annual performance review with my boss a couple of years ago in which she told me I had an average year which was nothing special. I then proceeded to list all my accomplishments and projects that year most of which she’d completely forgotten about. “Oh I guess you did have a good year after all then…”
Don’t let the business dictate to you what sort of year you’ve had. Nobody knows better than you. Fight your corner and sell your achievements to them. Even if those are small wins that are exclusive to the way you work personally. In fact especially if they are exclusive to you. Those are the ones you need to communicate the most, and which you can talk up the importance of.
Sometimes you have to manage your manager. ‘not working at your level’ is a hopelessly vague critique. Specifics.
If your boss has specific complaints, you can respond to them. If your boss has specific targets for you, you can work to meet them. If your boss doesn’t volunteer specificity, that’s bad, but you can ask for it.
The last place that I worked had a different process. You did a self review first in which you listed your accomplishments. After that, the boss did their review.
I wouldn’t go to HR. I’d ask your direct boss face to face what specific things you need to be doing to “work up to your level” and examples where your performance hasn’t meet expectations. If you’re able to wangle something concrete out of him as far as tangible goals, I’d confirm those by email with bullet points, so you have written backup. Keep a file of your work and what roadblocks were put in your way if you’re unable to meet all the goals.
Keep your head down and keep your job until you’re ready to retire. I’m 60 and an analyst, and fortunately still getting exemplary reviews, not that it means that much in the long run, pay-wise. But I need health insurance, and that’s my main reason for working now.
