Tips for my next trip to Korea
I recently returned home after a memorable 3-week trip to Korea with my parents and my youngest child. This was my 7th trip back to Korea after immigrating t...
Let's Get Rid Of Performance Rating Scales
Several weeks ago I wrapped up conducting employee performance reviews for the 2020 calendar year and it’s the first time that I can remember in my career where there was no rating associated with a formal employee review cycle. While at Venmo/PayPal a 3-tier rating system is what we have in place, an exception was made for the 2020 review year to forego ratings due to reasons related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Just a single performance review cycle with no ratings has convinced me that ratings are detrimental to good performance review conversations and that ultimately they do more harm than good. I had accepted employee ratings as the norm but I now find myself questioning this norm. Here are my reasons why I would love to see performance rating scales a thing of the past–at least in the software industry.
Demoralizing for the vast majority of employees who are still doing good work
Based on my experience the vast majority of employees tend not to receive the top rating. Many of these folks tend to be excellent employees but don’t earn the top rating for a variety of reasons, often because there’s often official/unofficial quota of how many people can fall into the top rating bucket. It can be rather demoralizing for employees when they know they’ve done great work, are liked by their colleagues, receive consistent feedback that they’re doing good work and yet in the end they end up with a mere “Average” or “Above Average” rating. For most people this is deflating, demotivating, and even demoralizing.
Employees (and their reviews) get reduced to their rating
Just about every time I’ve been on the giving end of a performance review there are 2 things that appear to take up the vast majority of the employee’s attention: 1) Anything that deals with money (merit increase and/or bonus) 2) Rating. Let me focus on the latter for the purposes of this blog post. I would argue that most employees place a lot of weight on the rating they receive and that they basically equate it with a letter grade they would’ve received if they were in school. Throughout my career I’ve heard several employers say something along the lines of “Please don’t perceive your rating as your letter grade - they’re not the same!” and I’ve come to the conclusion that this is virtually impossible. Employees perceive their rating as a top-level summary of the entirety of their review. Telling my employee “You’re doing great!” carries little weight when “Average” or “Above Average” is the rating that I’ve given them. When I’m on the giving end of a performance review it is awkward for me to tell the employee the wonderful things they’re doing when their rating is “Average”. Their rating ends up being the lens through which they receive and perceive their review and in most cases this ends up having a negative impact on the quality of the review conversation.
I’d like to now touch on the topic of employees getting reduced their rating. An example of this sort of thing happening is when managers talk amongst themselves and label their employees as “Exceeding expectations” or “Average” based upon their most recent rating. I’ve been there, done that. Now that my eyes have been opened to the world of no ratings I find myself bothered by reducing employees in this manner. I believe the mere existence of rating scale encourages and promotes managers to label and reduce employees to their most recent set of ratings. This is harmful to employees and ultimately to employers.
Ratings are highly subjective
I’ve been working in the software industry for over 20 years and I haven’t found a satisfactory way of objectively quantifying the work output of software engineers. I have not seen anyone do this well. While there are what I would call “mini measurements” that give you glimpses into employees’ work output (eg, # of Jira tickets that got done, # of bugs opened against their code, etc.) they are just glimpses. I’ve tried to come up with a satisfactory formula for how to objectively measure software engineers’ work output and… I’ve given up. This is a hard problem to solve and I am personally convinced at this point in my career that this is an impossible problem to solve.
Writing this blog post has caused me to think deeply about why I dislike rating scales so much and perhaps the biggest reason is because of what I’ve said in the above paragraph. There are no good objective ways to quantifiably measure software engineers’ work output, which results in ratings being highly subjective. While I would love to be able to come to a data-driven conclusion at deciding something as important & weighty as whether to give my employee a “Meets Expectations” or “Above Expectations” I don’t trust myself to do this well nor do I trust others to do this well either.
In conclusion - let’s get rid of performance rating scales because they’re highly subjective and they do more harm than good.
2023
My job search recap
After 4 weeks of very aggressive job searching, I was able to wrap up my job search late last week and I decided on an offer yesterday. Hooray! This is the f...
2021
Running Effective and Efficient Meetings
I spend a lot of time at work in meetings. I regularly think about having effective and efficient meetings and here’s a list of things that I think are impor...
Let’s Get Rid Of Performance Rating Scales
Several weeks ago I wrapped up conducting employee performance reviews for the 2020 calendar year and it’s the first time that I can remember in my career wh...
My Role As “Clarity Provider”
Over the last several months I’ve become increasingly convinced that one of my most important responsibilities as an engineering manager is to provide clarit...
My Fitness And Health Routine
Something that is personally very important to me is that I stay fit and healthy for as long as possible in life. While I wouldn’t label myself a “fitness nu...
My System For Staying Organized At Work
Being organized is a skill I personally value and at least for me - it’s a no-brainer that being organized can help everyone do their jobs better. It was imp...
Note-taking and Documentation for Engineering Managers
During my time at Venmo as an engineering manager (since October of 2019) there are some note-taking / documentation things that I started doing that I hadn’...
2019
Personal Retreat
I drove about 2 hours west to Stockton, IL - to a place called Christ in the Wilderness (CITW), to spend a few days (Friday evening - Sunday morning) to myse...
2018
Deconstruct
I recently returned home from attending Deconstruct along with a bunch of my co-workers. I thought I’d jot my thoughts down while the experience is still fre...
Ruby Script On Heroku That Accesses Google Sheet On A Schedule
I recently had a need to write a simple script that writes to a Google Sheet document once a day. I decided to write the script in Ruby and host it on Heroku...
My Disappointment With The New Macbook Pro
When I started at Braintree I was given a new 2017 15” MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. It’s a really nice laptop overall and I don’t mean to sound ungrateful… bu...
A Few Weeks Into The New Job
I’ve been at Braintree now for almost 3 weeks and I can’t believe it’s only been a few weeks because I’ve experienced a ton of new things and have met a lot ...
Interview Process Takeaways
In the last several weeks I’ve had the opportunity to speak with numerous companies as a job candidate. While the experience is still fresh in my mind, I tho...
2017
Thankful
I started 2017 with a ton of excitement over the opportunity to build Cappex’s very own college application product. I knew it was going to be an extremely c...
New Product Launch And Life Afterwards
A very large chunk of my life from the very beginning of this year until the end of July was focused on launching a new college application product. Thanks t...
Create a Website On a Custom Domain for Practically Free With Heroku and GoDaddy
I’ve had several people ask me over the years what’s a good & cheap way to set up a static or a dynamic website on a custom domain. One of the best thing...
Lessons Learned After 148 Phone Screens Leading To 9 Hires In 4 Months
Coming into 2017 I had a lofty goal of hiring 10 people by the end of February. 10 is the number of people I had hired up to the end of 2016 when I had been ...
Hello Is A Poor Greeting
I’ve done what I think is an insane amount of phone screens since December (well over 100) and in the last few weeks there’s something I’ve been noticing whe...
Setting Up Auto Adjusting Filtering In Google Sheets
Once I built out my custom dashboard using Google Sheets (read my blog post on this topic) I decided that I wanted to look at the data for only the last 30 d...
Building A Custom Dashboard Using Google Sheets And Sheetsu
I was looking for a way to build a custom dashboard that’s relevant for me and the team (especially my DevOps team), which at the very least, includes the fo...
Developer Candidates Should Be Writing Code During Phone Screens
I think this is going to be a pretty short post.
Hiring Is Tiring
Yep, hiring is tiring. Very much so.
2016
Childbirth Thoughts From One Man’s Perspective
NOTE - This is a blog post that I started writing when my wife and I were at the hospital this past August waiting for our daughter to be born. I started wo...
The Christmas Gift Test
Ever since I started managing people several years back I’ve practiced giving Christmas gifts and a hand-written Christmas card to everyone on my team. I in...
Do Not Store Personal Data On Your Work Computer
I know that it’s often convenient to have your personal files stored on your work computer, especially If you’re like me and you spend a lot more time on you...
10 Lessons From 10 Companies In 19 Years
Since landing my first programming job when I was a junior in high school until now, I recently realized that I’ve now worked at 10 different companies, incl...
I wish DST would end
I really wish Daylight Savings Time would cease to exist. I can’t possibly imagine that DST would go away in my lifetime due to the sheer complexities and c...
Be Thankful
Last 2 weeks at work have been rough. This most recent sprint as well as the release ended up being much more difficult than what my team is normally used t...
Stop Forcing Your Programmers To Perform Manual Tasks
Stop forcing your programmers to perform mindless manual tasks that could be handled via programmatic means. And if you’re a programmer who is in the unfort...
Upgrading to Java 8 could introduce bugs depending on your usage of HashSet
If you’re looking to upgrade from Java 7 to Java 8 you may not be aware that there are some rather significant differences to how ordering is maintained for ...
Simple Ways To Distinguish Between Engineering Levels
Lately I’ve been thinking about the simplest possible ways to distinguish between different levels of engineers, which are typically something along the line...
Dealing With The Fear Of Losing Your Technical Skill Set When Stepping Into A Management Role
When I was promoted to my current role of VP of Technology a little over 2 years ago, one of my biggest fears was that my technical chops would quickly deter...
A few gotchas when setting up Jekyll + GitHub Pages + custom domain
I just finished “converting” my music website from Heroku to utilizing Jekyll + GitHub Pages. And by “converting”, I mean I killed off a project that was se...
Gradle Build Scan Rocks
Earlier today I attend a webinar hosted by Gradle, Inc. where Gradle Build Scan was introduced. If you’re already using Gradle as the build tool for your pr...
Writing and deploying a simple application using Java 8 + Spark
I recently discovered Spark, which advertises itself as a “micro framework for creating web applications in Java 8 with minimal effort”. Like many developer...
Compare Property Files
I’ve been working on a rather massive refactoring work that involves changing how Java properties files are organized. It’s vitally important that the prope...
Page Load Speed Testing
I decided to conduct some simple page load speed testing. I hope the following info might be of some value to some folks out there.
Replacing SSD in MacBook Air (13” mid-2012)
I was running low on my 13” mid-2012 MacBook Air’s SSD, which had me pretty concerned. Thankfully I recently discovered that the SSD inside this thing is re...
Copying A Single File From One Git Repo To Another Git Repo While Maintaining Commit History
Yesterday at work I had a need to copy a single from an existing Git repository to a newly created Git repository while maintaining all of the commit history...
Simple Interview And Phone Screen Tips
I’ve been busy doing a lot of phone screens and interviews as of late. Actually, I’ve been doing a lot of interviewing during my time at Cappex. Since join...
What To Do When You Are On The Receiving End Of A 2 Week Notice
One of the things I hate the most about my job is having to deal with losing good people on the team. I run a small organization (currently 10 people includ...
Resolving Issue With Code Example In Lightweight Django Chapter 2
I’ve been reading through the book ‘Lightweight Django’ by Julia Elman and Mark Lavin and I was having a lot of trouble getting the final example in Chapter ...
Looking To Start Or Join a Support Group Of CTOs And Engineering VPs In Chicago
Here’s something I just posted on Hacker News - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11643390
Tips For Technical Managers On Writing Better Employee Reviews
At Cappex.com, we do formal employee reviews twice a year and being that it’s already May, I’m starting to think about writing reviews for folks on my team. ...
Resolving Tethering Issues With iPhone
I spend roughly an hour and a half Monday through Friday commuting to and from work and my laptop is tethered to my phone probably 90% of the time I’m on the...
Deleting Non-empty AWS Glacier Vaults
I had a couple of AWS Glacier vaults that I had been meaning to permanently delete for awhile. When I tried deleting them via the AWS dashboard, I got the f...
Selenium WebDriver and JavaScript Confirmation Dialog
One of many things I had been wanting to accomplish in the 2nd half of 2015 was to start making some hands-on contributions to my team’s functional test auto...
2015
Measuring The Performance Of Java 8 Parallel Sort
I was curious as to the performance improvement of Arrays.parallelSort over Arrays.sort.
Managing The Unmanageable And Behind Closed Doors
Whoops. I started working on this blog post all the way back in mid-February and it’s now mid-April. Life has been busy. Work is busy. Being a dad to a 9...
Why Android Sucks
Android sucks. At least my experience of it has. Now, I’m NOT saying that Android-sucks-therefore-Apple-is-way-better. All I’m saying is that I’ve had 3 A...
Clean Code A Handbook Of Agile Software Craftsmanship
Something I’d like to start doing in 2015 is to write a blog post after finishing a book, provided that there are at least a few key takeaways. I’m thinking...
Setting Up A 301 Redirect In Ruby On Rails
I saw in Google Analytics that I’ve been getting a lot of hits on junhopark.com/index.php, which isn’t a valid page. I decided that it’d be best to set up a...
My Thoughts After Being VP of Technology For Six Months
In July of last year, I stepped into my role as the VP of Technology at Cappex where I oversee software engineering, QA, operations, and corporate IT. Now th...
2014
My First Album Is Now Available For Purchase
My first album Acoustic Worship is now available for purchase on CDBaby.com! Recording an album is something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time and I’m g...
Resolving Dns Issue On Mac Os X Yosemite
I upgraded both my MacBook Air and MacBook Pro to Yosemite over the weekend and I saw that both my laptops were unable to connect to internal systems at the ...
Adding Page-specific JavaScript Files in a Rails Project
Being that I’m a Ruby on Rails newbie, I was looking for a way to add page-specific JavaScript files on a Ruby on Rails (Rails 4) project. Here’s one way to...
A Memorable Phone Screen
A few days ago, I phone screened a QA Manager candidate that ended up being extremely memorable. It went something like this:
Workout Frequency Before And After Baby
Ever since my son was born in late June, it’s been a challenge trying to find time to work out. Since I record every one of my workout sessions, I thought I’...
Merging Codebases In Git
A couple of weeks ago, I had to merge one codebase into another codebase and after a lot of searching for solutions on the web, I came across a solution that...
2013
Why I Love Being Married
My wife and I met through a (very) random suggestion from a mutual friend 3 and a half years ago. It was suggested to us that we should meet up, get to know...
Pictures From Turks and Caicos
Here are some pictures I took while I was in Turks and Caicos earlier this month with my wife.
My Thoughts On Commenting In Code
A skill that is often overlooked amongst developers and development managers is the ability to write good comments in code, which is understandable I suppose...
Hacker News By Points
I frequent Hacker News (news.ycombinator.com) pretty often throughout the day and I realized that my eyes were almost always drawn to posts on the first page...
Template Java Embedded Jetty Application On Github
I’ve been meaning to get something up on GitHub and here it is at last:
Playing Around With Lightroom
I thought I’d give Adobe Lightroom a try and play around with editing some pictures. Well, here are the results.
Getting Heroku + Java + Jetty + IntelliJ IDEA to Work
I noticed that Heroku supports Java applications running on Jetty and since I’ve never worked with Jetty previously, I thought I’d give it a go. Please note...
One Less Debt
Just paid off my student loans, which took me about 9 years and 3 months. I was planning on letting it drag on and on because of the super low interest on i...
Weekend Project Php Website On Heroku
I got hold of some really nice looking single page website templates earlier last week (from here) so I thought I’d go ahead and redo the website for my pare...
Building A Mobile App Using Phonegap Jquery Mobile And Intellij Idea
After years and years of writing software for the web, I decided that it’s about time I start tinkering around with mobile apps. I decided to use the follow...
Three Monitor Setup
Thanks to Plugable I’ve now got 2 monitors hooked up to my Lenovo laptop at work and I’m absolutely loving it. I definitely should’ve done this way sooner.
Teaching My Wife How To Code
My wife recently decided that she wants to learn how to code and of course, I’ve volunteered to be her teacher. She has absolutely no experience with progra...
Stuff I’ve Been Learning
It’s been quite awhile since my last blog post and I had a sudden itch to write about things I’ve been learning (mostly at/through work) over the course of, ...
Initial Thoughts On Synology NAS DS213
I purchased a Synology NAS DS213 last week and here are my thoughts after using this device for about a week now:
New Year’s Resolutions For 2013
Big things I want to accomplish in 2013:
2012
I’ve Got A Lot To Be Thankful For
I’ve got a lot to be thankful for. Here are some that stand out for me:
Moving From Subversion To Git
Last Thursday, my team made a successful transition from Subversion to Git. Here are some thoughts after having been on Git as a team for about a week now:
Debugging Play Framework Applications in IntelliJ IDEA 11
I just spent 30 minutes on Google trying to figure out how to debug my Play application in IntelliJ when it should’ve taken me 1 minute, tops.
I Am Not Going To Pay You To See Your Portfolio
Earlier today, I had a web design candidate who informed us that he would be able to provide us with an up-to-date portfolio of his design work for a flat fe...
Notes From Chicago Web Conf 2012
Here are my notes from ChicagoWebConf 2012 (Oct 6, 2012).
Lessons Learned While At Lakeview Church
This coming Sunday will be my last Sunday at Lakeview Church. I’ve been a part of this church since summer of 2006 and I’ve been blessed to experience such ...
My Experience Of Attending A Career Fair As An Employer
Yesterday I got to represent Cappex at a career fair that was being held at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. I had only attended a career fa...
Creating A Simple Ruby On Rails App With Postmarkdown
As I noted in my blog post from 9/15, I decided to recreate my site using Ruby on Rails + Postmarkdown and deploy to Heroku. FYI, my site is a super simple ...
Hello Ruby On Rails Postmarkdown
Decided to ditch PHP + WordPress + Lithium Hosting for Ruby on Rails + Postmarkdown + Heroku.
No More Taking Work Home
It’s been about 6 weeks since I started working at cappex.com and while I’ve been really enjoying the work, I’ve also been guilty of bringing work home. I’v...
Job Search Tips From Personal Experience
Earlier this year I decided that it’s time for me to look for another opportunity outside the company. The company executives decided on being acquired by O...
Moodyshoerepair.com Redesign Launched
I gave moodyshoerepair.com a (much needed) facelift over the course of this past week and it’s now live online. This is the first project completed on my n...
Why I Regret Getting an Android Phone Instead of iPhone
I wish I had waited to get the new iPhone (whatever is gonna come after the 4S) instead of picking up the Galaxy Note.
Why I Will Never Fly With Spirit Airlines Ever Again
I shall never ever fly Spirit Airlines again. My reasons why?
Adjusting The Screen Brightness On My Samsung Note The Easy Way
I’ve had my Samsung Galaxy Note for about a month now and I’ve been loving it. It was a HUGE upgrade over my old phone (Blackberry Bold 9000) and it beats t...
Been Awhile
The last time I wrote in this thing was 10/22 of last year, which is also the time when wedding preparations got crazy. Well, thank God the wedding is now ov...
2011
Taking A Breather In San Francisco
I arrived in San Francisco last night with Jenny and a friend of ours at around 10:30 local time to attend Jenny’s friend’s wedding which takes place later t...
Writing Good Software Simple Reminders To Self
One of the main purposes for keeping this blog is for me to think through and reflect upon things and to remind myself of the lessons that I’m learning. I k...
Commuting To Downtown Chicago For Work
My office moved from Westmont to Chicago about 2 and a half months ago and ever since then I’ve been taking the Metra train to get to work. There are some t...
Lessons Learned From A Family Tragedy
While reading my Bible this morning before work I came across the following question:
Wow 7 Years Already Since Undergrad
This past Wednesday, I paid a visit to my alma mater (UIC) to be among the panelists to share my post-college experiences of working in the corporate world. ...
My Engagement Ring Selection Process
One of the main motivations behind why Jenny and I wanted to start this blog in the first place was so that this blog would (eventually at some point once th...
I Am Engaged!
On Saturday, I got engaged to the most amazing girl I know. :) It still hasn’t quite hit me yet. To be honest, I’m guessing it’ll hit me once I get used to...
New Site Design
I’ve been wanting to convert my site to a single-page design and after working on this on & off for the last several weeks, I’m glad to have the site fin...
2010
Been A Long Time
It sure has been a long time since the last time I updated my blog. Here are the different things that have been occupying me in these last couple of months:
Excellent Book On Web Usability
One of the things I’ve been enjoying about work since I made the switch last November is being able to get my hands dirty with front-end web development and ...
Software Development As Missional Philanthropy
For some time now I’ve been really interested in going overseas for the purposes of doing missional philanthropic work. And by “missional philanthropy” I am...
User Interface Design 090
Do you remember how in college there were classes that were actually below 100-level? The classes that some folks were required to take but they didn’t coun...
If You Write Code Write Tests
So… I’m scrounging around the internet looking for some TDD-related tidbits and I came across the following at www.artima.com.
Making The Most Out Of Band Rehearsals
Band rehearsals–some love ‘em, some hate ‘em, but there’s no denying that they are very much necessary, even for bands that are comprised of phenomenal music...
Lessons Learned From Being In The Shoes Of QA
At work we have a huge product release coming up very soon. There are a lot of new features to the application, which means that there has been a ton of cha...
New Recording - Gone From The Portrait
Over the weekend I started re-recording a song which I had written a few years back. Vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitars, bass, keyboards, drums-via-k...
New Music - Lullaby (Instrumental)
After lunch @ Sweet Tomatoes with some friends I came back home and took a much needed nice, (too) long nap. Fast forward a few hours and it was around 11: ...
Grand Opening Of Our Church From A Worship Leaders Perspective
This upcoming Sunday is going to be a pretty big & important day at the church I’m serving as a worship leader–it’s the grand opening day at our Vernon H...
Java Hosting For Relatively Cheap With Rimuhosting
I have a few minutes to spare while my Ubuntu workspace is being patched up with some security updates so I thought I’d share a little blurp or two about Rim...
Playing Background Music During Worship Service
Almost every Sunday morning, I am needed to provide live background music, either on the guitar or the piano, at church worship services. Usually this takes...
Done
Yet another rendition of junhopark.com is done… at last! I decided to forsake my old Blogger posts since it’s been quite awhile since my last blog update an...