The Only Black Guy in The Office
Employee Performance Reviews Are Bullshit
Whatever business books say, they’re wrong — these things are a recipe for gaslighting
Update 6/7/22: Level has a new home. You can read this article and other new articles by visiting LEVELMAN.com.
When it comes to working in corporate settings, there’s just about nothing I despise more than employee performance reviews. They’re right up there with forced cheeriness, meetings that could’ve been emails, and emails that should’ve remained drafts. Performance reviews are some weird gumbo of patronizing, self-importance, and debate — and when you’re Black, they can have an especially shitty aftertaste.
In theory, they make sense: reviews give the company and its employees a means to assess successes and areas for improvement on an individual level. But the problem begins with the initial self-assessment, which is often composed of ambiguous, open-ended questions that all but beg for disparities between your sense of your performance and your manager’s. It’s the perfect opportunity for shady or just plain incompetent supervisors to gaslight their subordinates.
At my last job, we’d do these performance pit stops quarterly. Four times a year, I’d log onto a drab…
