That he didn't even confront his manager about his real number doesn't speak well to his willingness to try to improve the place.
I don't know where people get this idea. There's a lot of story and I haven't told most of it.
My boss promised a 3.4, then gave me something lower (probably 3.0-3.1). When I confronted him, he said it was because Google+ out in California wanted me to suffer for criticizing a product (that later failed, as I predicted). So I asked him to put a note on the HR file noting that the ding was political and not related to performance. I didn't care what the score was (the difference in bonus between 3.0 and 3.4 is minor) but I wanted the record to show what had happened, and an agreement on 3.4+ for the next 4 quarters to compensate for throwing me under the bus. That's all I wanted, and it's a small, reasonable, request. Everyone knows that "performance" reviews are about politics anyway, so I have no qualms about using one as a negotiation token. It's a game, so play it.
In response to my request, he went and revised my calibration score downward. He also made speculations about health problems (I have very-high-functioning hypergraphia, which is often a symptom of something else but in my case it's just standalone hypergraphia) that were irrelevant to work performance-- just to label me. I was in the process of deciding whether (a) to get attorneys on the case-- most attorneys don't want to appeal performance reviews because there's no money in it-- (b) to offer a side bribe to someone with performance DB access, or (c) to just get another job. The winner was (c); (a) and (b) meant $10k+ for something that might not work and would only pay itself off if I were there for 5+ years.
Also, HR investigated and found out there was no ding from California. Completely made up.
So, I dug around and found out that a mysterious departure of someone (a serious CS heavyweight) who had this same manager was a case of outright bullying that had gone on between approximately Oct. 2010 and July 2011. More digging found a pattern; this particular manager had a pattern of lying. In one case, he was actually reported to HR for repeatedly (and probably intentionally, though he denied it) using last-minute 1:1 reschedulings to conflict with someone's therapy. That was before I came to Google. Predictably, HR did nothing that time, too.
This was a manager who had a years-long history of bad behavior, especially toward people with (otherwise manageable) health problems. It wasn't even hard for me to piece together the story, because so many people knew that it was going on. If he didn't see you as vulnerable, he was very affable and supportive, but if he smelled blood, he attacked. He actually admitted, in one proceeding, that he enjoyed "testing" an employee with panic disorder to find triggers. In my case, I'm fairly normal but I do have hypergraphia and can tell a decade-long story (with increasingly high levels of function; from 2002-09 I had a serious trolling problem, now I focus on writing coherent and useful stuff) about that.
I don't blow whistles over small shit. This was a big fucking rat.
When Google stops allowing Evil, I will stop attacking it.
They get the idea that you didn't confront your manager about your real number because:
1) You've repeatedly told us that you don't know what your real number is.
2) Googler123 has made the declarative statement that your manager could have easily shown you the real number in the internal perf tool.
3) You haven't contradicted Googler123 that it's not true.
4) You haven't told us, "I confronted my manager about showing me my real number in the internal perf tool."
From that, we're quite correct in concluding you didn't confront your manager about showing you your real number in the internal perf tool.
I'm sorry you had a lousy manager.
If there's something wrong with your manager, you're supposed to go to HR and you're supposed to go to your boss^2. In any company. It actually sounds like that's what you did, so why are you telling us all that the outcome is guaranteed to be "fired" or "similarly fucked", "In any company." ???
No, in the company I want to work at, if I have a lousy manager, I'm going to talk to HR and my boss^2. That's what I expect from myself, and that's what I expect from you. It even sounds like you did it - so why are you telling us not to?
Google is a company made up of people. Some of them have even bothered to respond to you in this thread. And yet, you're telling them NOT to do what people SHOULD do.
How exactly is ANY company supposed to get better over time, if the employees aren't brave and do what's right, even if it might have consequences for them?
Or should they just quit, and then take every opportunity to smear the company on websites?
I don't know where people get this idea. There's a lot of story and I haven't told most of it.
My boss promised a 3.4, then gave me something lower (probably 3.0-3.1). When I confronted him, he said it was because Google+ out in California wanted me to suffer for criticizing a product (that later failed, as I predicted). So I asked him to put a note on the HR file noting that the ding was political and not related to performance. I didn't care what the score was (the difference in bonus between 3.0 and 3.4 is minor) but I wanted the record to show what had happened, and an agreement on 3.4+ for the next 4 quarters to compensate for throwing me under the bus. That's all I wanted, and it's a small, reasonable, request. Everyone knows that "performance" reviews are about politics anyway, so I have no qualms about using one as a negotiation token. It's a game, so play it.
In response to my request, he went and revised my calibration score downward. He also made speculations about health problems (I have very-high-functioning hypergraphia, which is often a symptom of something else but in my case it's just standalone hypergraphia) that were irrelevant to work performance-- just to label me. I was in the process of deciding whether (a) to get attorneys on the case-- most attorneys don't want to appeal performance reviews because there's no money in it-- (b) to offer a side bribe to someone with performance DB access, or (c) to just get another job. The winner was (c); (a) and (b) meant $10k+ for something that might not work and would only pay itself off if I were there for 5+ years.
Also, HR investigated and found out there was no ding from California. Completely made up.
So, I dug around and found out that a mysterious departure of someone (a serious CS heavyweight) who had this same manager was a case of outright bullying that had gone on between approximately Oct. 2010 and July 2011. More digging found a pattern; this particular manager had a pattern of lying. In one case, he was actually reported to HR for repeatedly (and probably intentionally, though he denied it) using last-minute 1:1 reschedulings to conflict with someone's therapy. That was before I came to Google. Predictably, HR did nothing that time, too.
This was a manager who had a years-long history of bad behavior, especially toward people with (otherwise manageable) health problems. It wasn't even hard for me to piece together the story, because so many people knew that it was going on. If he didn't see you as vulnerable, he was very affable and supportive, but if he smelled blood, he attacked. He actually admitted, in one proceeding, that he enjoyed "testing" an employee with panic disorder to find triggers. In my case, I'm fairly normal but I do have hypergraphia and can tell a decade-long story (with increasingly high levels of function; from 2002-09 I had a serious trolling problem, now I focus on writing coherent and useful stuff) about that.
I don't blow whistles over small shit. This was a big fucking rat.
When Google stops allowing Evil, I will stop attacking it.