Gfrktyl

It's not.

If I'm evaluating your performance then Bob and Alice have no bearing on the review. Now truthfully I'm human and I may think of comparisons to each other (and to other people I've worked with over the years) but I need to deliver my evaluation about you in as unbiased a form as I can.

It's the same principle that applies when I reprimand you and you bring up Bob and Alice.

Bob and Alice aren't there. It's just the two of us.

This is a MAJOR red flag and an indication of toxic management.

I would seriously consider either completely ignoring the fact that this manager is trying to divide and conquer or find another job.

There is a reasonably well-known practice called stack ranking, where businesses explicitly and intentionally compare employees, in an attempt to get rid of a small percentage of unproductive ones, and reward a small percentage of exceptional ones.

Your manager's statement “I can not give you a better performance review because B delivered much more than you did and I am giving them an average review already” sounds a bit stack-ranking-esque to me, and might indicate that your company is doing that.

Stack ranking is often criticised as being really destructive for morale. That's certainly how I felt in a job many years ago, where I believed I'd put in a year's worth of really good effort and done everything we'd agreed, only to be told I couldn't get a top ranking (and therefore pay rise) because another (very deserving) team member already was, and there was only one top spot allocated on the curve.

Of course, this might not be a considered company-wide approach to performance measurement — I don't think that employees are traditionally told about other specific employees' ranks in a stack ranking system, and it would usually be reasonable to expect discussions in one-on-ones to remain reasonably private. If it is just your manager doing this, and only doing it in private one-on-one conversations, that doesn't sound like particularly good leadership.

However — if the company actually does want to directly compare employee performance, maybe to encourage competition and/or collaboration to drive improvements overall, there's no reason why they can't do that. Sports teams (rowing is an especially good example) have very intense metric-based competition between team members, who also have to very closely collaborate to succeed.

Obviously it's difficult to translate that to knowledge work, where the performance metrics are much vaguer, but the problem of a team with both internal competition and internal collaboration is the same, and some comparison of team members with each other — hopefully in a less negative and divisive way than you've described — could be a part of a successful approach to solving it.

I second @solarflare's answer, but I'd like to add another reasoning.

Do consider that maybe the only inappropriate aspect is giving names explicitly. Rephrasing to "I can reasonably tell the task you took 3 hours could have been done in 1 hour" or "I cannot give you a better review, because of the standards I follow, which also normalizes every employee's review". Would that sound bad to you?

My point is that I believe comparing team members explicitly is poor ethics, but for all practical purposes, the same message could have been sent without the comparison, which would have been made either way.

On the plus side, you are given the opportunity to dispute the comparisons, saying things such as "A took less time because his task was actually simpler" or "I actually helped B a lot in delivering the tasks that you are attributing to him". Likewise, these answers do lack professionalism, but so does the person evaluating you.

I do believe this is not a reason to find another job, but coaching managers into giving proper feedback is pretty much a HR responsibility, maybe seek the HR department with some constructive suggestions.

There are some good answers already, but they each seem to capture only part of what is quite a complex answer.

There are many reasons why it might not be a good idea to directly compare staff members in a one-to-one performance review:

• An employee's performance should be judged against the expectations that have been set for them, not anyone else, which will vary with their experience, salary, goals, etc.


• Good team members should not be punished because another team member is outstanding.


• Different team members bring different (ideally complementary) skills and are probably set different objectives.


• Setting team members against one another is likely to foster a vindictive atmosphere.


• Whatever metric is used for the comparison (e.g. time taken to get work finished) may be "gamed" and become the metric that team members prioritize, at the expense of other considerations (e.g. work quality).


• Restricting the proportion of employees that can get a good rating (however that is measured) is demoralizing and simply not in line with reality.

However, there are also reasons why it can sometimes be a good idea to compare staff directly:

• High-performing staff can be used as examples for others to learn from. "Watch how Alice solves problem X" is easier advice to follow than "do better".


• The actions of other staff are concrete and undeniable, which can be useful for accountability. For example, "You just told me it's not possible to do that work in less than five days, but Bob did that exact same job in three days".


• There is no Platonic ideal for what a good worker (in whatever job/career) looks like. If I want to employ a software developer, what should I expect from them, and how much should I pay them? The only rational answer is to compare them to others (though to be fair, it might be tactful to be circumspect about making that comparison).

In addition, discussing or comparing to other staff in a one-to-one or performance review can be desirable for other reasons:

• If someone is being considered (or has longer-term ambitions) for a promotion into a leadership or management role, they are going to need to be able to assess other people's performance. Demonstrating how to do that in a one-to-one might be part of a longer-term development strategy for that employee.
  
  
  
  
  • (Anecdote: one of my team once told me he wanted to be a Development Manager in 3-5 years because he wanted "to be able to tell people what to do". I made sure to involve him in the kind of discussions a manager would need to think about, long before he was likely to get that promotion. He no longer works for me, but I can only hope that if he has been promoted since, he has a better understanding of what a manager is and isn't just "telling people what to do"!).
  
  
  
  

Finally, in response to the inevitable (hysterical) "quit your job!!!" answer, consider how likely it is that management in your next company will be perfect. If a manager telling you "Alice is doing a better job than you, but you're doing better than Bob" is the worst thing that happens at a company, it might still be an OK place to work.

In summary, this is a complex question that resists simple soundbite answers. Depending on context and how it is done, it may be a poor choice on the manager's part, or there may be a good reason for it.

It might be a good thing if it is presented in a positive way : two employers ago I have been working in a project team and every week somebody was elected by the project manager as the "employee of the week", meaning the person who has done something exceptionally good. There have been cases where two people had done something exceptionally good and the project manager exceptionally elected both.

But saying something negative in public is a show-stopper: such a thing should never happen.

There was just an article about the two top engineers at Google and how they complemented each other. They ALWAYS paired together. (Sorry if I get some of this wrong, it's from memory)

The article claimed that they were the prime example of how one great programmer could do the equivalent of 10 normal programmers and together saved the entire company repeatedly solving problems that nobody else could.

It sounded from the article as though one of them generally typed and the other often sat there with his feet up on the desk and thought.

Imagine the effect trying to pit them against each other or force them to identify who did what work so they could promote/adjust pay/fire one or the other... it would be absolutely destructive. It would have ended the company.

So I'd say that if it was acceptable by your company, you should try to correct that or leave. You might stick around and slog through it like BittermanAndy suggests, but it's not a practice that shows any understanding of software development teamwork so be ware.

I suppose that it's also similar to rating your basketball team on baskets only because assists don't score anything--bad juju.

In order for it to be acceptable it is necessary (but not enough) that it is a complete and accurate comparison. Which is quite a difficult thing to do. Your case shows how sloppy the comparison is with just a cursory review. It's missing a crucial element : paychecks. A is not under performing if she takes twice the time than B but gets a third of the pay. She might actually deserve a rise.

In general you won't see managers revealing your co-workers salaries. It's even illegal in many places.

Hence you are unlikely to ever see a proper comparison of team members performances. This is not to say that if the comparison was accurate and complete it would be acceptable but I have nothing to add there compared to other answers.

The act of comparing coworkers is entirely valid and a useful tool. The visceral negative reactions you see here are somewhat delusional (I expect almost everyone does this in some way/shape/form). The issue is not that you're being compared to your peers, but that you aren't being compared against the expectations that (should) have been set with you. For example, working on commission is an example where your expectations and compensation is tied explicitly to your performance relative to your peers.

The only way that performance reviews go well is if you have a regular expectations/goal setting cadence. Then you get to be reviewed against those goals, which may or may not inlcude comparisons to your coworkers.