I’m currently working at a hedge fund, and my manager has asked for upward feedback as part of the year-end review process. My manager is excellent at his job but views people as objects, not individuals. I'm not convinced there's any upside in giving honest feedback. I'd love to hear from other monkeys who have experience with this.
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I’m my experience, albeit short, if they are good at the job your honest feedback will be ignored (unless they’ve done something truly bizarre or extremely out of order)
Really comes down to your relationship with your boss.
I have two bosses. I could give one negative feedback. He wouldn't be thrilled, but he would listen and take it into account. There is zero chance I could do the same with the other.
As someone who's had a boss that truly views employees as objects and not people too, it sounds like a trap whether intentional or not. Maybe another PM friend of his said he does this, and your boss gets the temporary urge to do the same but doesn't really have the temperament to do it right and will just react negatively. But I'm making some assumptions on my experiences, only you can know about your boss. Mine would've never even considered doing it in the first place, and it would have devolved into something nasty quite quickly. Unless you have some minor legitimate complaint you can voice, I'd play it safe and stick to vague generalities. Because if someone is not used to receiving feedback, they are probably going to get defensive if you hit them with anything specific.
Not a good risk reward here lol
Exactly. Just smile and nod.
delete
I won't go as far as to say it is a trap but it seems nothing good comes of this.
Tell your boss what you like about his working style / what you would like to see more of in the future. That way, you are delivering feedback, that could help you, but without the risk of negative feedback.
This. Also it's a good idea in general not just at annual review time.
Sounds like fun working at Bridgewater lmao
I disagree with the posters here - you can always phrase things negatively or positively, and people tend to respond better to positive.
Example 1: Mr. X treats his people as objects rather than human beings.
Example 2: I've noticed ABC things that Mr. X has done in the past year to promote better [work life balance / career trajectory / communication / humanity / etc.] - I think these have been really positive for group morale and the firm will benefit from this greatly in the future.
Agree but a lots of seniors can see through this kind of language. What you said it good advice but one really needs to assess the relationship he/she has with said manager before spinning things in such manner
Agreed that most seniors can see through it, but I maintain that it's still the move.
Keep in mind, on most review platforms it will ask you for at least one area of improvement or development etc. A senior who isn't a prick will recognize that you're playing ball with them by using this section to pad their review more rather than damage it.
Feedback needs to be actionable to be useful. For example my boss occasionally micromanages, and I tell him this. He responds well to it, because he isn't a severe micromanager to begin with. Since he already knows that micromanaging is bad and he already is decent at avoiding it, he can easily process the feedback that he occasionally does it.
On the other hand, I have another colleague (my level of seniority, but different department that I interact with sometimes). My issue with him is that he is intellectually lazy. He thinks he knows everything, which causes him to often fail to do his homework before speaking in meetings or making decisions. In short, he's arrogant. I can't give that feedback because how do you think an arrogant person handles feedback? It will fall on deaf ears.
To make matters worse, he didn't start being intellectually lazy yesterday. He has been that way his whole life, and he's 42. The cumulative effects of intellectual laziness over many decades have taken their toll, and he has substantial knowledge gaps as a result. Thus even if he fixed his problem now, he'd still be way behind. Yet another reason for me to not share the feedback; it'd be too late even if he listened.
At a previous job I had a manager who was just straight up not bright. Good attitude and work ethic, but simply too low of an IQ to lead smart people. Often made poor decisions because his logic was weak. Can't share that feedback because what's he gonna do, take a smart pill?
People love the idea of feedback, but in reality its only useful in the right environment and right circumstances. "You view people as objects" sounds a little too hard to take, and a little too vague. Maybe there's a way of framing it so that he can accept it and realistically do something about it.
What helped you realize that the last manager was low IQ?
Lot of failures of logic on the job. Was a quant fund and he would struggle with some of the core statistical concepts. I’m not talking really complex stuff, I’m talking the directional intuition that any smart person would develop with exposure.
Cleanest example I can think of is that he didn’t understand the difference between correlation and causation. So for example we might observe that value stocks (let’s define that as low price to book) have high dividend yields. He would then take this observation and say “well REITs have great dividend yields so they must be value stocks." And it’s like, no dude, REITs have high dividend yields bc the law requires payouts and besides, we never said high yields are the best proxy for value. Very frustrating because that conclusion by him could lead to a one month project. So failures in logic combined with repeatedly destructive decision making.
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