Aug 13, 2026

Sometimes the manager has to take the hit

Performance ratings are rarely popular. I learned that leadership sometimes means owning an uncomfortable decision.

• #engineering-leadership
• #performance
• #management

Performance ratings are one of those things that can make a manager popular for about five minutes and unpopular for much longer.

At one point, I was responsible for performance ratings across much of the engineering organization.

I ended up taking responsibility for most of the final calls.

It wasn’t always comfortable.

Everyone has a view

People have different ideas about what good performance looks like.

A manager sees one part of someone’s work. A lead sees another. Someone working closely with that person may see something completely different.

That’s one reason I introduced more structured feedback around the organization, including input from leads and managers and broader feedback for recognition — the same shift that, over time, was part of what brought attrition down. Regular, honest conversations about where someone actually stood turned out to matter more than any single rating.

But more input doesn’t remove the hard part

Feedback can make a decision better informed.

It doesn’t make the decision disappear.

At the end, someone still has to make the call.

And when people disagree with the result, explaining the process doesn’t necessarily make them happy.

There were times when I absorbed most of that frustration myself.

That was uncomfortable, but I think it was part of the job.

Fair doesn’t mean everyone agrees

One thing I learned is that transparency and agreement are different things.

You can make the inputs clearer.

You can make the process more consistent.

You can explain how a decision was reached.

Someone can still walk away disappointed.

The answer isn’t to avoid making the decision.

It’s to make sure the decision is grounded well enough that you can stand behind it.

The part of leadership nobody puts on the slide

A lot of leadership advice is about empowering people, creating autonomy, and building trust.

All of that matters.

But sometimes leadership is also being the person who absorbs the difficult reaction so that the rest of the organization can keep moving.

You don’t have to enjoy those decisions.

You do have to own them.

That’s probably one of the less glamorous parts of the job.

And one of the more important ones.