No Annual Appraisals & Performance Reviews @ Adobe Systems!

All the Adobe employees will now have a reason to make their friends not working in Adobe jealous of them. The company says that it wants to abolish the age old practice of annual appraisals and performance reviews. Instead, the company will develop a culture where the managers give a quick feedback to his/her subordinates to improve their efficiency. The company is still getting the blue print ready and hopes to roll out the final plan soon. Adobe employs around 10,000 engineers all over the world and ~2000 of them are in India.

The company seems to be inspired from Marshall Goldsmith's theory that instant and real-time feedback can go a long way in boosting the overall performance of the employees; than waiting for a whole year to get it. Jaleel Abdul, head of Adobe Systems India says that instead of giving 'feedback' we'll work on giving 'feed-forward'. It's not a borrowed practice and believes that course correction is way faster this way.

Google practices what's called as 360 degree appraisal in which everyone gets feedback from peers, bosses and juniors. Microsoft is believed to put more emphasis on the overall behavior of the employees than the company's internal targets.

My own experiences of working in Indian IT industry & the appraisal system 'blindly' followed in it are interesting! If I were to summarize it; it's just a 'blind' feedback.

What do you think?