Yeah, I guess I never knew this was that controversial. I generally don't think my firm is out to fuck me, so I didn't think these reviews, especially at the junior level, were anything other than a way to ensure associates were getting the feedback needed to improve. Pretty much everyone knows who has a good reputation and who has a bad reputation, so I just do the reviews as constructively as possible for people I like working with. Once again, I'm not trashing ppl or shitting on them. I'm just giving what I think is helpful feedback. I generally use the sandwich method - positive point, constructive feedback, positive point. We also have a grading system, and I obviously give my best juniors the highest possible grading whereas the bad juniors who I don't bother giving real reviews to I just say "average".RedNewJersey wrote: ↑Sun Jul 31, 2022 4:43 pmI apparently have a weird view on this, but to me it seems completely normal to flag issues that occurred during a review period in a person's review. That's the point of a review. If you fixed them, great, they won't recur in the next review period. But they did occur here (it's like getting questions wrong on a midterm or quiz and expecting that not to affect your final grade because you learned it by the end).
Also, to be honest, people let a huge amount of things go without saying anything, so if I had given constructive feedback to the same person multiple times, that would be highly likely to go into their review. Plus, as long as it's truthful and done in good faith, the formal review process is the ideal place for feedback so that it can be aggregated.
That said, many people do not engage in the review process in that spirit, and just try to game it ridiculously by having all glowing reviews based on who they pick to review them (or, from the other side, say nice things about their friends and mean things about people they want to get rid of). If that's the goal, somebody who is just trying to do a normal review will look crazy and harsh. That seems like what happened.
Realistically speaking though - none of this matters as a junior. Unless you're egregiously bad you're not going to get fired/hurt by these reviews and when partnership considerations come up, no one is digging up a review from when you were a first year. So, to the OP who got a bad review, it stings but it's not a big deal and if you really don't feel comfortable working with that person because of this review, then don't. Or, just talk to them and ask what's up and how you can do better because the review was not consistent with other feedback you're getting.
