The OG Idea For HappyHQ
23 February 2026
The final task that I was responsible for at my corporate, public-company job was to run the annual performance review and calibration process for all of Design and Product. It sucked! Performance management is incredibly broken, and it’s not just broken at my last company. It appears to be broken nearly everywhere (that is, at least here in the United States*).
Before I go into the many challenges of performance management, I need to detour into some employment law. Bear with me.
Performance Management is Not for Employees, it’s for Employers
The most important thing to understand about performance management is that it isn’t for employees, it is for employers. It is legal Cover Your A$$ (CYA) theater, or as I like to say, capitalism gonna capitalism. Employers enforce performance management on everyone to justify that they are “doing the right thing” for their employees by trying to have clear performance criteria and processes. What they’re really doing though, is documenting employee performance, which can serve as evidence to defend against claims of wrongful termination, discrimination, or unfair treatment, particularly when making decisions regarding promotions, demotions, or terminations. Performance evaluations are essentially providing a legal basis for employment actions by demonstrating, or trying to demonstrate, consistent and fair treatment of employees, as well as showing clear performance expectations and providing a record of feedback given to employees.
The Broken Part
At my large, public company, I was responsible for leading several hundred people through the process. I’ve also done performance management at small startups where the legal liability and formality is less. While the details and surrounding processes were quite different, what was similar is that employees were eager to have real and meaningful conversations about their progress and their careers, while employers were eager to not get sued. What sucked at my last job left a lasting imprint.
At the start of the business year, the company kicked off the performance management process. Employers and employees were both supposed to draft goals, most of them company-specific but some also included personal development. There was a big push by HR around training, communication, and documentation. A huge challenge with this process was that the company goals often weren’t established or, if they were, they weren’t final. This meant that employees were expected to create their personal goals when there weren’t even company goals. That’s a major problem. It’s like starting a trip without knowing where you’re going.
As employees worked on their goals, managers were supposed to be reviewing them and providing feedback. These things rarely happened consistently. After goals were submitted, there was an expectation that the manager and employee would be having ongoing 1:1 meetings to review, discuss, and track progress. At the mid-year mark of the company year, there was an official, company-encouraged check-in process where employees would first write a self review, their manager would then write their review, and then they’d meet to discuss a mid-year rating. Since it was so difficult to easily track any actual process, and referenceable documentation was often lacking, lots of folks had to go back to their calendar, email, laptop, or document repository to try to remember and document what had happened. Nothing about doing all this was easy, satisfying, or uplifting.
At the end-of-year review, this same, clunky performance management process happened again, but this time the rating was formally recorded and had much more impact. Ratings greatly impacted bonus allocations, Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs), and eventual termination, if necessary. This was also the time when managers got to see other team’s ratings, which prompted days and days of meetings where managers discussed the ratings for their direct reports, and those ratings began to change as managers compared (err, I mean, calibrated) their people against other manager’s people. These meetings also usually impacted org chart design and headcount allocations, so they were super important and, often, incredibly biased.
What You Can do to Turn Your Performance Management Experience Into Something Meaningful
Now that we have that high-level, legal-mumbo-jumbo and the time-sucking process overview out of the way, you might be feeling a bit of doom and gloom. I certainly feel your pain. But there’s room to also have hope. Let me start off by reminding you that companies are not families. Companies are entities that conduct business and create jobs. Companies hire employees to achieve goals and, ideally, make more money. You can join and leave companies, companies can hire and fire you. No matter what your relationship is to your family, whether you are super close or somewhat distant, you are still related to each other. While companies aren’t families, they are places where meaningful relationships and connections can be developed.
I’ve now spoken to hundreds of leaders and managers, many of whom I consider to be the best, most thoughtful, empathic leaders in the industry. They all recognize that performance management is an important part of the management toolkit. Yes, these practices exist mainly to protect the company, but they can also protect and help you, as a manager and employee. Additionally, done well, these tools can be incredibly valuable: they can lift up employees in their careers, and challenge and guide them in their career growth. And that’s because communicating clearly and having documented expectations for employees is just good practice. Having clear performance standards by ensuring performance expectations are clearly defined and communicated to employees is not just a good thing for companies to do, it’s actually very good for managers to have these standards in place. Then, using measurable and objective criteria to evaluate performance, will help to avoid subjective biases. There’s also value in providing ongoing feedback to employees (not just throughout the performance period, but ongoing during regular 1:1s). Lastly, maintaining detailed records of performance evaluations, including specific examples of positive and negative performance is not just a good thing to do for the company, it’s incredibly valuable for the employee.
The OG Idea For HappyHQ
After leaving my corporate job, I would often think back to my last experience leading the performance management process and remember just how broken it was. It was like pulling teeth to get managers to do the real and meaningful work of meeting consistently with their teams and writing impactful reviews. I had to go back to my own calendar and documents to remember what had happened throughout the year to be able to put together a coherent self review. It was such a challenge for me, and I know it was for others, too.
I am a big note taker. I love note-taking apps and tools. I also love journaling. I kept thinking and wishing that there was an easier way to journal and track my work. I wanted an app that integrated with my calendar, docs, and other apps to come up with smart digests about my progress. I had the idea for an “intelligent work journal.” In my original product doc for HappyHQ, I wrote:
Managers today have more tools, software, training, and resources than ever before, but are still poorly equipped and prepared to manage people well. They don’t have the tools or skill sets to help their employees learn and grow. They are often thrown into the deep end and expected to navigate all the complexities of people management. Additionally, the actual people management side of a manager's job is often an afterthought when compared to the ever-pressing requirements of meeting urgent business and product needs.
These challenges cascade. Leaders are unable to see or understand how their teams are truly doing. They are flying blind, and even worse, they are being given a false sense of security based on inaccurate information.
I know there has to be a better way to work. As I’ve written in other posts, all of our information is everywhere and nowhere. Our work is buried inside of notes and apps. It’s causing incredible waste, friction, and frustration. HappyHQ aims to be the future of work. We aim to be where work happens, where work isn’t lost or buried, where there aren’t constant interrupts and intrusive notifications, and where you won’t have to go spelunking in your calendar, notebooks, apps, and document archives to figure out what the heck happened over the last year.
We aim to make managing work, tracking it, documenting it and drawing satisfaction from it the happiest experience you’ve ever had. We want to turn the ugh of performance reviews (and much, much more) into a positive tool that works for YOU instead of for lawyers. We can’t wait for you to join us.
*One final legal side note: It's important to state that Europe and many other countries do not conduct management reviews based on these concepts and laws. Employment in Europe is primarily based on formal written contracts that outline the terms and conditions of employment and those contracts outline how any changes in scope need to be handled. I could write an entirely different post about all of this, but that’s not my vibe. I’ll just say that if your company is geographically dispersed, I recommend getting familiar with the employment rules in every country where you operate.