My manager told me that she had to put a certain number of people in the category and since I am new I have been selected. She told me that it wasn't my performance but that I wasn't at the level of others that have been here for years and not to worry about it. duh I am not at the level of others that have been here for years but thought I was doing really well. Why did I take this job? My first job out of college, is this the way that it is everywhere?
24 replies (most recent on top)
@4jw I experienced the same thing. I've been with the company since 2007. Always a top performer until recently, where I was moved to a new team and role without any input from me, to then be labeled as "Needs improvement". It's insulting and complete BS. NetApp's "good" culture died a long time ago (2008-2010). However, a lot of smart and good people were still around and some teams kept some of that culture alive. Unfortunately, most of them have either retired, laid off or simply decided to leave and now we're stuck with extremely toxic leaders with absolutely no management skills.
@4jw I am very sorry but legacy employees are on the block. You can thank our former CHRO for emboldening this disgusting behavior from some of our worst leaders. The aim is to make you quit versus being laid off. It's called "Employee Self Select". And if you don't quit, you can now be let go due to performance without severence. Please take the warning seriously.
I work in NetApp HR, but not for long. I cannot personally be a part of this any longer.
I'm a long time employee. Got a NI for the first time in my career (at any job). Feel like my neck is on the chopping block. Been here so long it'll be tough for me to find a job. Was given 2 areas for improvement - I'm attacking them and they will not be an issue next time around....if I'm even here. Did I deserve an NI? Nope, first line manager was shocked and felt his feedback was taken out of context. Anyone else been around long enough to remember when we had a good culture and the company seemed to care about people? And don't even get me started on that FTO bullsh-t - I want to get paid out for that, WTF?
Learn as much as you can here, and then move on after 1.5 or 2 years
@338 There was a reason in that timeframe this whole thing was trashed at most companies. It is biased garbage that does anything but push performance up...
What's old is new again. I was a people manager up until 2015. If someone on the team was new, we did indeed have to rate them as "needs improvement." It's almost as if going a few years without stack ranking made people forget the ways it used to be.
Managers also like to blame THEIR poor performance on the people beneath them. What you will often hear is a senior leader saying he needs the “right” people. This is happening all over NetApp.
@OP Duh! She is right, being new you are not in her favorites yet.
Netapp desperately wants employees to work themselves to death. Just look at GK's latest email and the lovely message at the end. Giving a "Needs improvement" rating to a new employee is their way of trying to get that employee to work 10x harder in order to improve their rating.
This is not normal. It is standard practice to put people less than 1 year in the middle category or even a “New” category. Trust me, most of us in HR are very unhappy with this forced ranking and how it was rolled out.
@mt even if you get enough people to say yes to a union, you will be outsourced and/or replaced by a new hire in India.
People in India currently have nothing to fear because management appears to be trying to steer growth there, and not for strictly economic reasons. However, when management still need to improve ever shrinking margins and realize that there are people in Vietnam that have a much lower salary than in India they will be impacted. This is already happening in IBM, Oracle and Cisco.
If you get laid off, this will be terrible for your career. I say this because of two reasons one is the current job market for early professionals since most of reqs are to seniors. The second which goes with the first is that you are no longer a new grad so you are considered an experienced hired. Therefore, there is no program to get help finding a new job and you are going to be applying to the career website. This will make it extremely hard with grave consequences.
Also, if NetApp takes the Microsoft route and you get laid off. There will be no severance package for you. You are in a lose lose position if I'm being honest with you. Complain to HR and you are seen as a Karen, stay and you won't be given important work due to potential layoffs going on.
@ac "leadership (D/SrD/VPs) are holding the line forcing mgrs to assign N.I" They are holding the line but do understand I don't know one single person at any of these level that agrees with this. It is forced...
@rj IDK but she started this mess and the rest of the C-suite went along.
The time has come to Unionize!!!
@OP The current and former CHRO is who needs to get a Needs Improvement rating. They both have set this company back 20+ years in regards to HR practices. I sorry this happened to you but this is what the system is forcing to happen.
They are forcing ratings distribution across the board. You were an easy target this go around. They will do the distribution at mid year again. This HR team and policy is indicative of a rookie team who doesn't know how to manage Engineering professionals. One of the leaders of the policy came from Disney.
@OP and here we go... this system is such an antiquated HR practice that just flat doesn't work for reasons just as this.
It su-ks having to grade on a scale, but managers are compelled to do it. Worse, if you don't have enough people of a certain level on your team, you rate them but then they get kicked up for "calibration" which means that people who don't know them and don't ask may adjust their rating. It's a very opaque and frustrating process, especially with upper levels of management that have very little time with the company and may not even know what your team does.
No Dorothy; the high performers left a LONG time ago. The folks left are those you are politically connected who do JUST enough to not get fired.
Netapp is a sinking ship. Stay if you're "safe" or you're close to retirement. Leave otherwise.
They laid off many people over the years and didn’t hire more. People that are left are often the higher performers or been here many years, yet the managers are forced to pick a few that ‘need improvement,’ which is an obvious lay me off flag to put on someone. Don’t think a single manager liked this and probably stress over it. At the same time I heard they want to cut 10% more. I don’t think GK is going to make it much longer so hopefully positive changes are coming.
I am sorry about your experience, especially since this is your first job out of college. One of the hardest things to realize in life is that it is not fair and this is a good example of that. Additionally, the quality of management here is lacking that they would actually demoralize you so early on in your role with the company. Please don't let this demoralize you. Get the experience you need then see what happens. I would say go somewhere else, but this kind of thing happens all over.
It is unfortunate that they are rolling out stack ranking as most tech companies have abandoned this barbaric process. Good luck!
mgr here can confirm in q4fy25 n#t@pp decided to roll out forced ratings for this years thrive rewards. then hr hosted more thrive “trainings” to ensure said consulting firm got paid (they co-hosted hr trainings) & hr made mgrs “own the needs improvement rating,” even when many mgrs have stated they don’t truly have a “N.I.” to assign as many employees performing well. leadership (D/SrD/VPs) are holding the line forcing mgrs to assign N.I. It’s really a joke of a rating system, makes sense now that top hr exec is also chief legal officer
id--tic policy that NTAP paid some consulting firm to implement. Guessing a golf buddy owns the consulting firm. Stay true to yourself, understand that this is a forced metric and your boss is simply trying to keep her job by jamming you into a metric that she is forced to comply with. Believe her when she says that it is not where you belong.