Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by fallingknife 363 days ago
> “Anonymous Surveys” are a trap

This is both something I know is true, and also something I struggle to understand. I can't get my head around why company leadership would ever consider true anonymous feedback from down the org chart as anything but an incredibly valuable resource. Surely this could be a bad thing for some execs who are doing a terrible job and this would be evidence against them, but I would think that the majority would still want that information so they could remove those members from their ranks.
3 comments
bigfatkitten 363 days ago
Top level leadership finds it valuable, which is why they do these surveys in the first place. Middle management is another matter.

Middle management have the most to lose (they get the blame for poor employee satisfaction), and they also have sufficient resources and authority to hunt down dissidents.

link
fallingknife 363 days ago
Seems insane that leadership would give managers the ability to deanonymize answers, then.
link
ramijames 363 days ago
Much of the world is insane.
link
ramijames 363 days ago
Honestly, I'm in the same boat with this. I find it so frustrating. The core concept of anonymous feedback to honestly assess issues so that they can be dealt with seems so critical. I'm sure that in some orgs it is actually anonymous. The problem is that I'm ALSO sure that in some orgs it is categorically not. This means that you must assume that it is always not, because your job is on the line. Those orgs who can't act in good faith have poisoned the well for everyone.
link
flashgordon 363 days ago
So the thing is these anonymous surveys are just a way to "incriminate" managers. Most surveys are structure NOT to ask "Do you think Leader X is bad". It is more about "Do you understand what Leader/Org X is doing". So a "no" here means either "you" are the problem for not understanding or your manager for not clearly "explaining" what Leader/Org X is doing. So managers now have an extra job of selling some top-down vision with very limited data (relative to where there in the ladder) but without using the words "because VP X said so".
link