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I have a new job since 3 months in a company with 250 employees. The organization characterizes itself as a "bottom-up", democratic organization. The interviews were conducted mostly by Juniors who I am supposed to mentor or guide (except one technical interview, which was taken by an external Senior consultant).

Even though 3 months have passed by, I am still not given any performance targets. It is not even clear who my real boss is or if I have a boss. Whenever I asked about my targets and performance evaluation to the Senior most guy who has some decision making powers (and who also has contact with the executives), he always says "teams will decide" whether I am doing well or not.

As my previous jobs have been always in traditional, hierarchical, "top down" organizations, I am a bit confused about how to carry out my tasks and duties without any performance or evaluation criteria. Is it usual to have such a setup in these kind of organizations? How to be successful in such a setup? If I were to be critical of the work by Juniors, wouldn't it affect ultimately my own prospects as they will be directly evaluating my work?

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  • he always says "teams will decide" whether I am doing well or not Maybe you need to clarify that you're trying to get information on how the team is going to make that decision. Or maybe just flat out ask him, "Are you saying that there are no performance measures or metrics used for evaluations?" because it kind of sounds like that's what he's saying. – BSMP Jul 18 '16 at 1:02
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    Why would you ever accept a job without knowing what your tasks would be or who your manager is? – Lilienthal♦ Jul 18 '16 at 10:10
  • Why would anyone agree to work in such an environment? There seems to be no upside to me unless you are very junior. – HLGEM Jul 18 '16 at 18:40
  • @Lilienthal Conditions are otherwise very attractive. Excellent pay, fun work atmosphere, fancy office location etc. Also there is an opportunity to work in a very interesting new project. Altogether, I see lots of potential, but on the other hand, I guess I will have to bring in a different mindset than I am used to... – user18524 Jul 18 '16 at 21:41
  • @Usersysgenerated You're completely missing the point. I don't care how good the conditions are, you're supposed to find out what your actual job is before accepting an offer. You're essentially asking random strangers how to do your job well when you don't even know what your tasks are or who will actually be evaluating your performance. – Lilienthal♦ Jul 19 '16 at 7:06
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They're expecting you to be a leader here. The goal is for you to have a personal buy in with the company's mission.

Don't worry about criticizing anyone else's work. Your goal is to establish that you're all on the same team, and working towards the same goals together. With that in mind, it shouldn't matter if you're critical of each other's work.

To an extent, you're going to have to define your own goals and performance metrics. That can be difficult, but also very rewarding. You need to ask yourself, "What can I do to really make our product great? What can my team do?"

Ideally, everyone else on your team should be asking themselves the same question. Once you determine your goal together, your personal goal (or how you fit in with the team, and how your performance measures up) should become more clear.

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