Preparing for Performance Reviews
Perspectives & advice from the community
u/mango_admi shared the following advice on a post titled, Got told keeping me in the project is very difficult because I am very inefficient and irresponsible.
My friend you need to work on your communication skills and make sure that you are documenting things that you do. Try doing this for a start-
- Create a excel file with details of what you do on a daily basis. Have the following details in it- Date, Task name, status report, who to report to, reported today?
- Whatever happens, update this before you log off for the day.
- When you are updating then check if you have reported to the concerned person, if not then send mail or ping with the current status.
- Keep your lead updated about your daily work.
- Start paying attention in meetings and reading mails thoroughly. Use GPT to summarize meeing minutes and mails so that you can get easy language to understand what is being asked of you. Also ask questions in meetings if you have any. Dont keep quiet.
Once you create a habit of reporting your work and speaking up, you wont need to manage this excel as the trust in you will increase and even if you dont report daily, it will be seen as a sign that everything is okay on your end.
u/ReverseDebugger shared the following advice on a post titled, Managers & Devs: Year End review 101, how tos & what tos.
Ratings are pre-decided regardless of how much work you put in. Learn and read about how Bell Curve works.
As far as your experience goes, my personal experience stands at 13y. I would highly recommend you at this point to not to take up the lead role and in-fact, try to be hands-on as much as possible. If you are leading here, I would personally recommend you to look for a job where you are not the best. Since you are early in your career, your focus should be on coding and of course learning other software skills like communication, problem solving, and execution/planning as you mentioned but refrain from taking up team responsibilities. It’s more of a hassle than you think it is.
Lastly, I would suggest you to discuss on the following:
- How’s your company doing and what are their plans for the new FY and see if they align with your goals.
- How or what you could change or improve and why?
- What’s new in terms of tech improvements and in what areas you would learn.
- Any plans of scaling the team further or what kind of projects is your team anticipating.
- Lastly, if possible, ask them to allow you to work on open-ended and complex problems where you may struggle.
In terms of rating, right question to ask is, what it takes to achieve 4-5/5 rating? What areas you could improve upon.
As far as your feedback goes, you could share it in a constructive manner around:
- What went well
- What didn’t go well (for you and for your team)
- What can be done better
- Any other feedback
Fine tune the above as you think your manager is open for a candid feedback or refrain from being too direct and craft it as per your experience. Hope this helps.
u/Inside_Dimension5308 shared the following advice on a post titled, Managers & Devs: Year End review 101, how tos & what tos.
You should already know your performance rating based on how your manager is behaving with you. If he mostly sounds pissed and tries to point out your mistakes, you are in the below average rating(2). If your manager is encouraging you to take more responsibility. You are mostly in average(3) rating.
If your manager is mostly happy and praising you, you are in the above expectation(4) rating. However, the behaviour can be deceptive. So, don't quote my words. It is better to rely on regular feedback to understand your performance rather than waiting for year end.
What you shouldn't say? Don't get aggressive with whatever you say. Don't start pointing mistakes of your manager. Don't get personal. Don't start recalling your specific contributions. Your performance is not based on micro-contributions.
What you should say? You can present your dissatisfaction providing a macro-view of where you have excelled which justifies your better rating(based on your expectations).