Performance Reviews

performance reviews round table

Performance reviews can be big headaches in memory games, unclear expectations and disappointments for both employees and managers. Managers can sympathize themselves as they are also someone else's report too.

This section builds upon the major building blocks discussed so far and rounds everything up in the performance review period. As a recap, we've built the foundations were:

  1. Setting core expectations of the role by:

  2. Outlining expected behaviours of success with the performance pyramid

  3. Measuring, recording and discussing the needle moving impact the report has done since the last performance period

We can now combine them all into one framework to use for the performance review period.

The Framework

All the discussions that follow depend on knowing what the actual framework is before diving a bit deeper into its thinking process and how it could be executed.

In one image, this is the gist of the framework: performance review framework

The three major things that get taken into consideration for performance review are the achievements, faithful execution of the performance pyramid and what their current operating level is at.

Note

These three components are the parts are within the employee's control the most. Success must first come from within with a willingness to improve, change and be ambitious. Regardless of the final outcome, that itself is a win for the employee on a personal level. Additionally, employees are able to self assess whether or not they should be put up on the round table for promotion.

Once that has all been prepared, the report's manager will champion that employee at a "round table" where they present everything. Everyone at the table now gets to ask clarifying questions, voice their support or voice their objections for the employee. This should be based around company objectives and culture. Perhaps the company is at a scale where they don't want to accept high ego jerks that pave a path of destruction despite their contributions. If the company values pay transparency to reduce back channel bickering, this is when the managers would discuss the appropriate pay to make sure nobody's left behind or massively below their peer's median salaries.

Consensus or not, once everything has been said that's needed to be said, the decision makers will go away and work with HR to determine what happens. They will have full business context including budget, available positions and so forth to make a final call. The news, good or bad will be given to the manager who then gives it to the employee.

Note

This part of the process is where the employee has least influence over. Middle managers can discuss and promise to champion their direct reports as best as possible. In my opinion, this is the best a report can ask for as managers might not be the decision maker.

Let's break it down for some next level detail with some food for thought.

What is the Impact of the Achievements?

Ideally the employee would have aligned their achievements, KPIs, objectives or missions with their impact. Maybe they had more autonomy and found some pivot along the way that was worth the deviation as long as it was sanctioned. That's okay too. The impact in question should have been recorded in the impact sheet.

The key thing to distinguish here is the contribution the individual made in achieving results. Multiple people might have been collaborators in the works. So if the piece of work netted say USD $300k from the works, what was the individual's contribution in that? Things to look out for include:

  • Leading the architectural design, customer engagement, acceptance and delivery of the project with 3 other members. You can validate this by checking their design documentation output, probably participating in some of their client calls or getting notes and customer surveys.
  • Implemented the majority of the core algorithmic problem (the hardest part) of the application. You can validate this by looking at their pull requests and code submissions
  • Supported the delivery of the feature by implementing it according to specs, fully tested with next to 0 production bugs. You can validate this with the number of issue requests, code reviews.
  • Internal and external customer survey results that are positive with enough sample size
  • Metrics and dashboards that show quantitative measures to back up what they say and how their work contributed to that metric. e.g. An overall infrastructure/hosting cost savings of say USD $100,000 a month, $50k was through DB sharding and scaling that the employee was responsible for. Again you can check this by quickly looking at their pull requests.

I mentioned several times that you can always go down to the code reviews. There is a general trend that managers can't just be hands off anymore. They need to be able to get into the tools and code when necessary. That doesn't mean that you should spend a substantial amount of time doing that. Use automations, scripts and AI tools to help you glean the information you need. Some ideas would be:

  • getting familiar with git and pulling out their commits, branches etc. Even better if the git commit schemes follow a pattern that links to a ticketing system which allows you to target the commits you care about (the ones they listed as needle movers).
  • hitting the ticketing system's APIs and ripping out commits and design links from that (and checking their delivery times)
  • using AI tools to summarize what was done in the above

On the flip side, watch out for false signals where the impact might not be so meaningful.

  • Unless it's their job, they're putting too much emphasis on learnings and documentation efforts. Documentation is an expected output as software engineers code and deliver features. Spending time just learning and then documenting it all even though there's a documentation deficit, isn't going to be the needle mover unless the company initiative is to spruce up the documentation. Technical designs though does count as technical work as the influence is a technical one that can span one or more teams. It requires problem solving and solutioning, not writing what's already there.
  • The inverse of some of the points above where the employee listed a quantifiable achievement, maybe even dollar values to a feature but was hand held throughout that delivery and it was really used as their learning experience more so than their own autonomy.
  • Too much emphasis on Citizenship work. It's good to have company citizenship like hiring, helping out with events and conducting events. Just be wary if there's too much emphasis here if it's not the employee's core role.
  • Playing the part of another role like product owner or product manager and spending too much time on administrative tasks like ticket hygiene. Fair though if they do this well and are doing actual requirements gathering, clarification and estimation based on deep technical design. To a degree, everyone should play this part a little bit to make sure the work lines up with the overarching company goals.

Those examples are focused more on the individual contributor (IC) track for software engineering. Not technical writer, developer evangelist or any company with greater scale that does warrant these specialists. An individual contributing software engineer's job is first and foremost, to deliver features end to end of high value and high quality. They need, and with support if necessary, to prioritize their core responsibilities above all else. Doing that well gives them slack to dive into other things but that core work shouldn't be sacrificed unless their role or expectations are explicitly changed.

The Performance Pyramid was Faithfully Followed

The majority of items in the pyramid have been ticked off. Without downplaying its importance as a box ticking exercise, the Pyramid is meant to work hand in hand with showing the impact with an emphasis on quantifiable achievements.

Some items, like positive manager feedback and positive 360 reviews won't be able to be ticked off until near the end of the performance round, so that would have to wait. Though it's perfectly fine for managers to request more frequent feedback since the previous cycle at regular intervals or as needed. They just need to make sure to get a decent sample size and to ensure that it's anonymously delivered. More on that later.

In the sheet template, you'll also notice there's a notes section. Fill in any notes along the way to see a change in behaviour over time. The nice thing about Google Sheets though is that you can also see a log of what changed but it might require more scrolling than necessary. Managers will want to keep track of how consistently their reports have executed the pyramid.

Operating at the Current Level or Higher

The next thing to do is to check where the report is operating at. There are a few things to consider at this section and may also be a principle that managers need to indicate at the time of onboarding.

Does your organization have a minimum operating level?

Awhile ago, Google used to set the expectation that software engineers need to make it to Senior within a certain number of years before they no longer need to climb up the ladder. This is no longer the case at the time of writing but consider it for your organization and if it's appropriate for your scale. If it is appropriate e.g. you have a junior workforce that you've traditionally done well with, you might want them to level up accordingly as you shift from early start up to scale up mode. As new talent comes in, you may want your wild west partners to level up their professionalism to be more consistent or to be a bit more knowledgeable in industry standards for the next level of growth.

If this is the case, adjust your onboarding and tell them directly when going through the levels document about what the expectation is. Manage the communication to existing employees on where you need them to be and work with them to fill in the gaps. The leeway in time to the minimum level could be more considerate for existing employees though.

The difference between current, formal, and desired levels

Before going further, let's ensure we've got the nuances in language down. This language should also be used when managers communicate with their reports so that there is no confusion. Additionally, managers can modify the levels worksheet to incorporate this language in (see image below).

The formal level is where the employee was hired at or has been promoted to. The employee may have been hired as a non senior but then got a promotion previously to senior. Then their level is formally recognized by the organization as senior.

The current level is where they're operating at. Regardless of their formal title, they may be operating below, at or higher than their formal level. This is important for how performance evaluations will go and ultimatey affect remuneration.

The desired level is one that has been communicated, discussed and agreed to between manager and report. This means that the expectations, gaps and support mechanisms are in place so that the employee can achieve the desired level. Presumably, this would be something higher than where the employee current is. In the case of poor performance, the desired level may come from the manager to indicate to the employee that they need to step up. In this case, the desired level should have been communicated in a 1:1 way before any more drastic action has been taken i.e. a PIP (performance improvement plan) which often leads to an end in the working relationship in one way or another. More on the PIP later. The desired level should come with a timeframe. Whether it's a promotion, a minimum level or a closing the gap situation, there should be some achievable timeframe. This makes it more real and pushes for both sides to have a resolution or an action plan depending on the situation.

Here's what a levels doc might look like for a senior who isn't meeting expectations: senior not meeting expectations levels doc

Note

Bolded items are things the employee needs to improve upon.

Here's what one looks like for someone aiming for promotion or needs to hit the minimum level: upward growth levels doc

A promotion is warranted if they look like this: promotion worthy levels doc

True company integrity will shine here if management can keep its promises and reward people going above and beyond their expectations. Be absolutely sure the employee is operating beyond their current level consistently. Also note that they still have gaps at the senior level and that it's a skip level promotion because the employee has been stellar.

Is the employee operating at the level you expected?

In terms of performance reviews, the employee should at the very least, be performing at their formal level. If it's the minimum level for your organization, perhaps they have had considerable impact to warrant a raise as opposed to a promotion. To summarize the above:

  • Current level is below formal -> close the gaps by a specific date
  • Current level is at formal level -> collect achievements for the round table
  • Current level is above formal level -> collect achievements for the round table

Preparations Leading Up to the Review Period

Let's assume that the review period happens twice a year, 6 months apart and that promotions and pay bumps can happen at each occassion.

Managers should be having conversations 2-3 months prior if they intend to champion the report at the round table. As a direct report, this is probably the best you can ask from a manager. From a business perspective, many things get taken into consideration including role availability (if the report is after a lead role but there aren't enough lead spots), business profitability and cashflow, staffing needs etc. This needs to be communicated early on and it may not be the manager who has the final decision making power.

That being said, the manager should help the employee prepare and iterate on the documents. If everything has gone to plan so far, achievements and impacts should have been recorded along the way every 2 weeks. That's not always going to be the case but that's just poor execution then. Managers need to make sure they're looking at the levels and impact frequently enough to get a good grasp of what's going on and provide guidance on alignment with company objectives, how to quantify the value being added etc. so that it becomes less of an admin chore as the performance round draws closer. It's very hard to remember things in the last 6-12 months in the last week leading up to the performance round.

The good thing about it is that both managers and reports can edit the worksheet. It's definitely in the best interest of the employee to be updating it on the regular and bringing it up in the 1:1s. Reports should be their own best champion. Armed to with all the knowledge and processes of the performance review, having clear expectations set up front and having frequent discussions about performance, they should be preparing 90% of the materials for the performance review. If you're the report, make it easier for your manager to get you promoted or that raise, don't put the cognitive effort on them. Managers probably have multiple reports and they're only human too.

Managers Prepare the Promotion Candidacy List

Whoever's managing the performance round should prepare a candidacy list a couple of weeks or so in advance so that people have time to think, review and comment on promotional candidates. The main thought process around this is:

  • This saves the in person time when the round table happens. The round tale becomes more streamlined and crisp.
  • Managers have to diligently prepare and be very concise about why they're bringing up their report for a promotion and think about all the reasons why not from the others' perspective
  • We get a historical log to see if there's a repeat candidate -- was there someone who just needed to close out one or two more gaps? Did they just need to demonstrate consistency through one or two more initiatives? Or is there some other personal agenda at play?
  • Some people don't think well on their feet and prefer a more quiet place to think on their own

Tip

You can modify and adjust this round table worksheet for your needs

Outcomes of a Performance Review

Finally the round table should happen and everyone has their say. Decision makers go away and come back with a result which can be one of:

  • No promotion, but standard raise - Reasoning should be clearly given to the manager for the manager to have that discussion with their report. Not the best outcome for the report and manager but hopefully the framework has been pretty up front about what it expects and it becomes less of a personal thing and more objective so that the manager doesn't have a rough time.
  • No promotion, but decent raise - Again, reasoning should be clear on why they didn't get the promotion. However, this time they got a decent raise so that means they're doing well. There might not have been a spot available or the company needs to see a few more chunky sized initiatives to make sure delivery is consistent. So at this point it's not a matter of if, but when they'll get the promotion. Expectations and goals should now be set on the levels document with a timeframe for the next level.
  • Promotion, with raise - A promotion should always be coupled with a raise for that level's bracket. This is the ultimate reward a company can give and so the option of promotion without a raise isn't even listed. Communications of when the promotion is made public, how much the employee has earned etc should be communicated by the manager. Perhaps the promotion should happen with fanfare at a town hall or other event. Though internally, teams can gather for celebrations of their peers getting promoted before that happens.

In all scenarios, the employee should be thanked for their contribution and treated with respect. They've spent time preparing materials and executing what the company has laid out in its processes.

Consequences of a Poorly Executed Review

The review itself should be as objective as possible and that messaging should be propagated to all levels of the organization. There will always be some subjectivity as no process is perfect but everything done so far has been in the view of transparency, setting clear expectations and rewarding people who clear those expectations. Not rewarding people when all that work has been done would be a breach of implied promises and you shouldn't really blame them if they leave, or even worse, silently quit.

Things can also get personal and emotional for managers and reports as well and take a turn for the worse for a sour relationship if the messaging delivered is vague and not clear. Time will be spent seeking other managers, chasing other work, micro managing unproductivity etc if the manager isn't representing company culture values well when communicating this important outcome to their reports.

Individual contributors are the backbone of the company in which managers rely on. Treat and reward your people well and you'll get farther together.

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