How to navigate engineering performance reviews with success

Become your own advocate to supercharge your career.

In an ideal world, you can rely on your manager to properly evaluate your performance and provide helpful feedback - but that's not always going to happen. And when it does, the consequences for your career can be significant. This is because managers (good or bad) are often spread thin, have less context, and can easily miss details. And especially if you have an excellent manager today helping you level up your career - they want you to outgrow their mentorship. So, you must learn to take charge and effectively contribute to your evaluation. Once you master this skill, you'll unlock a great deal of growth for your career.

This multi-topic series will share my key learnings and strategies for successfully navigating engineering performance reviews. In this first article, I will discuss understanding your company’s process to begin forming a plan for success. While my focus will be on software engineering, you could adapt much of this for several other roles.

Why on earth should you take my advice?

Hi, my name is Henry Kirk, and I’m an Engineering Manager (Senior TLM) at Google. I lead our central iOS and Android teams composed of multiple managers and dozens of engineers. During my career, I’ve completed nearly two dozen performance review cycles as an individual contributor and manager and calibrated countless software engineers from junior to staff levels (including other managers). In addition, I’ve also worked through several promotions over my career, so I understand the excitement and disappointment of the process. Further, I’ve been part of many promotion committees with various outcomes. And most importantly, because I spent the time writing all of this down ??.

Language note: I use “L+1” frequently. If it’s unclear, it’s a peer who is one level above someone. Example: If I’m a senior engineer, my L+1 would be a staff engineer.

Understanding your company’s performance process

Have you tried booking a vacation using airline or credit card reward points? It’s one of the most challenging and frustrating experiences. The sheer number of rules and restrictions force you to book flights at unreasonable hours and vacations during the worst seasons. However, by educating yourself using the dozens of online resources, you can take advantage of the systems and maximize your hard-earned points. Navigating a performance review is no different; you must learn how the system works to build a successful strategy.

For example, at several big tech companies, when someone is going up for promotion, they need the support of L+1 peers to be successful. I often see engineers scrambling at the last minute to find peers familiar enough with their work and of the right level to support their promotion. This results in nothing but stress and an uncertain outcome. This is because not every engineer has the right exposure to L+1s during their day-to-day work. Had they understood the process and created a plan ahead of time, they’d be developing relationships and visibility with peers well in advance.

Key areas to dive into

Below are several topics you’ll need to educate yourself on. In addition to utilizing your company’s internal resources, speaking with your manager and tenured peers is a great way to gather information.

How long is the performance cycle?

Some companies use six months, while others are a year. You’ll want to know the length of time you’ll be assessed to ensure your expectations (discussed later) are aligned and achievable within the given timeframe.

What are the expectations of your role and level?

Role expectations can be nuanced at times. For example, you can be an individual contributor with reports or an engineering manager with reports. With engineering managers, a higher weight is placed on team development vs. technical contributions despite both having reports. Further, you should learn if there’s any variance in your business group or organization structure. I’ve seen cases where an expectation is ambiguous at the company level, so the business unit provides guidance (e.g., citizenship).

Who writes the assessment or feedback?

Is your manager responsible for writing the evaluation, or is it collaborative? Are your peers surveyed for feedback? How is the feedback collected? Is there a word limit? For example, if you learned that your peers could only write 100 words about your performance, you might want to ask them to focus on one area versus being overly broad and unconvincing.

What part of your assessment is visible to who and when?

This is helpful so you know where to spend your time and effort. For example, junior engineers up for promotion might not have their self-assessment visible to a committee, only your manager’s assessment. If this is the case, you would emphasize helping your manager craft a solid evaluation.

What’s the process for assigning a rating?

You’ll want to understand everything from when and how a manager proposes a rating to ratifying it. One important reason is that sometimes a manager must submit an assessment before launching a project (due to process timelines), so you need to articulate the impact differently.

How is your performance compared to your peers?

This will help you articulate and calibrate your contributions. If your performance is compared against peers in another team or workgroup, you must provide adequate context to reviewers unfamiliar with your work. For example, I’ve observed teams that work on mobile or web apps are included in review committees made up of backend systems engineers who frequently ask, “what’s so hard about client work?”.

What is your manager responsible for?

The more you know about your manager’s responsibility, the more you can help them effectively evaluate you. Simple as that.

What’s the promotion process?

Promotion processes are often the least transparent and most confusing. Ensure you understand the requirements, such as rating history, documentation, who presents it, and how it’s evaluated. For example, if your promotion is determined by senior leadership in your organization, it would be beneficial to ensure your projects and their successes are visible to them regularly (e.g., newsletters, demos, etc.).

What are the challenges in the overall process?

No process is perfect, so it will be beneficial to identify and learn how to overcome inefficiencies to improve success. Revisiting my earlier example where a backend system engineer will ask, “what’s so hard about client work?”, you would ensure you’re authoring your assessment to include greater detail on how your work is difficult. In another example, if you learn that fewer colleagues are attempting one over another of two promotion opportunities in a given year, it could be beneficial to select the less crowded opportunity as part of your strategy.

If your company’s process is nonexistent or informal

That’s fine! Even if your company treats performance reviews with little formality, you could (and should) still be generating artifacts and documenting your value. You’ll engage with your manager and peers to gather feedback and demonstrate your impact. I’ll describe best practices for this and more in parts two through five of this series.

Should you skip a performance review if given the opportunity?

Some companies have performance review cycles that are optional. If your company offers this, I do not recommend passing on the opportunity. Evaluating performance and gathering feedback takes practice. Further, if you don’t participate, you’ll leave the process solely in the hands of your manager. Managers are human (for now ??); they might miss things that could be an essential factor in your performance review. Thus, you want to ensure your manager has enough evidence to assign the proper rating.

I’ve made this error myself. Many years ago, I skipped a performance review because I was too busy working on a project and assumed my manager had me covered. Unfortunately, they weren’t aware of key details, so I ended up with a lower rating than I thought I deserved. That experience taught me a valuable lesson: take responsibility and be an advocate for your career.

Thanks for reading! In the next article, I’ll dive into setting expectations with your manager.

Please give this article a like or share to help others ??! You can find my other articles here. In addition, if there’s a management or leadership topic you’d like me to discuss in the future, please comment below, message me on LinkedIn, or @henrytkirk on Twitter. I’d love to hear your thoughts!