Get The Rating You Deserve: Optimize Your Tech Performance Review
Are you putting in hard work but not seeing the results you deserve—whether it’s a promotion, good rating, a raise, or the simple recognition you know you’ve earned? This happens to so many of us -- happened with me in Facebook at times, and has happened to many of my friends and people I have worked with in my career coaching practice.
This course bridges the gap between effort and reward, helping you unlock the real value of your work while navigating the complexities of workplace dynamics.
Through real-life examples, actionable strategies, and mindset shifts, you’ll learn:
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Why traditional approaches to better rating and promotion often fall short.
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How to align your efforts with what truly creates impact.
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The critical role of communication, relationships, and mindset in achieving your career goals.
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The importance of balancing between doing great work and communicating that work and your desires behind doing that work.
We’ll explore biases (that all of us have), strategies for managing up and down, and ways to build relationships before you need them. You’ll discover how to take ownership of your career, work sustainably, and stay in the game for the long haul—all while developing the clarity and skills to thrive in uncertain environments.
This course is informed by years of experience working with hundreds of professionals and my own journey from overcoming a “trending Meets Most” rating to “greatly exceeds” one and extraordinary results.
This course also explores long-term strategies and short-term tactics. So, stay till the end for balanced insights, principles, and resources to take your career to the next level!
Yogi Sharma is a career coach who worked at Facebook/Meta during the hyper growth period of the company. Yogi worked as a research scientist / software engineer at Facebook from 2011 (when there were a few hundred people working at Facebook) to 2017 (when there were tens of thousands).
During this period, Yogi worked on a multitude of infrastructure teams including disaster recovery, cache consistency and networking hardware. Through a combination of stellar performances in some halves and challenging perf reviews in others, combined with deep conversation with many employees there (many of whom he became friends with), he learned how to navigate career and performance in a tech oriented company.
Prior to working at Meta, Yogi got his PhD in Theoretical Computer Science from Cornell University. Subsequently, he taught undergraduate courses at Cornell and the University of Waterloo. He got his undergraduate degree in Computer Science from IIT Kanpur, where he earned the prestigious President’s Gold Medal for outstanding academic performance (highest GPA in the graduating class).
During his time at Facebook, he navigated many challenges, including receiving a tentative rating of Meets Most mid-cycle. He helped the manager and larger team see his impact and was able to influence changing the rating to Greatly Exceeds (three ratings up) by the end of the cycle. He learned a lot in those three months and many of those lessons are available for you to learn from in this course.
Besides negotiating better ratings, Yogi has also learned the art of negotiating compensation well. After leaving Facebook, he negotiated (among other offers) a total compensation offer from $320k to $1.05M at a large ride sharing company in the Bay Area. He shared that story and lessons from it in an earlier Taro talk (Behind the scenes of a $320K → $1.05M negotiation in Silicon Valley: https://www.jointaro.com/lesson/BEmfJlwjrXhFrPkFV3qh/behind-the-scenes-of-a-dollar320k-dollar105m-negotiation-in-silicon-valley/).
Yogi ended up not taking the million dollar job offer, and decided to follow his passion of coaching. With his engineering expertise and empathetic non-judgemental listening, he guides people navigate the technical and emotional complexities of decision making and execution. If you want to get personalized support from Yogi, you can reach out to him at coaching@yogisharma.com or schedule an introductory call to dive into your situation at https://tinyurl.com/meetyogi. If nothing else, you would walk away understanding your situation deeply and strategies for how to approach it.
We hope you enjoy this course as much as Yogi enjoyed creating it.
Yogi coached and helped me get back to running and fitness by fundamentally changing how to approach the problem. His technique challenges you to address the core issue head-on and helps provide practical techniques on how to tackle them.
This course teaches you how to be a high performer in general, combining elements of communication, productivity course, promotion course, and system design.
One of the most tangible outcomes has been a successful transition from a managerial role to an individual contributor, a goal I had aspired to achieve. But, the changes were not merely career-specific. I also noticed improvements in my interpersonal skills. Thanks to Yogi's unique and compassionate approach to communication, I have built strong rapport within my team and garner more respect now.
