I work in a small company with no formal perf review system - How can I get feedback to improve?

Question

I work at a small company with only 10 engineers. Since it’s so small, there’s no real feedback culture - We don't have a formal performance review system.

Everything I’m hearing is always positive - Everyone just tells me I’m always surpassing expectations and doing well. However, I know that there's a lot I can improve as I'm an earlier-in-career engineer. I want real feedback so I can get better and understanding the path from junior -> mid-level -> senior: What can I do to start getting this feedback?

Alex Chiou · Accepted Answer

Let your manager know that you treat all feedback as a gift and that you want real, honest feedback to become a more effective employee of the company. Make it clear it's in both your best interests for you to get this feedback. Identify teammates that you can learn from and set up recurring 1:1 meetings with them to build those relationships to a state where they're comfortable giving you feedback. Long shot: Try to add a formal but lightweight feedback exchange system. It can be anonymized by having the managers conduct it. Every 3 or 6 months, the managers ask their reports to submit feedback for their peers. When you receive the feedback, you just get the raw feedback: You don't know who it came from. Code review is one of the best places to receive feedback as a junior engineer. Whenever you get code review feedback, ask commenters to dig deeper into constructive comments that you're very interested in.

I work in a small company with no formal perf review system - How can I get feedback to improve?

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