Performance Review Q&A and Videos

Hi Everyone,

I am a senior software engineer in my company. We are an R&D company who work for the retail industry. I work in the Computer Vision and systems area.

I joined this company as a senior software engineer. Initially, the project that I was hired for had C++ work but that project was scrapped and we worked on a new product where everything was Python and lots of DevOps tools.

Now the problem that I am facing is all my colleagues who are software engineers know a lot about Python and these tools. I have never used them so far. For me, it was exciting that I was using these new tools which were very necessary in the current industry but I was anyways slow and my code quality and the way I designed things never matched the team's ways of things. I know everybody says that the fundamental principles are the same but I found there are some pythonic ways which are way better than a person who is learning it. Additionally, I was a Senior Engineer, so the manager and lead always came to me and said that they expected more from me. I was not contributing enough.

I feel it is normal to expect things from me as I am a senior. The main problem that I face is I don't feel myself important to the team. Most of the development or coding is done by the rest of the team. I even see they are given more design and senior role work too. I am given very small things. Honestly, even I don't know if I will be able to work on designing systems using these technologies. It affects my confidence and so I am never confident in my work, I have a constant fear that I can lose my job anytime. I don't feel proud of my work anymore now. I have learnt the new tools from last 1 year but I am unable to lead the team in any direction. There are some new concepts in Computer Vision world now like Embeddings which is completely new to me I am struggling to catch up on anything.

Our product is going live very soon, so the issues and pressure have started to grow. I am not even able to build any relationships with the real stakeholders in the team. They all love my other teammates and thus keep giving them work. Whenever I try to talk to them about any issues I do not get any encouraging reply, it feels like I am giving very basic suggestions.

Can anyone advise me on how to handle and perform well in the team and above all feel recognized in the team and organization? I am pretty sure many people here would have changed technology and should have faced similar situations , many would have recovered from this situation.

I always have very high standards for myself and have always been recognized as so in my previous companies. Lately, I feel I am not feeling very proud about my work, and I feel that is the main issue. I need some advice to improve in my field and in a consistent way.

I joined a company 6 months back and from start I am noticing that some of the engineers in the team are constantly underperforming and I can hardly see them working on any task. This puts additional pressure on other teammates to perform as we set team sprint goals considering availability of all engineers and we find the team always lag behind the deadlines.

I am wondering what should be the right way to discuss this with my manager during 1:1’s. I don’t want to sound like I am pointing fingers on others.

I've heard that situations at Atlassian and other companies in general can be very competitive to the point where engineers are competing against each other for survival with systems like stack rank and team quotas. I'm wondering what's the best way to navigate through systems like these.

I have joined this new company for little less than a year. I had interviewed for a different role but due to certain hiring constraints joined in a different team and role. The team I am in is not very technical, there's a lot of process and grind work that's part of the role. It is rather different from what I have been doing which was essentially automation of manual processes and deployment pipelines using tools and coding.

I had one review till now where I got an average rating, to me it seemed sub optimal given I put in a lot of effort to add value to the team. Some of the comments I received included that I should come up with my own ideas (this was with respect to a manual process that I automated which was lying in the backlog for over two years) and also related to some of the choices I made (manager asked if I want project A or B and I said I'm definitely interested in A).

To be honest, I feel my manager is nit picking and he also trivialized my work by making comments like anyone can code, ideas are important, etc even when no one from the team actively owned to execute the ideas.

I feel my manager doesn't particularly like me due to the above behaviors. In this situation how do I set myself up for a good performance review the next time. I would have considered quitting but I like the vibe of the company and some of the other teams are doing phenomenal work. It was hard for me to get in so even if I quit I don't want to quit without trying first.

In most of my previously held roles I became a go to person pretty quickly and got good visibility. How do I do this here?

What concrete things do I say, in a conversation with my manager to "set expectations"?

Do I say something like "I would like to ____ expectations this quarter, is it sufficient to complete project A & project B?"

What if I am new to the company, and unable to contribute meaningfully to a significant project, or there is downtime when no projects are available?

Can I say I'll fix some unknown volume of bugs this quarter?

We are 3 people in my team. I've been at the company for 2 years roughly and my team mates for 15+ years. I'm in a situation where my coworkers do stuff, but stuff that's often completely unrelated to our backlog. One of them struggles with being motivated by the job. Occasionally, a 16-hour job takes a month to complete. Maybe 2. And you never know why or when it will be done. This causes a lot of tension with the product lead. The other teammate (focused on the front end) rarely makes any PRs. I'm not sure if it's due to the fact that they have mostly done HTML/CSS and are unsure of how to navigate the frameworks we use or what it is. Our manager tends to cover for us, but obviously he's not loving this situation. It's been like this for 1–2 years. Now it has started affecting my pay raise, and I'm starting to feel tired of always playing dumb or referring to the other great work that they're doing when asked what my teammates are up to. Both seem to be struggling somewhat with stress and anxiety, so I've tried to be compassionate with them. But what do I do? I want to take ownership of the team's performance, but it's difficult to know what to do. They have the senior roles, and they have most of the ownership of the project, so I also feel weird telling them "what to do," if that makes any sense. The company size is roughly 20 engineers, FYI.

Any advice on how to handle this situation nicely, i.e. making sure we're still friends afterward, would be highly appreciated.

I'm relatively new to the company, so I would love to understand more about this. Here's more specific questions I had:

1. How is the first one evaluated? Is it different because you're new?
2. Is it evaluated from the day you joined the company or the day you joined a team out of bootcamp?
3. How is delayed impact factored in? Since I'm new, I'll have some small wins by PSC time but am not likely to have big ones as they're waiting to launch/realize impact.

I was told that exceeding expectations doesn't necessarily mean that you're operating at the next level, so I would like to get more clarity here. What does it mean to exceed expectations in a way that's building up towards promotions vs. not?

Hello lovely Community! 👋

I am currently working as Senior Software Engineer 1 and I am close to get promoted in the next performance review cycle.

My manager asked me to create a development plan and individual goals to track the progress efficiently.

Wanted to understand how the development plan and individual goals should look like for Senior Engineer?

My manager changed in H2, and my previous manager became my skip. While my current manager has a decent idea on the current projects I am working on and their importance, sometimes I see them mixing up specifics, which could be because they’re still ramping up. With that context, how do I make sure my manager represents my year long performance in upcoming calibrations well? Should I give them context on all my work in our 1:1s, especially my H1 work as they weren’t in my team?

Layoffs are making me quite anxious. I understand job security might not really be a thing when it comes to big tech, but I do want to try pursuing employment security, if that makes sense. How do I "get good" so I can be a little more resilient when it comes to layoffs and employment? I'm not really sure where to start.

Hey Taro,

I have a question around how to manage a direct report who I’m receiving performance complaints about.

For context, I’m the team lead for a team that works distributed across vertical teams. We have a new hire who’s been working with us for around 3 months now. He’s working with Team A and has recently been helping them to write App X, a brand new application.

Recently the PM for Team A has reached out to me with some general complaints/concerns about his output. The work this new hire is doing blocks most work for Team A, and the PM feels like they should have finished their work by now, and apparently other members of Team A have raised similar complaints.

Additionally, this new hire has a reputation for working very long hours/late into the night after work. On several occasions he’s posted slack messages at 1am, and the PM is concerned that he’s trying to spend long hours after work to try and make up for his lack of progress.

Myself and my manager have both already had casual conversations with him about his late night work to try and put a stop to this, and myself and other team members have tried to help him with his tasks where we can. We’re in a very small company so while I can try shuffling him around to a different vertical, it’s not like there’s limitless possibilities there.

I’ll be bringing this up with my manager today during our 1:1, but I was also very interested in hearing what the Taro community thinks here.

This is my first time as a manager so I’m very much out of my depth here.

I've been at this small startup (~100 engineers) for about 8 months.

I've worked on 2 different projects/teams (2 months + 6 months) for various reasons. This constant ramp up process is limiting my ability to make significant impact.

Now my manger is about to move me to another totally different project because my current project scope is transferred to another team.

The startup hasn't done a layoff yet, but the possibility is there this year.

I think I need to stop paying the ramp up cost and stick to my current area (meaning switching to the other team) so I can make bigger scope impact and avoid getting laid off.

How should I navigate this conversation with my manger?

We recently wrapped up the performance review cycle and I'll be having a meeting in a few weeks with my manager about my performance review and any potential annual raises. Recently, I was switched to remote status and took a ~12% decrease in total compensation and almost puts me at the junior-level compensation. I was wondering if I should be negotiating for a larger than normal (2-4%) raise in order to make up for the remote status pay decrease. I am bit cautious during these tough economic times but the pay decrease may have been a bit drastic as others in my location pay tier are paid more. Promotion raises are likely unrealistic as I was just promoted a few months ago.

I have 2 other developers working with me on a critical project, plus my mental + physical health is not so good.

I really want to move to a more relaxed workplace, but I feel deadlocked. I'm unable to carve out time from my job.

I have recently not been performing as well as I did last year/early this year due to my mental health and some changes in my personal life, and my manager noticed that too. I got promoted this year only, and if my performance drops, I get compared to my performance last year which led to my promotion. So if I try to avoid work, I'll be noticed further.

I am a mid-level engineer at an HFT company. I've been with my current company for around 7 months and another similar one for 2.5 years previously. My biggest career issue so far has been poor attention to detail, which leads to me to always miss small mistakes I make.

For instance, I always review my own PRs myself before sending to reviewers, and clean up plenty of issues I notice myself. But then my reviewer will point out some kind of bug, or something I forgot to do, and in retrospect it will be immediately obvious to me. Alex often mentions the importance of being able to get most of your PRs accepted in one attempt, but for anything > 30 lines this simply feels like a pipe dream because I am so terrible at noticing things until it's too late.

(For the record, I'm very thorough with test coverage, but when I simply forget to implement something, I of course forget to test it too).

Another more specific example is that our process of verifying features in production is sometimes a bit involved, and requires changing config in several places. I knew what to change, did so and tested everything, then told my manager the feature had been verified. Later on he was looking at the configs (not sure whether he did it to check my work or for some unrelated reason) and pointed out that I did not actually set everything as I intended to, and therefore the feature wasn't verified correctly. I realized mistake I made (ran a command to change a bunch of files in the wrong directory) but only after the fact, and it cost me embarrassment and extra work.

I think I'm quite good at the other aspects of software engineering: coming up with impactful ideas and executing on them independently, picking up domain knowledge and areas of the codebase quickly, fixing bugs (my own or others'), presenting on my work, etc. So I've been able to eke out "meets" and even "exceeds" reviews at my first job because I had significant impact despite blundering all over the place.

But my deficiencies in this area make me fearful for my career, as I am always worried about making just enough mistakes to get PIP'd or fired. Furthermore, we don't have levels here, but I doubt I can make it to the equivalent of Staff or even the senior level with this kind of defect.

Does anyone have advice on how I can "train my brain", as it were, to improve at this ASAP and make sure I don't go down the wrong trajectory? Thanks!

A little context: I joined my company back in Jan and have been doing really well. I’ve been consistently pushing code, owning projects, and creating good relationships with my colleagues.

This week I’ve been really sick and it feels like nothing is going right. I have been running an experiment for a couple months and today I found out that one of the arms is bugged because I introduced it a while ago. After a scrambled meeting with my lead and manager, I addressed the bug and pushed a fix but because of freezes my bug fix won’t actually be in til after year end. My manager stated that they wouldn’t have expect an engineer to not notice a bug like this go on for so long.

The business side is actually not even interested in the bugged arm and would like to go with an approach I proposed earlier in the project.

I’ve learned a lot since I pushed the bugged change and my code and communication has improved but my managers comment plus all the news about layoffs and perfs and PIPs has had my anxiety through the roof the past few weeks. Anyone else feeling the same?

What is the prevailing culture within the organization, and how does it manifest in day-to-day operations and decision-making? The prevailing culture within an organization is the shared values, beliefs, norms, and practices that shape the social and psychological environment of a business. This culture influences employee behavior, motivates management styles, and affects decision-making processes. What are those for Meta?

What are the hidden things to notice and to worry about? For example:

1. Cliques and Silos: Pay attention to the formation of exclusive groups or departments unwilling to share information. This can indicate a fragmented culture that hinders collaboration.

2. Resistance to Change: If there is noticeable resistance to new ideas or changes in procedure, the culture may be rigid and resistant to innovation.

3. Overwork and Burnout: A culture that consistently expects long hours and overwork may prioritize short-term gains over long-term employee well-being and sustainability.

4. Turnover Rates: High employee turnover can be a red flag for issues within the organizational culture such as lack of growth opportunities, poor management, or a toxic work environment.

5. Office Politics: Pay attention to how much politics influence decisions and progress. A culture heavily influenced by politics rather than merit can demotivate employees.

6. Feedback Mechanisms: Lack of mechanisms for providing constructive feedback, or a culture where feedback is ignored, can indicate a culture not open to self-improvement or employee development.

7. Diversity and Inclusion: Observe whether the organization actively supports diversity and inclusion, not just in policy but in practice, reflecting a culture of respect and equality.

About Company: growing mid-size startup, great tech culture, talented people to work with, pays well

Promoted in recent appraisal cycle (2 levels above entry level, similar to L6 at Amazon) but the increment is not attractive compared to what is normally paid at that level (within company). Performance review was great but manager does not have much say in deciding increment percentage. I do see learning opportunities here in future but demotivated by this bias.

How do I renegotiate salary? How to have this discussion with skip manager?

I've learned it is a great idea to keep a "brag journal" up to date with your accomplishments. This is something I've been doing but my question is what are some ways I can bring this list up during the performance review? Do I share the document prior to the meeting or do I quickly go through the documents with them?

I work for a very technical and niche start-up as a Frontend Developer. For context, we have 3 F.E. devs and 3 B.E. devs. I was hired as a vaguely-level intermediate developer, and after about nine months at this company, my F.E. lead is advocating for me to be a Senior developer. The only issue is that the company hasn't done internal promotions before, and they're a bit stalled whilst considering how to best handle the process. There's also some ambiguity in measuring a Front-end developer's skills - especially compared to a back-end developer; Our CEO is also a seasoned back-end developer, so he understands technical skills but is unclear on how it maps to Front-end skills.

What are some things I can bring up to my company's leadership on how to measure my skills and value? Such to help facilitate a conversation around my promotion.

Since Dec 2021 to Aug 2022, My managers changed 4 times after and I got promoted from sde1 to 2. Due to multiple projects and managers, I could not take ownership as I was still in ramp up phase but manager was expecting more at the SDE2 level, pointing issues, demotivating. So I took internal transfer to a different team. I am in this new team for 3 months. 1 month - I took to even understand the basics. Manager left and new manager joined. I had to go on vacation for 15 days. I don't have metrics to show that I am performing at the SDE2 level because

1. I didn't get design projects (design phase has already been completed by the time I joined this team).
2. No OPS, this is a new product. There are no operational tasks. Working on beta launch.
3. I am the last person who joined this team. I don't have anyone to become mentor since I have limited knowledge on this new team and work
4. Have not taken interviews due to hiring freeze

Worried about Q1 performance cycle in 2023. 2022 was difficult for me to show any impact. Is there anything I can do now to not get low rating in Q1?

At this point, I am no more interested in work and just want to leave due to lack of mentorship. I have a buddy who answers questions if I ask in this team but I don't have anyone to mentor me to guide me to see what kind of projects I can work, coming up with the initiatives. I feel stuck. There are no hirings happening outside and inside the company. What can I do to proceed further?

I joined my team in June this year right after bootcamp. When I joined this team, we set the goals for the half, and then got reorg-ed to a different domain (think ML for ads vs ML for recommendations).

Our models had only shown limited success in the previous domain before the reorg, we spent around 2 months (July and August) just building new versions of these models for the new domain.

It's October already, the model hasn't shown any significant success in any of our projects with XFN. We are getting closer and closer as we understand the problems better. However with code freeze in November, December - it is unlikely it will reach production or even online experiments by then.

Does that mean I would have "no impact" at my first PSC? This would be the case for all of my teammates which seems bonkers.

I thought about writing a long note with all of the progress we've made in understanding the problem (which will result in a model that's cheaper than the current one and easier to understand), what are some results we have seen already, and hypothesis on where to go next.

Still to be honest I'm scared the results I got won't be good enough to get to production by PSC-time, and thus I'll be marked as no impact. In retrospective I should have studied the problem more when I joined but I was so new to Meta.

How can I mitigate this? Looking for a side-project now I can fully own (as E5, I don't think attaching myself to a teammate's project is good enough) is unlikely to get any results with the current model we have.