Rating

< Not enough impact | Moderate Impact | Significant Impact | Outstanding Impact | Transformative Impact >

Why not lower?

Justify in 2-3 sentences why you would not rate the individual lower than what you've proposed. Use words from your company's ladder and/or other documents like operating principles, leadership principles, etc. Write this section for consumption by the individual to make sure it is tangible callouts for specific achievements/behaviors instead of external factors like "they have worked in this role for 3 years".

XYZ delivered on all their core expectations as the tech lead of project A and as a contributing engineer on projects B, C and D. They showed behaviors aligned with the company values and operating principles. All of their contributions were high-quality and delivered on time. XYZ also made community contributions as expected in their role and level as an interviewer. Overall, solid performer demonstrating all expectations at current level in their role.

Why not higher?

Justify in 2-3 sentences why you would not rate the individual higher than what you've proposed. Use words from your company's ladder and/or other documents like operating principles, leadership principles, etc. Write this section for consumption by the individual to make sure it is actionable growth feedback instead of organizational limitations like "we don't have the budget for higher ratings".

For a higher rating, XYZ needs to grow their delegation and mentoring skills. This review cycle XYZ was able to make significant contributions to project A but could only make small/medium contributions to projects B and C which meant a slower project velocity for the team overall since XYZ is our domain expert. Peer-feedback from cqq@ illustrates this as well. If XYZ improves their delegation and mentoring skills, they can help the team launch multiple projects of the size and shape of project A at the same time which will quickly multiply their impact.

Role

Describe what role the individual played in the past review period. Be specific and write 2-3 sentences to capture all roles.

Tech lead on project A where they led the design, implementation and post-launch activities.
Major contributor to project B where they implemented the Foo and Bar components.
Participated in the initial design of projects C and D.
Incident Commander for incidents ir-lorem-ipsum and ir-dolor-amet.

Summary of Achievements (The "What")

Describe what impact the individual had in the past review period. Capture only a few bullet points summarized from the longer self assessment with emphasis on the largest impact. Use words from your company's ladder and/or other documents like operating principles, leadership principles, etc. Make sure you show a sampling of artifacts specific to the person's level and role that also clearly show the contributions the individual made.

Delivered the first launch of project A which enabled onboarding of new customers P & Q leading to Y% increase in revenue. Design doc, launch review, shipped email. Also see peer-feedback from abc@ below.
Delivered components Foo and Bar for project B. Design doc for Foo, Design doc for Bar, Significant PRs: 1, 2, 3.
Participated in design reviews for projects C and D. Their participation led to closing a major architecture decision in project C (decision log) and reusing an existing library to speed up development for project D (screenshot of doc comment stream). Also see peer-feedback from mmm@ below.
Incident Commander for incidents ir-lorem-ipsum and ir-dolor-amet. ir-lorem-ipsum postmortem, ir-dolor-amet postmortem
Interviewed 6 candidates and participated in 4 hiring debriefs this review period. Interview stats screenshot

Defining Behaviors (The "How")

Describe how the individual had the above impact in the past review period. Capture only a few bullet points summarized from the longer self assessment with emphasis on the most visible behaviors. Use words from your company's ladder and/or other documents like operating principles, leadership principles, etc. This example uses Stripe's Operating Principles to illustrate the point.

Meticulous in their craft - The design and development of project A was very thorough leading to a smooth launch. XYZ also made sure to follow up on post-launch activities like adding monitoring and fixing minor bugs.
Exothermic - XYZ is a solid teammate always willing to help others. They consistently raise the bar in design and code reviews with their mentoring. They are also a dependable interviewer, doing their share of interviews as needed.

Peer Feedback

Call out snippets of 2-3 feedback received from peers. It is useful to also briefly mention the peer's level and role since feedback from peers junior to the individual should be weighed differently than feedback from senior peers.

[name, Product Lead, Project A] - "XYZ was the driving force behind the technical design and delivery of this project. The work was high quality and done ahead of schedule. We had a smooth launch that enabled us to immediately onboard large customers P and Q!"
[name, L2 Developer, Project C] - "I have learned a lot from XYZ about writing production quality code. Their mentorship helped me quickly iterate on code reviews."
[name, Eng Lead, Partner Team Dolor Amet] - "XYZ has a lot of domain knowledge and is no doubt our foremost expert on Foo. XYZ does high quality work when directly involved in a project. However my team was however blocked on project C while XYZ was focusing on project A. I would encourage XYZ to mentor other engineers to reduce their own SPOF so we can keep up project velocity."