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Hacking Quarterly Performance Reviews

by JohnSeptember 20th, 2021

Too Long; Didn't Read

There’s a secret about the quarterly performance review process they don’t tell new managers: You learn how to cheat the system. To understand how managers can cheat, we need to know how performance reviews work. Managers need to understand how the words of the career framework are interpreted by their managers. The framework outlines the expectations of an employee at a company. It defines the career path of a given role and defines who gets promoted.

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There’s a secret about the quarterly performance review process they don’t tell new managers.

You learn how to cheat the system.

A new manager made this observation after completing his first performance review. And you know what?

It’s true.

The knowledge of how quarterly performance reviews actually work is unavoidable for managers.

So how can we use it to help others?

How do Quarterly Performance Reviews Work for Managers?

To understand how managers can cheat, we need to know how performance reviews work. Whether it’s an annual, mid-year review, or quarterly performance review cadence, this is what happens behind the scenes:

Your manager collects feedback and reviews your contributions.
They determine how each contribution applies to your company’s career framework. They then decide your performance review rating.
They meet with other managers to explain their decision. Other managers will provide feedback on the performance rating.
Reviews are shared. Promotions and raises given. Managers take some time off after an emotionally exhausting process.

This is an intense process. Your manager needs to craft this chapter of your career’s story and weave it in the language of the company.

They take this story and defend its small details against a panel whose goal it not aligned with yours. This panel’s goal is to ensure fair ratings across all performance assessments.

There’s a side effect to this intense review process. Managers learn how the system works.

So let’s dig deeper into how performance reviews are seen in a manager’s eyes.

What is a Career Framework?

A quick aside – what do I mean by a “career framework”?

A career framework is a document outlining the expectations of an employee at a company. It defines the career path of a given role. These frameworks show how one progresses in their current title and get promoted to the next.

Some companies will even tie raises to one’s growth within a career band. The idea is to incentivize the personal development of one’s skills.

If you’re interested in seeing career framework examples, I recommend checking progression.fyi.

How managers think about a quarterly performance review

There are two major components of putting together an effective performance review.

Clear feedback on what an individual did well and where they need to grow.
How this individual is performing within the company’s career framework.

Giving feedback in a performance review is straightforward. Check out my guides on how to give positive feedback and constructive feedback to learn more.

The challenge is tying an individual’s contributions back to a company’s career framework. Managers need to understand how the words of the career framework are interpreted.

Are these words interpreted literally? Or do they outline the “spirit” of an expected behavior?
What examples have they seen that represent high performance for a given expectation?

It’s critical for a manager to have answers to these questions. These answers outline how the company determines raises. They define who gets promoted and when.

Let’s look at an example of what I mean.

Example of How A Manager Assesses Performance

Looking at Square’s Career Ladder, let’s use a behavior for a Senior Engineer (Level 5 Individual Contributor):

Improves code structure and architecture in service of testability and maintainability.

Reading this, the questions that jump to my mind are:

Does Square take this behavior literally or not?
What examples exemplify this behavior at Square? Who is considered to be a high performer of this behavior?
What is the expected behavior for someone just promoted to Senior Engineer? What about someone who has been in the role for a few years?

To me, I see growth depend on the impact of one’s contributions.

For a new Senior Engineer, I would expect the following:

Be able to refactor code as they go along
Set testing goals for a project
Build towards the long-term architectural plans of the team.

What about a more experienced Senior Engineer? My expectations change. I want them to be able to solve more complex problems that multiply the effectiveness of the team. While they may not see the some problems in a system’s architecture, they can address them once known. Some examples of what I mean are:

Defining or contributing a plan to update the foundational architecture of important systems.
Leading projects that require coordination across two or three teams.
Working with QA to acknowledge risks early in a project. They implement solutions that mitigate those risks.

Here’s the thing though – these are all assumptions based on my own experiences. I won’t know Square’s actual expectations until I experience their performance review process.

This is where managers learn how to pull the levers of the organization.

Why Do Managers Get Frequent Promotions

Coming back to the thesis of this post – how managers learn to cheat at quarterly performance reviews. The details from the previous sections are to make a point.

Managers need to know how career development works at your company. They have to understand the subtext of the expectations for your title level. They are in the room where promotions get made. They see the examples that reflect what it means to be a high performer.

They learn how others rate their employees.

In other words, they learn how to pull the levers of the organization to grow careers.

Managers can’t escape this knowledge. Managers who care about career development have to learn this information. They have to know how performance reviews work to teach the process to others.

What matters is how managers this information.

Managers: How Can You Help Your Employees Write a Better Quarterly Performance Review?

How managers use their knowledge of the performance review process is important. This decision is why I find management to be an ethically demanding job.

This job requires you to be honest with yourself. You must understand your values. You make decisions that affect the actual livelihoods of others.

What you do with the information in this article can’t be decided by me.

How you share this knowledge is decided by you.

The most I can do is share my viewpoint in hopes that it will push you to help others.

To me, great people managers are measured by how much the people around them grow. They put others before them because that’s what brings them joy. Successful teams grow when they have a leader that cares about the people on it. Performance reviews are an important part of this.

When it comes to performance reviews, here are my tips to put together better assessments:

Be clear in what the organization expects of a given role. Overexplain how the performance review process works. Be as transparent as possible. The clarity will build trust in the performance review process.
If you use a career framework, explain the actual expectations of a given behavior.
Pay attention to the examples that represent high performers at a given title level. Use those to identify similar opportunities for your direct reports.
Be as specific as possible in your written assessments. I like to highlight behaviors that one grew and underperformed in. This gives clarity on where employees should focus their efforts.
Don’t wait till performance review season to check in on progress. Give feedback early and often. Check-in on your employee’s goal progression.

Individual Contributors: How can I Write a Better Quarterly Performance Review for Myself?

Now that we know how performance reviews work behind the scenes, what can you do?

To write a more effective self assessment for yourself, do the same work as your manager. Track your contributions, learn examples, and tie this information to your career framework.

Start a Brag Sheet

The easiest thing you can do today is making a brag sheet.

A brag sheet is a document that outlines every contribution you are proud of making over time. Reflect on your work every week or two and try to add at least 1-3 items you’re proud of.

This is a time to be exhaustive. Don’t hold back – anything that has made a positive impact on your project, team, or company is acceptable. Some examples are:

Leading a team meeting
Owning a feature or project from inception to release.
Helping others with a solve a bug
Onboarding new employees

This list will make writing your self-assessment and performance review a LOT easier.

Learn Examples of Exemplary Behavior in Performance Reviews

Ask your manager to explain how performance reviews work behind the scenes. They won’t be able to tell you everything, but it will be more than where you started. This is only the start though.

The real trick is to get them to share examples of high performers.

Say you’re told to focus on developing your skills in a specific behavior. Ask for examples of what people have done in the past. Managers should have multiple examples to give you. You can use this information to focus your skill development efforts.

When it comes to promotions, it’s a similar approach, but on a larger scale. You need to show that most of your skills are contributing at the next level.

To reframe the discussion for promotions, use this great question that a report asked me:

Who is considered to be a high performer at the next title level?

Your manager will point you to people you can pay attention to. Learn from them. They represent what your company sees as a high-performing contributor.

Tie Your Work to the Career Framework

With a list of your contributions and examples of behavior in hand, it’s time for the last step.

You need to tie your contributions to your company’s career framework.

This step is exactly what managers do when they write your performance review. They take your contributions and determine which framework behaviors it applies to. This is how they translate your work into the language of the career framework.

When you do the same thing, you will show your manager how you have grown. You will speak their language and the results you want will come easier.

This is something your manager can help with. Once a month bring your brag sheet to your manager. Work together to tie your contributions to each behavior in your career framework. You will get a deeper understanding of how performance is evaluated. This work will get you the promotions and raises you are looking for.

Wrapping Up

Managers must have a deep understanding of the quarterly performance review process. They need to learn what every word in a career framework means. They must build a library of examples that represent a given behavior. The result of this knowledge is important – they are your guide on the career path of your company.

The risk of this knowledge is that managers can leverage it for their own gain. This is why people management is an ethically demanding job. HOW we managers this knowledge has direct impact the lives of others.

I challenge you to decide how you will use this information to help others.

That’s why we got into this job, right?

I’d love to learn how you think about your performance reviews. How do you approach your employees’ assessments? What do you think about when making your own? Let me know on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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Hacking Quarterly Performance Reviews