Explore Performance Review on Taro

I'm an E5 iOS at a Big Tech company. My team has some E6 work that I'd love to take on, but my PM prioritized some E4 work above it. Since the only other iOS engineer on my team is E6, my EM asked me to take on the E4 work while the E6 works on the E6 work. The E4 work is scoped to about a month's worth of work, but I worry that scope creep may drag things out further. I've been at this company for close to 3 years on various teams. For the majority of that time, I've been saddled with E4 work (and sometimes even E3 work) that has taken valuable time away from working towards E6. I was hired as an E5. Is there a way to avoid spending time doing lower-level work to focus on getting to the next level? For what it's worth, I got Exceeds on my latest performance review.

I work on the privacy side, so our core projects are often held up by XFN. This leads to me having to find something to do in the meantime, which often means smaller, ad-hoc efforts. However, I've been told that working on larger projects across a lengthier time horizon is better for promotion. What can I do during these blocked times that also shows good execution signal for promotion?

I joined Meta and my team in July of last year. I got an MA for this half. I am happy I at least got that, but it looks like a lot of people got exceeds expectations. The thief is making me less happy, and slightly worried. Should I feel good about this?

Hello everyone,

As a senior engineer L5 in my company for 1 year, I recently found myself in a new team with a new direct manager but report to the same Director in the same Org due to the recent company restructure/company reorganization as part of layoff changes. My Director and I are the direct responsible individuals for the Backend Platform System for the last 1 year. However, I am finding that a significant portion of my time is being taken up by "glue work," such as onboarding new teammates, updating the Wiki, documenting On-call Runbook, mentoring cross-functional team members, providing code reviews for new developers, and unblocking people in their code development. While these tasks seem important, they are making it difficult for me to focus on my own projects.

In my first one-on-one, my new manager expressed a desire for me to take on new initiatives. I am eager to do so, but I need to be able to focus on my own work to make this possible. My manager understood that the frequent on-call support was a blocker for me and asked me to train and onboard a new teammate to take over the on-call support, as well as field requests from users and help others with their work. However, I have still found myself doing a lot of training and providing support even two weeks since my last meeting.

I would like to hear from others who have found a way to balance these responsibilities effectively. How can I prioritize my own work while still contributing to the team's success? I know this will be a difficult decision, and I'm not sure how to approach it. I'm worried that if I stop doing some of these tasks, it may impact my relationship with my manager and team.

If anyone has faced a similar challenge, I would appreciate hearing about how you approached it. Did you stop doing certain tasks and responsibilities, and if so, how did it affect your relationship with your team? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

I’d like to convert my internal system of progress into a checklist and then share it with my manager. For example, I’m learning about logging. A question to measure my own progress is to check if I know what information should be logged? What about security considerations? If someone asks me about logging in 2 months, can I unblock them?

I was fired from my previous company due to bad performance on the job. What to tell to potential recruiters about my employment status? Will letting them know that I don't have a job make them lose interest in pursuing with me? Will it reduce my ability when it comes to negotiating the salary/benefits later?

Currently, I'm on a 10 person team, but we only have 3 senior engineers and the remaining 7 are E4s (5 people) and E3s (me and one other new grad). For our upcoming half, they want E4s leading some of the projects for their development. However, I would like guidance, mentorship, and feedback from an E5 or above ideally since they are more experienced. Also, from one of the Taro videos on feedback, one of the points made was to find a way to get feedback from senior engineers at the end of the half who will bolster your PSC packet versus a mid-level engineer who might not hold as much weight (Correct me if I'm wrong)?

Anyway to navigate this the right way? Should I avoid certain projects that are led by E4s? Does this even matter?

I transitioned into a backend engineering role 1 year ago after working as a data analyst for 3 years. The jump was definitely big to me, as I had to learn a lot of new concepts (OOP, clean code, architecture, devops etc). The transition was done through internal hiring where they did a live coding interview (2 easy leetcodes), a live system design interview, and motivational interview. I passed all of those and ended up in a high-paced team.

The team was severely understaffed. The manager was managing 3 teams that decreased from 20+ people to <10 people and there was hiring freeze. There was no proper onboarding and all the seniors were too busy with tasks to help me properly. I did my best to read the documentations and set up 1-1s with more senior engineers from other teams that could help me. I finished several projects although carried over some to the next half.

My 1st performance review was "meet expectations". However, before my 2nd performance review, there was a manager change and this manager gave me "partially meet expectations" and then said that I would be put on PIP program. When I asked the manager what the program would be like and how many people completed this successfully, he/she couldn't give a definitive answer and said that HR would be in touch me.

I decided to quit and spend time to learn more fundamental concepts and take up a freelance project. It's been 2 months since then. Right now I feel like I'm learning a lot in these 2 months compared to my 1 year in that company, but I can't help but feeling very anxious with all these layoffs and the incoming tech winter. I don't have any self-confidence within myself that I would get any decent job, especially after getting an incoming a PIP, I'm just worried that when I'm interviewing at my next job, the career gap in my resume and the past potential PIP would deter me from getting any jobs. I'm also at loss on how to avoid potential PIPs in the future. Any advice to help me? Thank you very much.

Edit: For more context, I didn't come from a CS background (I studied Mathematics). My team was not a revenue generator. The company was especially hit really hard during covid and had 2 big layoffs. When I left, there are many products that are being shut down and a couple of senior-level product managers left as well without being replaced due to hiring freeze. During the talk of my PIP, the manager brought up his/her expectations on me that was 1 level (mid-level) above my current level (junior-level).

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 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 am working on my P0 goals for this half however, the XFN is not communicating well. I am done with my changes and blocked on them for days. They don't review code as fast as I need and keep me waiting. How should I approach them? Also, I want to build good relationship with them for a good Performance cycle feedback. I think they don't take me seriously. what is the right approach here?

Hello,

I am an Entry level Software Engineer( SWE 1) in my current team for a year now in a mid sized company. I have a matured tenure( 3 years ) SWE 2 in team who has been wanting to get promoted to a Senior Software Engineer for sometime now.

The situation is, in order for a chance for promotion, this SWE 2 was asked to lead a small feature implementation of 2 people where they ended up missing deadlines twice stating engineering complexity. Due to this situation, whole of the team, including Teach lead and SWE1s have swarmed in to help them meet the deadline which is almost a week from now.

The thing is, this particular SWE 2 has been calling me out in Standup and grooming meeting and in person to EM for not completing my story in time even though I am giving proper updates in standup and Tech lead hasn’t raised any concerns yet. According to this SWE2, the stories I have been working on should be completed in a particular x timeframe because he thinks so. They have not laid out any scope or plan where to make changes for it. Their argument is, unless I complete this task, the whole team is blocked because of me. They made it a point to convey it to EM along with PM. EM reached out to me in frustration and seemed content after I explained him the complexity and was able to deliver it next day morning. I had reached out to other senior engineers on team and they guided me properly to finish this task.

This particular SWE2 again called out my name again in my Tech Leads one of the PR and mentioned that other devs are blocked because of me. Tech lead gave a great suggestion to unblock others ( which he could have asked way earlier and implemented ) and others are unblocked now. When I reached out to this SWE2 asking an estimate for current story, in our 1:1 conversation he mentions go with your speed. We don’t really need your part to be unblocked. It will be a good to have. But he keeps on throwing me under the bus infront of team, EM and PM. This SWE2 lacks technical depth and keeps on checking with me everyday if I need any help. But they can’t explain anything properly and I consider it as a waste of time to even decipher their explanation because it tends to increase my confusion.

If it matters, we have our end year review next week and EM seems to think SWE2 is the one helping me (in fact not at all, can’t even explain a proper code change). This SWE 2 is one of the main reason I was given not meet expectations last time in our mid year review rating. I am scared of how much impact he has because of EM’s calling out, again on my review this year when in fact I have hardly worked with him this year. Please advise how to handle this situation.

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?

hi all,

I am a tech lead for my team of 5 engineers. I am also a senior eng intending to climb up to staff level.

My manager is not very vocal or supportive and seems reluctant in terms of helping out a plan for myself. I have been working hard though. How can I work with my manager to create a promotion plan for myself and get buy-in from them?

I am not sure if I should move up the eng ladder or transition to management, but are there any guidelines for creating a written promotion plan and manage up so to speak?

Prepping for interviews always feels detrimental to actual career growth. At the same time, what are the things one should look out for to avoid getting laid off and jump ship when things are about to go south.

One advice mentioned often is to look for finances of the company, but I am not aware how to analyse it. Can you help with resources for the same?

Got feedback from manager that my rating is just MA and on the border. I was given the context that my project complexity was not that much and it was a lower level project. I worked really hard and was expecting good ratings. What can I do to make sure that I exceeds the expectations next time?

Given all the layoffs happening all over tech industry.

This Amazon expert thinks so:

Please assist with your advice.

My ideal plan was to reach E5 (Senior Engineer) on my current team and then leave. But I am nowhere near promo currently. I’ve been on my current team for about 1.5 years now. I have to get promoted in about a year from now, or else I’ll be fired.

I need help deciding whether I should roll the dice and switch to another team. I’ve built some strong relationships on my current team, worked with my manager for over a year now and am fully ramped up to my current team’s stack. I’m not sure how to make the decision of whether to leave or to stay.

This quarter, my skip requested/ gave me an opportunity to lead an org wide efficiency initiative as we are at risk of hitting quotas for some internal services (he mentioned potential IC6 scope) and it’s quite urgent to act on it. My role is to start and lead a large team of engineers on this initiative which involves tons of direction to ensure our org isn’t over quota. I would look my role as a hybrid of TL+ TPM with following responsibilities: analyzing data to find opportunities, creating roadmaps for the program, supporting engineers for execution to reduce usage, project management, understanding and enforcing processes, building knowledge on internal services, coaching engineers, setting Eng excellence culture within the org. All that to say, given limited time and a need for someone to lead, I will be focusing on direction and delegate all of the execution work to the squad.

1. How risky is it to have low code output as an IC5? Given the year is just starting, does it make sense to explicitly discuss this with my manager and skip that my code output will be close to zero in Q1?

I did read some accounts (anon post on WP) where EM and skip aligning on low code out out but the IC5 still got MM at the end because they had only 10 diffs for a half. I don’t want to be in that position.

1. Should I deprioritize some direction work and allocate some time for coding on my timeline through P2 projects? This will increase diff count but that just seems not a great usage of my time. TIA!

After this past half (I joined mid-August), my manager is saying I'm working at a meets all (MA) level. Granted, I only joined in the middle of the half, but when I ask him how can I take the next level to be promoted or have an EE or above rating, I get very vague answers with not much detailed support (he's also a new manager and this will be his first PSC).

This past half, we had an expectations doc where it listed each project and the impact it should have. I hit all those expectations, but with his vague advice, I'm not able to create actionable steps for myself for this half to get the promo or higher ratings.

From Taro, I'm learning code quality, velocity, and impact are the most important at my level - which from my feedback, I'm doing well in. What are some ways to take it to the next level? Finish my projects earlier and take on more projects in the half? Feeling a little bit lost so any advice is greatly appreciated!

Hi Taro folks,

I’d like to create a doc to track my deliverables across engineering axes to make my work easier to see for my manager. This should also help with arguing for promotions down the road… does anyone have a good format for such a doc? FYI: engineering axes include project impact, people, direction, engineering excellence, etc.

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.

I have been doing good at my current company, been here for 3+ years working initially as an Entry Level, then promoted after an year to a MidLevel Software Engineer. I have been receiving "Exceeds Expectations i.e. 4/5" rating since the beginning and "Superb i.e. 5/5" rating once.

I applied for international relocation to Singapore back in July. The manager and skip mentioned that while cost cutting is going on, they are making an exception for me and it should be processed completely by initial weeks of January 2023. In times of layoffs, and especially with my company's stocks not doing that good, I am afraid if it could lead to getting laid off. This is causing me a bit of anxiety.

Although it is being mentioned by leadership that no layoffs are happening, we are seeing projects getting cut off, rigorous re-orgs happening, and entire focus of the organisation is on cost saving, which I feel is great especially in current times.

I started the conversations for relocation when times were going good in terms of offers being posted in the market. The teams were thriving as well in terms of work. But by the time entire process got over, it seems the situations have changed. What should I do?

To add on, another thing I did sometime back was to share with my manager on how I am performing several roles of the next level and how it can be used to further the cause of promotion in the upcoming performance reviews. I tried to break down the career ladder doc into key umbrellas of behaviours needed, and assigned the initiatives I delivered under those. Now afraid if this was another way I shot myself in the foot by asking for more in times of cost-saving and probably being conservative. Please assist with your advice.

I am an L4 engineer with decent knowledge of my team's stack.

What are some actions I can take to meet expectations in my current role for the next few years, while minimizing the amount of time I spend on work?

Given that I'm not shooting for a promotion, does that change how I should approach relationship building with senior folks on the team? There is a lot of advice on Taro about relationship building, but it appears to be aimed at folks who wish to promote quickly.

I came into my role with an advanced degree, so I started out as a mid-level engineer. However, I still need to be able to ask questions as I've never worked as an engineer before. I've seen all the Taro content around asking questions, but my manager has drilled in since a few months into this role that expectations are that I function independently, unblock myself, and don't take up much of others' time by asking questions. That it would count against me in performance reviews (versus for me if I help others with their questions).

Given the current job market, I don't know where else to go, but this environment leaves me pretty exasperated. Is it normal in other companies to go to more senior engineers with help getting unblocked? Are questions only really around code, or is it normal to ask for help debugging a feature/bug/test? I worry about becoming a senior with the expectation to be independent and help others when I myself have never received guidance to grow to that level properly.

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?

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 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?

I am usually very competitive and while I love my friends, I have this internal push to always do better than people around me. I got promoted to SWE II within a year in 2021 and I was so proud of that. However, this year my manager changed and without really knowing or understanding me, he gave me the feedback of "didn't meet expectations" in our annual performance review in Feb. I had full plans to change my company soon since I didn't feel supported by my manager. However, my father fell incredibly ill in May (still is) which canceled all my plans as I moved back home to support my family.

I have a feeling my friend who is on a different team than I am (but reports to the same manager) might get promoted to senior. She deserves it. She got different opportunities than I did but I can't help but feel a pang of jealousy knowing that all I want this coming Feb is "meets expectation" rating while my friend might get promoted. Another friend of mine switched to a company that seems incredible but I somehow feel "behind" in my career despite knowing that I will meet the career goals I have next year. I am already a million times a better software dev than I was beginning of the year. I have close relationships with my colleagues but how do I focus on my own lane and not compare myself to others?

Hey everyone! I am looking for some advice. I have weekly 1:1 with my manager and during our last interaction, he suggested to come up with a yearly plan on things I want to achieve. Can someone shed some ideas/templates I can follow to create a roadmap or plan.

Do you have examples of a problem, action, and impact for performance reviews? For example, I was working on a migration from a monolith to a BFF. I was loaned to a different team to help with their extractions. Their engineer gave me an API to use, but their API turned out to have serious shortcomings and I ended up working long hours to reimplement a lot of the monolith’s logic in the BFF. Despite this, we still slipped our timelines. How do I describe the impact of my actions in this case? I feel like my actions had “no impact” because we slipped our deadlines regardless.

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?

I've gotten feedback from a mid performance review and my manager wants to see improvements in various areas. It includes improving my debugging skills by paying closer attention to pertinent details (and not getting distracted) for example.

Since then, I've become much more conscious and aware of the errors that I run into and much more deliberate in my debugging approach. This has resulted in me being able to diagnose problems much more accurately, and has also lended to me problem-solving much more effectively as well.

The problem is I'm not sure how to best demonstrate (or prove) that value improvement to my manager. Unlike PRs (which are often more visible in the value it demonstrates) -- you see what you get, my debugging skills/tactics are not readily obvious to the outside party unless they're observing my day-to-day activity. I can say that I've gotten better but if I have nothing to back that up with aren't they just words without weight? Who's to say that I'm even right in my own assessment without social feedback? I could be dunning kruger for all I know.

Is it enough for me to simply document those performance improvements and share (or talk about) them with my manager?

Note: My ultimate goal is to get promoted so I'm trying to (1) show that I've taken their feedback seriously and (2) demonstrate actual improvement since my last performance review.

Let me know if I'm thinking about this the right way or if am I overcomplicating it. Thanks!

In one of the videos Alex mentioned that some devs get a culture shock when joining a Big Tech company from a smaller company. What kind of culture shock would that be? Do you have examples and methods how to prepare oneself for those?

I am a little worried about the potential of layoffs at Meta. I am not sure if I will get a needs support. I have been working on doing a design doc for the past month, and my manager has generally been very positive towards me. But I feel like I might get a NS due to my not submitting as many diffs and accepting as many diffs. I joined my team less than three months ago, and still technically ramping up. I would be sad if I got a NS or a pip, but it wouldn't destroy me.I guess my question would be how can I best buffer myself during these next few months, and how can I avoid situations like this in the future? What should I do if I do get put on PIP/NS?

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.

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'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've heard from my peers at Meta that you should post a lot on Workplace, otherwise it can reflect badly on your PSC. Is this true or more of a myth?

Some additional questions:

1. Does it vary between big companies and small companies?
2. Do you need to work a lot to be a high performer?

What role does good feedback received in a 360 review cycle have in the promotion / salary hike conversation? How to make the most of good feedback?

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?