Performance reviews

Once a year, in June, we pause to reflect, assess, and plan the way forward in a performance review on Bob. Reviews focus as much on your professional development as on your recent work: they’re less about evaluation and more about a forward-looking discussion of your achievements, your challenges, and your aspirations.

Because feedback is continuous, nothing in your review should come as a surprise: areas for development are identified and tackled well before the review.

The review is followed by the yearly compensation review.

How a review cycle runs

A review looks back at the year since your last one.

1. Self-review. You answer the same questions your manager does, about yourself, and rate yourself on each competency of your competency matrix: working towards, meeting or exceeding expectations.
2. Manager’s review. Your manager answers the review questions below, drawing on your 1:1s, the feedback you received, your IDP and your self-review.
3. Calibration. Managers review their ratings together, so that the same rating means the same thing across teams. A rating can change at calibration; the packet then shows both the manager’s rating and the calibrated one.
4. Summary. Your manager writes a short summary of the whole review.
5. Sharing and conversation. Your manager shares the review packet with you on Bob (your self-review, their review, the calibrated ratings and the summary) and you discuss it together.
6. Your IDP. With your manager, you update your IDP for the year ahead.

The review questions

Each question takes a rating and a written explanation.

Question	Rating scale
Performance: how consistently has this person demonstrated impact and delivered results at their current level?	Below expectations · Meeting expectations · Exceeding expectations
Career development: what steps have they taken to pursue their career progression?	Disengaged · Engaged but inconsistent · Advancing

Performance is read against your current level in the competency matrix. When you’re working toward another role, the explanation also says where you sit between your current level and that role, which may be the next level on your track or a role on another track. It also covers how you’ve lived our values. Meeting your current level consistently is meeting expectations; working at the level of the role you’re aiming for is exceeding them.

Career development is about how you drive your own growth: keeping your IDP current and using it, asking for feedback and acting on it, and the progress on your growth areas since your last review.

Writing a review

For managers, the review follows the same principles as all our feedback: Radical Candor, care personally and challenge directly.

• Every claim rests on something that happened. Name the project, the decision, the moment. “Shipped the checkout refactor two weeks early and unblocked two teammates” can be assessed; “great engineer” can’t. When you have nothing for a competency, say so rather than stretching a weak example to fill it.
• Nothing is a surprise. Anything critical in the review has already come up in your 1:1s. If it hasn’t, raise it before the review rather than in it.
• Write for the person reading it. Refer to things they will recognize, like a project, a client, or “in our 1:1s”, and not to dates or the name of a document.
• Development areas are the path forward. State them as plainly as the strengths and with the same specificity, framed as what comes next.
• The ratings are yours. Choose each rating yourself and let the explanation show why.

The summary

The summary closes the review, after calibration and before you share the packet. The person reads it next to your review and their own, so it doesn’t retell them: it’s a short note in your own voice, warm at the start and at the end, that names the one or two things that carried the year and the development areas as goals for the next one. Where you and they rated something differently, explain why, so the calibrated rating lands without surprise. The summary adds no judgment the review didn’t already make.

Your manager’s role

Your manager leads you through the review. They offer the insights and feedback your growth needs, and make sure the review is a stepping stone to your next career milestone rather than just an assessment. Consider them your partner in this: not just an evaluator, but a mentor invested in your progress.

Competency matrix and IDPs

Each review uses the components of our career framework:

• The career handbook for your role describes its expected responsibilities and anti-patterns.
• The competency matrix identifies your current capabilities and the skills you should develop to reach your next level.
• Your Individual Development Plan (IDP) turns that into a personal plan of action: the specific things you’ll focus on to reach your career objectives.

With your manager, you align your personal goals with the competency matrix and write your IDP for the year ahead, so that your development plan is both challenging and achievable. You then follow up on it in your 1:1s until the next review, which measures your progress against it.