[cbanek]

It's all honestly completely useless. I've never had a useful performance review at any company ever. It's either I'm doing bad, and know it, and that is either my fault or due to reasons outside of my control. Or I'm doing well, and know it. Honestly, sometimes at places things were so bad that I felt I was doing terrible, but I was actually keeping the team going by pushing past a lot of tricky issues.

Really I think any company that waits until performance review time is really broken. That could be a year, or sometimes many years.

Also, the usefulness or performance management is usually undermined by the fact that the people doing the worst usually are in hardcore denial as to their performance. Those people are the hardest to change and manage. I've rarely seen performance management actually fix a problem, other than making the environment so unpalatable that the person just leaves.

I really wish I could have all that time wasted on writing useless "self-reviews" back. Even if I was staring at a blank wall it'd be time better spent.

[nilkn]

Here's my slightly unusual take on performance management as a manager.

If I'm doing my job well, reviews should mostly feel like a formality. They shouldn't take much time from me or from my reports.

If I'm doing my job poorly, one signal of that is that a review takes a lot of effort. If a performance review takes a lot of my time or that of the report receiving the review, it suggests there's been some considerable communication breakdown. Typically this means the report has been performing poorly, doesn't realize it, and I have failed to convey this situation to them. More rarely, someone is doing well but I failed and made them feel like they were doing poorly.

In this way, I still appreciate the review process. It encourages me to confront performance management issues continuously throughout the year, and in the worst case that I slip up it provides a safeguard that makes sure I eventually do get on the right page with the employee.

[shajznnckfke]

Some people just don’t like talking and/or writing about themselves. I find the process painful even if I know I’m doing great and I know that everyone else knows too.

[SergeAx]

And that is a clear direction sign towards being a better team member.

[nickff]

Thank you for sharing your insight.

[Decker87]

Wow, how very unusual.

[ci5er]

May I ask why you find that unusual?

EDIT: I don't know what country you are in.

[ghettoimp]

I've been at $megacorp for a few years. We just completed yet another formal, annual review. It would be easy for me to look at the process and say it is needlessly structured, time consuming, and has never had any surprises.

That said, I once worked for many years at a small company with no formal review process at all. At this place, there was practically no communication from upper management about how they thought you were doing, whether they understood or valued your work, what they wanted you to focus on, etc. After years of this, I left feeling rather bitter and unappreciated.

For all its flaws, the review process at forces a conversation where you get to summarize to higher management what you have accomplished and why it is important. Peer-review at least gives you a chance to call out outstanding work from your co-workers. And the review itself at least gives you a venue to hear what management thinks of what you have done.

Anyway, I'd do a lot differently now, if I were back at the old place. But on the whole, I think the review process is actually a good thing.

[BeetleB]

My very cynical experience:

> For all its flaws, the review process at forces a conversation where you get to summarize to higher management what you have accomplished and why it is important.

In my experience, they've decided it already and don't really care what you put down - unless they want you to get a promotion and then they will care as they need buy-in from others. Particularly, if they want to screw you over, then it doesn't matter what you've written (i.e. even if you put in great accomplishments you can still get a poor rating).

> Peer-review at least gives you a chance to call out outstanding work from your co-workers.

Same thing here. We used to require naming 3 people to give peer feedback. When they want to screw someone, the manager would actively seek out negative reviews to support his case - regardless of whoever you picked.

> And the review itself at least gives you a venue to hear what management thinks of what you have done.

I can agree with this - although where I worked they'll let you know throughout the year. I did have one manager who was very reluctant to give negative feedback, though, so I suppose this benefits the employee where the manager is at least forced to formally give you negative feedback.

Processes are good in general, but useless if the system doesn't value it. If the manager can actively go and solicit feedback from folks you didn't nominate, then why waste my time and the time of the people I did nominate?

I cheered when my company stopped doing annual reviews.

[edgefield0]

Thanks for this comment. Can you please share more details on how the process is structured at your company?

[ghettoimp]

Sure -- once per year:

- Write up self review. 1-2 pages to highlight what you worked on and accomplished, who you helped, why it matters. Score yourself on various dimensions of how good of a job you are doing (working with others, getting stuff done, etc.)

- Nominate 3-4 people to give you peer reviews. Best to pick people who can speak to your work, ideally with some folks from outside your particular group, and ideally with some seniority.

- Managers decide who to ask for peer review about whom. You'll get asked by various managers for feedback about their reports. Write and submit this feedback -- could be as short as a paragraph, more typically 2 or 3 paragraphs: what did you work on with them, what did they do achieve, what could have gone better? I've probably given feedback for 5-10 people on average.

- Manager synthesizes all of this into a report, score you on the same dimensions.

- Manager meets with you, gives you their report, goes over it with you. There's a lot to this meeting. It's a review of how they see your work, a comparison of your self-scores and their scores to get on the same page, a discussion of noteworthy feedback from others (positive and negative), a chance to defend yourself against any negative feedback, and a discussion of ideas for addressing any concerns. Typically there is also a lot of goal-setting for the upcoming year, and more generally a discussion of how things are going, how happy you are, and so on.

- Formally acknowledge that you discussed the report with your manager (checkbox in some system). This also gives you a chance to formally comment on the report, I imagine in case of some dispute.

- Followup meeting, some time later, deals with compensation adjustments, promotions, etc. This is kept separate from the review itself.

Effort level has been perhaps 2-3 days per year for writing up all the reviews. I'm sure it's worse for managers.

[condercet]

I had the displeasure of working for a company that had a similar review system, but it was quarterly rather than annual. Total nightmare.

[edgefield0]

Thanks for this detail. Was there any goal setting at the start of the review period so you understood what you were going to be evaluated against?

[ghettoimp]

The dimensions that you are scored on are fixed ahead of time and haven't changed in years.

The individual goals are set in this year's review, evaluated in next year's review.

[temikus]

Not the OP but sounds like Google’s “Perf” process. You can take a search through HN and get a couple of accounts. Generally; you write how well you did, then you get a couple of peers to confirm it and give you feedback. Then your manager works with a bunch of other managers to “calibrate” to make sure their view of the world is not skewed (think you did poorly but you actually did well and vice-versa). Then you receive a rating based on that calibration.

[electricslpnsld]

I wish I had that kind of insight into my ‘performance’ pre-review! I’m at a FAANG right now and given my interactions with my manager alone, I figured I was bombing performance-wise (constant complaints about my work, refuses to acknowledge any accomplishments, super angry at me during one on ones, assigns piles of work that ‘need’ to be done by Monday on Friday at 6pm and then doesn’t even acknowledge the completion of the work next week, ...). Come performance review time on the other hand I’ve had awesome peer reviews, performance ratings, stock refreshes, etc for the past four biannual performance cycles. Given the complete mismatch here between how I feel I’m doing and how my manager treats me, I’m actually pretty happy we have this performance review system in place. Probably just need a new manager...

[AnotherGoodName]

Stop your manager in their tracks next 1:1 and state you have some feedback about how you're feeling here. Start by noting that it's a very stressful time right now and that these concerns are even more important for you. Your manager would likely be hurt if you left and good managers appreciate upwards feedback so that they can correct on their side.

The fact that the performance rating is good means your manager probably is acknowledging the work you do, just not to you. The manager input for ratings is hugely important at the FAANGs, so your manager is clearly telling others you're doing a great job. There's just clearly a gap here between you and her/him in that feedback.

Source: Am a manager at one of the FAANGs. I'm finding that everyone is overthinking every bit of feedback right now. Clearly minor feedback is hard to differentiate compared to major feedback. Likely due to the video communications barrier and that everyone is a little bit more alone with their thoughts. I'm being cautious on delivery because of it. There's also less ad-hoc thank you's and acknowledgements going around due to the remote barriers.

[m0zg]

> Stop your manager in their tracks next 1:1

BAD idea with most managers. Your manager is likely to be vindictive and insecure if confronted like that. Even with peer reviews in place managers have disproportionate influence on your reviews, and promo/comp decisions (something you readily acknowledge). If the manager treats you with disdain, it's almost impossible to fully reverse that - it's just human nature, let alone do so through confrontation.

The best thing is to move on to greener pastures, of which there's vast abundance at any FANG. People can move around easily there by design: that way shitty managers get naturally de-staffed. Anything else is a sunk cost fallacy. Do yourself a favor, and go to a team where you're appreciated, respected, and can work alongside decent people. Do not tolerate this abuse. Otherwise your career will stall, you won't be able to do anything about it, and you'll feel miserable throughout.

Source: been there, done that.

[BeetleB]

I both agree with you and agree with your parent.

Yes, the chances of retaliation from your manager is not insignificant.

However, the experience with a good manager is always fantastic. If I don't trust my manager enough to give him negative feedback, I don't want to stay in the team. Giving negative feedback is one of the few reliable ways to discover if you have a good manager. I'd rather know than not know.

Source: Also been there and done that (and paid the price, but it was worth it).

The worst thing, though, is to put up with it. I tried it and it didn't end well either, which put me on the path of "Well if it's going to suck, it's better to be vocal than not."

[XorNot]

This is the correct advice. Management is just another arm of HR and HR is not your friend.

Nobody at any company they don't own should be under any illusions that they're viewed as anything other then replaceable labor. Your salary like everyone else's gets lumped into the expenses column, and your accomplishments don't appear on that spreadsheet next to your name at all.

[srtjstjsj]

Yes. Suck up to the boss, then say you're interested in a new opportunity at Team X, or, sadly, you've accepted an offer to work somewhere else, or, you are quitting for personal reasons.

[m0zg]

That's why I liked Google so much: you don't have to "suck up" to anybody. If things aren't working out, figure out what you'd like to do instead and 2 weeks later you're working on that, if they have spots on the team and would like your help. You may be asked to stay a bit longer, say 6 weeks, but the process is very non-confrontational. It's not like that for junior people, though - if you're junior you have to stay in your position for at least a year, which IMO is dumb - people who work there have no problems finding employment elsewhere. It should never be harder to move within the company than _outside_ the company.

[quickthrower2]

Yeah for a big company there is no excuse. Smaller companies might be more impacted by giving people this freedom but maybe the advantages outweigh the disadvantages anyway.

[cbanek]

As just a random internet person, please, let me agree that you need a new manager. Other than yourself, no person has more impact on your job, and if you're taking shit and dong well, you can do so much better.

Also, never forget that your performance is 'capped' by your management chain. While others may see that you are amazing, the best they will be able to do is poach you to their team, but they can't override your manager's feelings about raises, promos, etc.

(I feel like I'm talking to past me, who I really wish I could have told this to earlier.)

[Merrill]

I've heard that its your manager's manager that is important to your career. Your manager can't actually promote you, except by recommending you as their replacement if promoted or transferred. Your manager's manager can either promote you or work a deal with their peers to get you promoted.

If your manager is keeping your performance results from being reflected upwards, you have a problem.

[stennie]

A promotion doesn't mean you have to take on the role of your manager, it generally means you have expanded (or new) responsibilities and expectations. For larger companies career progression broadly falls under either an individual contributor (IC) track or a leadership track. As an IC you can grow your career from Engineer to Senior Engineer to Staff Engineer without changing managers or teams, and there is a similar progression for leadership.

Becoming a manager because you think that is the only ladder to climb is definitely the wrong choice. I think a great manager is also a leader who takes an active interest in the motivation, growth, and outcomes of their team. If a management team worked the way you describe (manager's managers run the show and broker deals with their peers for micromanaged promotions), that would be an extremely dysfunctional environment.

In my experience it is always the direct manager who recommends someone for promotion rather than the next level up (although your manager's manager likely has final approval on budget). As a manager, I support and coach my team toward their career growth aspirations with regular performance & growth conversations. I also try to ensure my direct manager has visibility on the state of the team, but ultimately they are expected to be looking at a bigger picture and trust that I am taking care of my team.

[user5994461]

They're both important if you are in a large corp.

They both need to praise and recommend you in order for you to be promoted (your manager has more to do on that). A bad word from either will kill any prospect of promotion instantly.

They both need to carry their weight for the team and the department respectively. They put a ceiling on what your team and your department can do and can get (work, budget, opportunities). In a bad case there's simply no slot for promotion so you can't be promoted. In the worst case your team/department might get gutted.

[Ozzie_osman]

Alternatively your manager could proactively give you bits and pieces of that positive feedback without being forced to by a formal, time-consuming process.

[electricslpnsld]

And this is at a company that supposedly prioritizes constant feedback, we even have multiple mandatory training sessions per year on providing fast feedback. Go figure...

[temikus]

Or just talk to them regarding how you feel. I concur with one of the commenters below regarding FAANG - you rarely get good feedback if your manager is not supportive of you.

[Der_Einzige]

Is this Amazon? It sounds like Amazon...

[monkeydust]

I have short 15min weeklies with my team members and then other frequent check-in points. By doing this the official review process becomes redundant i.e. no surprises in expectation mismatches - from my side and team this is a good thing but we waste time doing the official stuff.

[funnybeam]

Good work. This is called management - performance reviews are a sop to try and make up for poor management but are utterly useless and often counter productive (there’s no better incentive to start job hunting than having to prepare for a performance review)

Competent managers don’t need to do performance reviews and bad managers are not helped by them

[egberts1]

Yet the corporate legal eagles will insist on documentation as to bolster their case of such dismissal, if any.

[funnybeam]

And that’s when you create a performance improvement plan.

If someone is underperforming then you take steps to try to understand why and help them to get to the level the company needs them to be at. Hopefully this works and everyone is happy but you need to be clear (to your employee and yourself) that ultimately this could end up in dismissal if it doesn’t work out. This is when you document everything and have regular meetings with the individual so everyone understands what is going on and if it ever becomes legal then you have everything you need to justify your decision.

Point is, you only need to do this if someone is underperforming so much that you’re thinking you need to dismiss them, and if someone’s performance is bad then you don’t wait for the annual (or quarterly or whatever) review before doing something about it - you deal with it straight away

[WJW]

I've never seen PIPs work out well, although all my observations are from outside the manager/PIP-ee perspective and perhaps my sample size is not large enough yet. One employee managed to meet the demands of the PIP but only at the expense of dropping all other (not documented in the PIP) tasks, an extreme case of "what gets measured gets managed". Overall, they got to stay on but it was detrimental to the team they were in.

The more savvy people started applying at other companies the same day they received the PIP, since it was clear to them they would have to work significantly more for no increase in salary and they perceived the attainable effort/reward ratio to be better elsewhere. In one case this led to hilarity when the CTO had instructed the managers to PIP at least one of their team members "for morale reasons" and it ended in more than a third of all devs leaving the company in the next two months.

[funnybeam]

Wow. PIPs should only be used when someone is underperforming so badly they are damaging the team (and the business) at that point you have nothing to lose if they voluntarily leave (which in fact, is probably better for everyone)

"what gets measured gets managed" is one of the reasons I don't like the usual metrics and performance reviews, but in the specific case of a PIP they are necessary. If someone meets the targets of the PIP but starts dropping other required behaviours then you just add that into the PIP to make sure they don't do that

[httpsterio]

I don't think that my performance reviews have been a question of whether I'm doing a good job or not, it's always been more about if the employer agrees that I've spent my time wisely and do they appreciate what I'm doing.

In Finnish performance reviews roughly translate to "Development discussion" and in my experience that's exactly the case as well. I've spent most of the time in my reviews talking about my boss about how the company can support me better and how I can achieve personal goals (raise, titles etc) and what I'd need to do.

[ChuckMcM]

This is sad, when I read it I think, "This person has never had an actual manager, just people faking it badly."

That said, it isn't too unusual in my experience because people who are good engineers usually get told "you should go into management if you want to keep advancing" but they don't tell them "Oh, and this is a completely different job than you have been doing and none of your skills will apply, kthxbye!"

For a long time in my career I didn't want to be a manager because I didn't trust myself to manage well. And it took a really bad manager at Google to educate me on what the job of a good manager is. I stumbled around a bit but figured out that there are two things a manager must do to be successful; first is to communicate with their team what is expected of them and how that expectation will be measured, and second is to listen to what their employees say to them.

Sounds kind of simple but it's actually kind of hard to get right.

Performance management is drilling down into understanding what is going on with the person who is failing to meet their expectations.

If you both understand the metric for measurement, whether it is lines of code or time to delivery or what ever you have worked out with the employee ahead of time, both of you have to look at the metric, and the action to date, and get to a common understanding of what is going "wrong."

The most common problem I have dealt with are people who claim to be "senior" from a large company but don't really have any idea what that means other than "time spent in the role." I have pretty qualitative definitions of "entry level", "experienced", and "senior" that I work from and right away I try to communicate that to an employee. Sometimes they get hired into a role that is "above" them and they are unable to rise to the challenge, sometimes its just a different work flow than they have been used to.

The second most common problem is ego. An engineer who defines themselves by how good of an engineer they are, has a really really hard time looking critically at their own weaknesses. That conversation usually has a lot of "this doesn't mean you are a bad engineer, it means we have to work out how you can be even better than you currently are." type discussions.

The third one that comes up are people who are doing the job because someone else (spouse, parent, peer) thinks "it's a good job, you should be a ..." rather than the job they really want to do. As a result they put in only enough effort to not get fired and not much more. I'm okay with that if they don't mind being paid at the entry level wage level. If they are in the mindset that "I've got five years of experience and <reference> says I should be making $Y at this point." Then we have the conversation about "careers" versus "jobs". There are plenty of people who just want a paycheck and will do the minimum for it. They do fine work and clock in the hours, but they don't add value to the team like someone who wants to be good at what they are doing.

Too many engineering managers try to treat engineers as cogs with the only power of "do it or I will fire you" to motivate them. From my limited experience with this type of management it only works so much, and it doesn't build teams, or good product in the long term.

[cbanek]

It's true that most of my managers have been terrible, which I think is honestly par for the course (statistically at least).

I have had good managers, but for them, the performance review process actually tends to hamper them. A good manager who knows all the people under them are amazing and then has to stack rank them is going to make someone mad. Your manager only has so much power. Then it's their manager, and their manager. Managers don't have infinite amount of social capital, or even the amount they deserve. Some have too much.

I agree, performance reviews can be a time to get feedback and make changes, but in general, I find the continuous feedback (from standup/team, customers, daily work, incoming types of bugs) much more useful. If anything, I feel that my written reviews have had a lot of dissonance with the financial results or lack of promotion. Many times I can have glowing written reviews, but due to stack ranking, budget, or whatever other excuse they want to use, many times it just doesn't line up with results from management. And it's impossible to hold management to account in general, which is why HR is there.

So when you're doing bad, performance reviews are a stick. And when you're doing good, they dangle the carrot, but many times you can't grab it. Then they force everyone to do mandatory training about how objective the process is, even though it really isn't. And that level of gaslighting has spelled the end for many good employee/employer relationships IMHO.

[ChuckMcM]

I don't disagree, especially about "stack ranking" which is, I believe, ridiculous and I've pushed back hard on it whenever it was suggested.

That said, I think calling them "performance reviews" to be a disservice as well. (I prefer 'Focal Reviews'). I try to stress in reviews a write the ways in which I feel the person is making progress against their medium and long term goals, and where they are perhaps stuck.

In terms of promotion and pay however, we may disagree. I try to distinguish between someone improving as an engineer and someone doing a good job. It is a subtle difference but it is an important one to me.

Using the example of a fictional programmer, if they get their part of the projects done on time and their code is of high quality and reliable. Then I think they have done a great job and if I can I seek to give them a bonus of some sort to reward that.

If this same programmer gets their part of the project done, and helps others getting their stuff together, and perhaps refactors the project so that everyone has an easier time integrating and testing? Then they are a better engineer because they are acting as a force multiplier for the entire team. Those are the people I try to promote.

I'm not a big fan of raises for "time served" as one manager I knew put it, although I do believe you have to adjust to the market so if salaries are going up across the board you should reflect that in the pay of your engineers.

It is always my goal that annual focal reviews are not a 'surprise', rather they are a summary of the previous 12 months.

[stennie]

Great comment! My corollary would be that "Many managers have never had a great role model". In my first role as an engineering manager I thought it was the logical career progression and promotion from lead, but my preparation was more along the lines of "I've had managers, I can do what I think they do". I was very fortunate that my company at the time was supportive with follow-up training and building a peer group of newly minted managers, but it would have been more ideal to have some prior leadership & management training so I was more aware of the role and responsibilities I was signing up for. I think training provides helpful insight into intentional motions and being a competent manager, but it is hard to beat experience and learning from some great role models.

One secret I would tell any engineers considering management: "management is a career change, not a promotion". Charity Majors has some excellent blog posts on this, including the Engineer/Manager Pendulum: https://charity.wtf/2017/05/11/the-engineer-manager-pendulum....

[sharken]

Some excellent points on the challenges of a manager. I would think that managing the people side of things can be hard as well, unless its a matrix organization.

As an engineer I agree that "time spent in a role" does not say anything about the quality of an employee.

That combined with the mindset of someone who clocks in the hours, adds up to a person that can be hard to work with. At least if your own mindset is that you want to be good at what you are doing.

An example of that is a manual task that is holding the team back, but nobody is really pursuing how to get rid of that task or automating it.

Anyways, many good points and it definitely sounds like you are one of the great managers out there.

[bob33212]

You can ignore the actual goal of assessment and just write words in the form of "Action, Noun, Target"

like:

"Gained Expertise in product X in Q3." "Implemented self guided research in Technologies X,Y,Z in Q1" "Member of diversity committee in Q1-Q4" "Increased bug detection by 10%" "Code quality increased by 15% per code analysis done by codetech.com" "Upgraded deprecated libraries on build servers"

[brightball]

If you’re ever in a SAFe team, one of the tenants is that annual reviews are useless. It pushes for doing constructive reviews every PI (approximately quarterly).

[brtkdotse]

On the other hand, you’re in a company doing SAFe so you have plenty of opportunity to stare at a wall.

[chris11]

But companies doing SAFe can use developer velocity to help judge individual dev productivity. That can be surprising if you aren't aware of what story points are used for.

[sharken]

As someone who is again at a company doing SAFe, I am genuinely curious as to the relevance of story points.

For estimation, hours is a good measure, even more so when there are external consultants that get paid by the hour.

Developer velocity can be measured by tasks/features completed compared to the estimate.

Could you elaborate on why story points are useful or perhaps point to some resources on the topic ?

[chris11]

I'm not saying it's useful, just that I found out it was a metric for management. I was originally expecting it to be an internal metric. The company I was at actually used it in performance reviews somewhat comparable to stack ranking.

There was an expectation that devs complete about 8 points a sprint. I don't know if the eight point target is common, but SAFe does talk about comparing story points across teams.

> At scale, it becomes difficult to predict the story point size for larger epics and features when team velocities can vary wildly. To overcome this, SAFe teams initially calibrate a starting story point baseline where one story point is defined roughly the same across all teams.

...

> Give every developer-tester on the team eight points for a two-week iteration

https://www.scaledagileframework.com/story/

[brightball]

This is a hot button for me also. Story points are a solid measure of complexity, but when it comes to estimates on a planned timeline over the next few weeks I want it in hours or days.

Otherwise, somebody ends up trying to convert story points into hours and that's not what it's there to measure.

I wrote extensively about this a couple of years ago before I found out about SAFe itself.

https://www.brightball.com/articles/reality-driven-developme...

[sidlls]

If I'm ever again in a SAFe team, something has gone terribly wrong. I won't join a company that uses this practice unless I'm very desperate. If a company I'm at adopts it after I've joined I will immediately begin looking elsewhere.

[brightball]

Yea, I'm very curious to hear more about this.

I've loved it at my company. It seems like development best practices + sanity enforcement outside of it and it's fairly flexible too (we use kanban instead of scrum).

It's done wonders for putting the planning of how things should be implemented into the hands of developers themselves and then essentially gets out of the way.

[C1sc0cat]

Why? reading Wikipedia this seems to be what used to be called RAD - done right its Fucking awesome.

One thing is you need 100% collocated experienced people who know what they are doing - no third party agencies who spend 15 mins discussing pixel separation in photoshop mock-ups.

It also not something you'd carelessly throw a junior or an intern into

[sidlls]

SAFe as I’ve seen and experienced it is a cumbersome, process-heavy system. Like most other project management systems currently in use in this industry it’s probably okay if 95% or more of the features are well-known and specified clearly. For any non-trivial software development work it’s a burden. For development touching other disciplines (e.g. statistics/ML, new product development) it’s more like an obstacle.

[brightball]

It is process heavy outside of the dev flow, but that is more business side so it shouldn’t affect devs themselves much.

It’s supposed to be getting out of the way of developers.

[pc86]

I've never been on a SAFe team so maybe this is addressed in that methodology, but I think annual reviews are more a tool to pass your performance up to higher levels in a structured manner as opposed to letting you or your boss know how you're doing. Like the GP said, the manager and their direct typically know exactly how they're doing, or at least more or less where they fall on the spectrum of the team. Ideally stand ups should give daily feedback to everyone when someone starts to fall behind, and managers should be giving their directs feedback often (not necessarily daily).

[jdmichal]

Yes, exactly this. What I tell my directs when they write their reviews is two things. The lesser one is that I'm a human and I don't remember all the awesome stuff that everyone does through a whole year. So now is the chance to remind me of it.

Secondly, and more relevantly and importantly, I'm about to walk into a shooting match to defend my employees' performances against a larger pool. And what I need in that battle are bullets. The more bullets I have, the more successful I will be. So load up my gun with every single bullet you can think of!

[abhorrence]

Do you make an effort throughout the year to write down all the awesome stuff your directs have done?

[jdmichal]

During our one-on-ones I try to take notes. But I still miss things. Visibility is always a problem, and is even more binary now with remote working. I have zero chance to stumble into awesome things happening. I can either already see it happening or I can't.

[deepaksurti]

Sorry but what is SAFe? (No pun intended)

[brightball]

Scaled Agile Framework https://www.scaledagile.com/