People-Ops-Perf-Reviews-and-Goal-setting.md

People Ops, Performance Reviews and Goal-setting

Dev Leveling Guides—aka Engineering Ladders

It’s hard to get these right. Just b/c they work for one org doesn’t mean they’ll work for yours.

• Career Structure. It Doesn't Matter. Until It Matters. - by Ade Trenaman. Takeaway: A comprehensive overview of career structure at Gilt, touching upon other companies' models. Gilt's model is based on Radford and considers these elements: Level of knowledge, job complexity, supervision, experience, sphere of influence and team size (for leads to manage), and accountability.

• Medium Engineering Growth: Tracks - by David Shimon. Takeaway: Different skills/items for different types of developers, listed and detailed.

• On Being a Senior Engineer - by John Allspaw. Focusing on attributing "Senior" to "Mature". Covers aspects of being social. Mature engineers are at least aware of their ego, able to take into account the feelings and egos of their fellow engineers, and work through them all to achieve great things. This tends to make them engineers that other engineers want to work with.

• Open Source Culture - by Camille Fournier. A post on Rent the Runway's engineering ladder, by the company's now-former CTO.

• Programmer Competency Matrix - by Starling Software. Great for tech skills, but would need substantial work to capture what it means to be a well-rounded dev ("client focus," "product ownership," etc). We like it for what it is ("technical only"). You'd need to add the other sections.

• Sharing Our Engineering Ladder - by Camille Fournier. Rent the Runway's famous engineering ladder, in spreadsheet and text/doc formats.

• The Software Engineering Job Ladder - by Chuck Groom. Takeaway: "why having a job ladder helps everybody; what makes for a good job ladder; the way I think about software engineer job levels; and [...] some related advice." Focuses on individual contributors. The author's levels emphasize ownership and responsibility, not defined skill levels.

• Technical Assessment Rubric - by Kate Heddleston. Takeaway: Different people have different trajectories. Tailor goals to target weaknesses in a category (confidence, communication, code quality, etc.).

• Thoughts on the Technical Track - by Dan McKinley. Thoughts on how the different ways developers become technical managers, including randomly and ad hoc. "I don't think that proceeding with the assumption that leaders will just naturally emerge produces the best results."

• Truth and Consequences of the Technical Track - by Camille Fournier. Takeaway: "I think the idealistic goal of management is to help teams live up to their talent potential. The realistic experience of management is often an abstraction layer between upstream and downstream, to help flow information, each layer helping to make a finer-grained set of decisions and adjustments to keep the overall company moving in the right direction."

Goal-setting

• Habits to Earn a Raise - by Ryan Latta. Takeaway: Get a journal to record your wins, set goals aligned with company goals and follow up, run at problems that everyone else avoids.

• How to Set Team Goals: Notes from a Conversation with Joe Goldberg and his Colleague, David Wolpa.

  • Deciding on a goal: Why do people choose to join your org/team?; What goals has the team really rallied around in the past? Why?
  • Look at "paired metrics" from High Output Management, e.g. output + quality-measuring outcomes ($, billable hours), not inputs (utilization, "time spent on tickets")
  • People should have role in determining the goal and setting the target (which should be stretch but be realistic)
  • To what degree is achieving the goal directly under team's control?
  • Communicating a goal: Explain why goal is important to business, esp. when there's a disconnect from day-to-day. Need to do that repeatedly throughout the goal-measurement period. Naming/ritual gets people bought into it (e.g. fundraising thermometer)

• Lightweight, Continuous Goal-Setting - notes by Joe Goldberg. Takeaway: Set, evaluate and adjust goals on a regular basis. This doc contains goal-setting objectives, steps, tips, and a quarterly email template.

• One Rubric Changed Box's Engineering Performance — Here's How - by First Round. Takeaway: How Box SVP Engineering Sam Schillace helped the tech organization scale up while valuing performance. Have clear standards for performance, have an opinion on the role of managers early, have a process for evaluation and reward, don’t be soft on low performance, be consistent without losing speed.

• Three Paths in the Tech Industry: Founder, Executive, or Employee - by Michael Seibel. Takeaway: pros, cons, and strategies for pursuing all three paths.

• Uncovering the Secret Powers of MailChimp Employees Through Apprenticeships - by MailChimp. Takeaway: MailChimp created a 90-day apprenticeship program for employees to explore their interests and curiosity about other roles. The program has strengthened diversity efforts and also helped employees launch new careers.

• We Studied 100 Mentor-Mentee Matches — Here’s What Makes Mentorship Work - by First Round. Takeaway: Don't use the word 'mentor', don't treat it like a transaction, show up prepared with questions, don't discuss everything, ask about your blind spots, look for themes and organizing principles, be honest and transparent, focus on execution, strive for mutual learning, always have several mentors.

• When Mentoring Turns Toxic - by Lorraine Duffy Merkl. Takeaway: "In a best-case scenario, mentors induct young people into the traditions of their professions. But this dynamic can set the stage for destructive behavior, McClelland writes. Sometimes mentors try to stamp out daring ideas that threaten long-held principles in their fields. Others may see themselves as “gatekeepers” whose role is to cut upstarts down to size. And basic narcissism may lead mentors to act out when they feel threatened by promising protégés. Mentoring relationships can also go awry when young professionals feel beholden to their advisers."

• Why The Right Change Often Feels Wrong - by Scott Berkun. Takeaway: "Inexperienced people often confuse the chaos phase as a failure in their choice. And if they quit early, assuming “chaos” means they made a mistake, and revert back to the old ways of doing things, they likely will never have the confidence to try something that bold again. They now confuse the chaos phase with failure. This is a kind of self-inflicted learned helplessness, where the necessary cost to improve and grow is now too psychologically expensive. People and organizations can become paralyzed here, as they’ve become extremely resistant to any threat of a 'foreign element,' even though that’s exactly what’s needed to grow."

People Operations/HR

• From HR to People Ops: When and Why To Start a People Team - by Courtney Seiter at Buffer. Covers when to start a People team, and what to consider: team size and/or growth rate, start before you need one, and your reasons. Four why's to start a team: to change the world, increase diversity, succeed, and allow your teammates to succeed.

• How HR Can Become Agile (and Why It Needs To) - by Jeff Gothelf. Takeaway: "In an agile organization, HR needs to provide the same services it’s always provided — hiring, professional development, performance management — but in ways that are responsive to the ongoing changes in the culture and work style of the organization."

• How to Navigate the First 90 Days as the First HR Hire at a Startup - by Culture Codes. Takeaway: A profile of HR veteran Heather Doshay, who as VP of People for a startup aims to build healthy culture. "Small cracks aren’t always visible or might seem trivial, but if left untreated, they can break apart a company." Surveys, observing meetings, scaling good attributes, hiring an HR professional early are some techniques companies can use to leverage HR expertise well.

• What Is "People Operations" and Why Should You Care? - by Doug Devlin. Takeaway: "People Operations is based on the simple truth: to hold on to your talent, you have to understand and “take care” of your talent. Allowing employee choice based on analytics as opposed to emotional mandates is the cornerstone of People Operations. "

Performance Reviews

“We see things not as they are but as we are.” Giving reviews is a place where bias lurks. Understand the cognitive bias cheatsheet and mental models list and you’ll at least acknowledge that we’re all biased.

• Assessing Employee Performance from Eric Elliot. Takeaway: "If you’re not listening closely to the employee you’re evaluating, and interviewing their peers about how helpful and knowledgable that employee is… And if the sum of that feedback is anything less than your primary gauge of performance … You SUCK at judging employee performance."

• Betterment Tested Three Performance Management Systems So You Don't Have To - by FirstRound. Takeaway: "Create clear lanes for your team to run; and align your structure key and processes to achieve what needs to get done. Empower employees to run as well and as fast as they can in the right direction by providing the right context. Define measurable goals to hit in a way that makes it clear to everyone what they're supposed to be doing every day."

• Cognitive Bias Cheat Sheet, Simplified - by Buster Benson. Takeaway: The four condundrums that lead to biases are too much information, not enough meaning, not enough time and resources, and not enough memory.

• The Dangers of Measuring Performance - by Sam McAfee. Takeaway: offers a useful summary of how we've evolved our common management practices from Taylorism to agile teamwork and collaboration. Measure performance by throughput; pair people/teams to focus on one deliverable at a time; and empower teams to improve processes themselves.

• Decisions: What Makes Someone Have “Impact” Anyway? - by Camille Fournier. Takeaway: Expect people to make impact within the scope of the level they are operating at, so talk about impact and scope almost interchangeably. No matter what level: Good decisions → Trust → More responsibility → Impact.

• Employee Reviews – Tips to Use Them as Motivation - by kate{mats}. Takeaway: keep them more positive than negative; attach constructive suggestions to negative points; ensure feedback is accurate and continuous; set clear expectations and guidance on how to achieve different ratings; round up when in doubt, end positively.

• 5 Keys to Building a Human-Centric Performance Management Process - by Johnny Duncan. Takeaway: Build genuine relationships, prioritize psychological safety, check-in regularly with people before checking out, recognize and appreciate people instead of only giving them rewards, and keep the process simple.

• Five Ways to Receive Negative Feedback Well - by Claire Lew. Takeaway: "How you receive feedback — especially negative feedback — sets the precedent for how welcome honest, forthcoming perspectives are in your company. Dismiss feedback on a whim or become overly defensive, and you’re not likely to hear critical feedback from that person again."

• Give Performance Reviews that Actually Inspire Employees - by Ben Wigert and Annamarie Mann. Takeaway: Traditional annual reviews don't usually inspire people to perform better because there's often a lack of trust, context and connection to make them useful. Better alternatives focus on being achievement-oriented, fair and accurate, and developmental. Consider calling them "progress reviews" to make them more encouraging.

• How to Be a Better Manager by Remembering 5 Simple Phrases - by Lighthouse. Takeaway: They are, “...that sounds important to you, let me write that down” (helps you keep your promises, and is a signal that you value what they said); "...what can we each do by next time to make progress on this?”; “Yes and...”; "...tell me about the last time that happened"; "...together...”

• How to Get to the Core by Asking the Right Questions - by Tom Bartel. Takeaway: Asking why, listening to someone before making assumptions and stating them, and achieving buy-in are critical to getting someone to adapt their behavior. Mistakes like suggestive questions, "you have to fix it" messaging and inflexible plans will alienate and not solve the issue.

• Mental Models I Find Repeatedly Useful - by Gabriel Weinberg. A comprehensive list of mental models to make you aware of biases and assumptions.

• A Note on Feedback - by Andrew Spittle. Takeaway: How to use the 3-2-1-Oh performance feedback chat, "a mix of a team member writing a self-assessment and a team lead writing a review. The conversation centers around answers to these bullet points: What are 3 things you’ve done well? What are 2 areas or skills you’d like to develop? What’s one way your team lead or Automattic itself can support you? And, oh, can you write a sentence or two about how you see your career developing?"

• Scaling Culture with Feedback - by Chris Savage. Takeway: Ask specific questions to see if people are living out your values.

• Team Reviews by Marc Hedlund. Takeaway: "Team reviews are quick and easy to do, and every time I’ve done one, the manager and I wind up talking about important topics, pushing ourselves to promote and reward people who deserve it, and taking action where needed. It also helps me know our whole team better, and get clear signals from managers that make interactions with each person more meaningful. I highly recommend the practice." Includes a template to get you started.

• Three Axioms Engineering Managers should use for Meaningful Performance Reviews - by Oren Ellenbogen. Takeway: Before giving perf reviews think about how the employee can work anywhere, what they're great at, improvement areas, how to help them grow, books/blog posts to recommend, and what else the company can offer to help them grow.

• 360-Degree Feedback - Wikipedia entry on the process for collecting feedback from a person's reports, peers, supervisors and self.

• Why I Quit Google to Work for Myself - by Michael Lynch. Takeaway: A former Google engineer describes how Google's promotions committee setup meant that the legacy pipeline project he worked on didn't produce the metrics required to impress committee members. "Google kept telling me that it couldn’t judge my work until it saw me complete a project. Meanwhile, I couldn’t complete any projects because Google kept interrupting them midway through and assigning me new ones. My career was being dictated by a shifting, anonymous committee who thought about me for an hour of their lives. Management decisions that I had no input into were erasing months of my career progress."

How to Review Managers

• Running a Manager Feedback Cycle - by Cate Huston. Provides a structured, transparent process for getting feedback as a manager. "It’s hard to get feedback as a manager, the hope was that people would be more candid if they 1) submitted feedback anonymously 2) to someone else. Because we tend to amplify negative feedback, there was a benefit to having someone else go through it, find trends, and repackage it for the recipient."