Software Engineer Performance Reviews

360-Degree Assessments

Overview

Softheon uses a 360-degree assessment to conduct performance reviews for software engineers. 360-degree assessments combine several models to provide more expansive feedback and identify the strengths and weaknesses of engineers. Traditionally, feedback is received directly from the engineer’s manager. However, with this method, we gather a variety of feedback from multiple sources, including the engineer’s peers, clients, manager and direct reports. Feedback can be gathered in several different ways, such as verbally, email, or through an automated system.

Benefits

Through a 360-degree assessment, engineers can receive meaningful and constructive feedback from more than one source. This is beneficial since engineer’s work closely with other engineers (peers) and product managers (clients). By hearing structured feedback from those additional sources, engineers can get a much more well-rounded, relevant, and specific evaluation on their job performance. Engineers can clearly identify areas of success and opportunities for improvement across the whole spectrum of their job role.

360-degree assessments also takes pressure off the engineering manager from having to be personally responsible for all the feedback for their team. It also helps them to see an overall picture of their engineer’s work performance. It’s possible that a engineering manager might change their perspective on an engineer after reviewing their feedback from other engineers and product managers.

Another great benefit to 360-degree assessments is that they are an excellent way to promote effective communication among the team. It encourages an open and honest culture where successes are celebrated and areas of opportunity are identified and supported. Feedback is now much less one-sided and more collaborative, with teams working together to improve both personal and organizational performance. This promotes a culture where ongoing self-development is encouraged and celebrated.

Drawbacks

Just like any performance review mechanism, 360-degree assessments do have their drawbacks. The first drawback is that they are very time consuming. They require multiple reviews from multiple people which takes time from all parties involved, not just the managers.

Additionally, 360-degree assessments may be very complex. Multiple reviews need to be compiled into a single performance review and then basing rewards off that can be complex as there are multiple viewpoints with different weights and weights vary for each role.

Fortunately, through automation, many of these drawbacks can be addressed, such as using electronic form submissions and workflows for automatically capturing and aggregating reviews.

Scoring Categories

All engineers will receive feedback from their manager, peers and clients. Depending on who is filling out the evaluation form, the reviewer will grade the engineer on different categories related to their job responsibilities. The following is an exhaustive list of all possible categories an engineer can be graded on.

Leadership

The leadership category grades an engineer on how well they are able to provide guidance and leadership to their team.

• Do they offer help and guidance when other engineers hit a roadblock?
• Do they take opportunities to allow more junior engineers to develop their skills?
• Are they active in assisting with the direction the product is taking?
• Do they lead by example?

Training Others

The ability to train others is a critical skill engineers must exhibit if they wish to climb the engineering ladder. This category grades engineers on how much effort they put into training the other engineers on their team.

• Do they regularly publish Wiki articles on subjects they are an SME of?
• Do they hold Softheon theaters on new projects, ideas or best practices?
• Do they assist other engineers when they are stuck?

Personal Growth

Setting time aside to learn new things is vital for an engineer who wants to keep up with the latest technology. The personal growth category aims to grade engineers on how much effort they put into improving their performance as an engineer.

• Do they participate in training aimed towards engineering?
• Do they research best practices for technologies relevant to their work?

Communication

Without good communication, teams can fall apart leading to stress, anxiety and missing important deadlines. It is imperative that engineers can communicate effectively to team members in both verbal and non-verbal form.

• Do they effectively communicate with their team members?
• Do they effectively communicate with employees in other departments when applicable?
• Do they follow company guidelines for communicating their work? I.e. making sure tasks in Azure DevOps are up to date.

Engagement

Being engaged in a project is important if an engineer wants to build software that the customer actually wants.

• Do they regularly attend the meetings they are supposed to?
• Are they an active participant in meetings?
• Are they responsive and available during the periods in which they are expected to be?

Initiative

Finding defects with a release prior to it going to production is extremely important as it’s much less expensive to fix a defect before it makes it’s way to production. This category grades how proactive an engineer is in identifying issues before they become a bigger problem.

• Does the engineer review processes with the product team to determine processing gaps?
• Do they attempt to bring innovation to their product?
• Do they escalate issues outside their control in a timely manner?

Teamwork

At Softheon, engineers are expected to be part of a team. The teamwork category grades engineers on how well of a team player they are.

• Do they work efficiently with the other members on their team?
• Do they have a professional attitude interacting with other members on the team?
• Do they keep an open line with their team and respond within a timely manner?

Technical Skills

By definition, engineers are expected to play a technical role within the organization. The technical skills category grades an engineers technical skills.

• Do they know the technology stack associated to the products their team supports?
• Are they effective in using tools to aid in development?

Productivity

The productivity category grades how much meaningful work an engineer can complete in a given period of time.

• Do they often have to do significant rewrite after a code review?
• Do their user stories often get rejected during testing?
• Do they produce code that often leads to bugs?

Work Quality

To avoid technical debt, it’s important that all engineers always consider the quality of the code they are producing.

• Do they attempt to improve the code base with every check-in?
• Do they follow Softheon’s Software Development Life Cycle best practices?
• Do they ensure proper tests are written for the code they produce?
• Is their code readable and maintainable?

Troubleshooting

Being able to troubleshoot issues is a critical skill an engineer must possess. Engineers must be effective at troubleshooting issues related to the products their team supports.

• Do they learn from previous issues they have seen?
• Do they attempt to fix issues themselves before escalating to others?
• Do they ask for help when appropriate?

Evaluation Forms

Each reviewer will be required to fill out an online evaluation form for each engineer they are assigned to review. Depending on their relationship to the engineer, they will grade the engineer on different categories. They are three different possible relationships the reviewer might have to the engineer; self, manager, client or peer. Below are the different categories each reviewer will be expected to grade an engineer on. Depending on their relationship to the engineer and the engineer’s title, these categories may vary.

Self

Every engineer will be responsible to do a self assessment. The self assessment is important because it will bring alignment between the engineering manager and engineer. There will be scenarios where the engineering manager might think an engineer is under performing while the engineer believes they are a high performer or vice versa. It’s critical for an engineering manager to identify these situations so both parties can be on the same page on their current performance. The self assessment will include the following categories:

Manager

An engineering manager will be required to grade every engineer reporting to them on the following categories:

Client

Engineers serve product managers as their client, often working on user stories and bugs created by them. The client evaluation form is an opportunity for product managers to grade the engineers on their team on the following categories:

Peer

Engineers will frequently work with other engineers within the same team. It is important for an engineer to receive feedback from other engineers so they can see what areas they need to improve on. Below are the categories engineers will grade each other on:

Evaluation Methods

There are two different evaluation methods; full evaluation and scorecard. A full evaluation requires the reviewer to grade an engineer on a scale from 1 to 5 and additionally provide detailed comments on why they received that grade. A scorecard is more geared towards speed, where the reviewer only needs to assign a score between 1 and 5, comments are optional. Below is a breakdown of what each grade between 1 and 5 means:

Scoring Process

Once all reviews are completed for an engineer, the engineering manager is responsible for compiling all the reviews into one performance review evaluation. To do so, the manager assigns different weights to the grades based on the relationship between the reviewer and the reviewee. The end result is one final grade between 1 and 5 which is the engineer’s final performance evaluation.

Below is the evaluation breakdown for engineers:

Since senior engineers have more of a leadership role and work more with other engineers, we added more weight to the peer review. Additionally, we added an “other” relationship. This can be anyone the manager thinks should have more weight on the senior engineer’s review. For example, if a senior engineer works very closely with someone on the business team, the manager might request they fill out a full evaluation for the engineer.

The final step is for the engineering manager to schedule a one-on-one meeting with the engineer. In this meeting, the engineering manager goes over the engineer’s performance scores within each category and gives suggestions to the engineer how to improve in certain areas they are struggling in. If the self assessment differs vastly from the manager assessment, this is a good opportunity for both parties to discuss why they felt they deserved a better score or why they scored themselves so harshly.