Performance Reviews
Managers at 37signals are expected to continually and actively assess job performance. Moreover you’re expected to communicate those assessments to your report in their annual review time and also throughout the year during your regular course of work. To neglect that duty puts your report and your team at a disadvantage. Performance problems linger too long, which causes drag on the team and gives your report an unrealistic perception of the quality of their work. On the more positive end of the spectrum, performance successes go unnoticed and unrecognized.
Your formal touch points for performance assessments are well defined:
- 3-month and 6-month performance reviews
- 1-year Hell Yeah & performance review
- 2-year L1>L2 or L2>L3 requirement
- Annual performance reviews
Everyone, no matter their level, receives 3-6-12 month performance reviews during their first year of employment. Junior (L1) through Senior (L3) contributors are required to receive recurring annual performance reviews. Managers may exercise their discretion on conducting annual reviews for Leads (L4) and Principals (L5).
Managers have three opportunities in a new hire’s first year to formally address performance. You should treat those three points with care and gravity. At the 3-month mark, 6-month mark, and finally at the year mark, managers are required to create comprehensive, supported, & documented assessments.
Some process notes: Your manager assessment form will be shared with you by People Ops via to-do about a week prior to your report’s anniversary. People Ops will also assign your report their own form in which they’ll be invited to reflect on their work and job satisfaction. Once you’ve both completed your forms, notify People Ops so they can review and distribute them. People Ops will send you and your report the review forms the day before your scheduled call, and you’ll take it from there.
When completing your assessment, you should be thinking about:
- The work done, both the quantity and impact. Did your report do high quality work, and did they pull their weight on the team?
- The skill level shown in their work. Is your report technically proficient, do they demonstrate good judgment, and are they adaptable to your team’s nuanced ways of working?
- The amount of correction needed, material and superficial. If you go back and look at your report’s projects, how much red pen is there? Did you provide the right amount of oversight, and how much of you or another teammate is represented in the final work product?
- Engagement with work and team. Is your report communicative, transparent, and helpful? Is it easy and natural to work with them? Do they run towards problems?
- Coachability. Is your report receptive to feedback, and do they internalize it and learn from it so as not to repeat mistakes? Do they seek out feedback, and do they offer helpful feedback to others when appropriate?
These questions are a reframing of the expectations in your career progression models, but phrased this way to help managers think critically about what you’re assessing.
Managers are expected to support performance assessments with a deep review of the work your report has completed. Links to PRs, Basecamp project work, or other documentation should be included in your review form.
You should also solicit peer feedback from the people who work most closely with your report. If you manage a programmer, ask their design counterpart what it’s been like working with them. Please devise 2-3 specific questions when asking for peer feedback. You shouldn’t be asking colleagues for a long vague assessment, but a targeted evaluation of specific qualities that they feel qualified to speak to. Some examples of questions you might use:
- In the past 6 weeks, what is one specific example of when [report] made your work easier or more effective? This forces recency and highlights your report’s strengths & successes.
- What is 1 thing [report] could do differently that would improve your ability to work with them? This forces prioritization (1 thing) and highlights areas for development.
- If you were to work with [report] again next [cycle/project], what would you want them to do more of or less of? This forces orienting for future work and highlights practical feedback, both positive and corrective.
Remind the teammates you’re asking for feedback to be candid. Never share their negative feedback verbatim, but summarized and as anonymized as possible.
At the 3-month mark, you will not have much work product to review or data to inform your assessment. Work with what you have, and try to draw conclusions about your report’s grasp of the skills expected based on the information you have. When your report reaches the 6-month mark, they should be meeting most, if not all, level expectations.
At the 1-year mark, your report should meet all level expectations and ideally exceed in a few areas. Not only will you complete a performance review form at this time, you’ll be asked to commit to retaining your report on the team. You should be enthusiastic about the contributions they’ve made so far, their presence as a member of the team, and the potential you see for their future work. The bar for remaining on the team at the 1-year mark isn’t just passable performance, it’s hell yeah! You’re excited to have them on the team in their current state, and you can’t wait to see what they do next.
Managers meet with People Ops after conducting their report’s 1-year performance review. The purpose of the meeting is to ensure the bar for hell yeah has been met and documented, and that the employee is on track to succeed as their performance review cadence drops to just once per year.
In addition to reviewing past performance and evaluating future potential, performance reviews are a time to set goals for the coming months. Your report should set at least 2 attainable goals that build on work they’ve done thus far. They should also set 1-2 stretch goals that would be impressive to achieve, but are not instrumental to team operations or output. Discuss your report’s ideas for goals at their performance review, give your input, and then document the outcomes so you may follow up throughout the year.
You can try using AI when preparing your annual reviews. You should document any crucial feedback you’ve given your report & the outcomes, 1-1 notes, and general observations throughout the year, then AI can help you analyze your notes for patterns you might have lost sight of from being close to the work. Ask AI to identify themes, flag inconsistencies, or surface areas of growth or concern that appear repeatedly. This exercise isn’t a substitute for your own judgment, though. You know your report and their work better than any tool can, but AI can act as a useful lens, helping you write a more complete and balanced assessment than memory alone would produce.
Performance review documents are stored in 2 places: your report’s Bamboo profile, so they may reflect back on them at any time, and in the project you share with People Ops, so you may also reflect back, and also add notes, goals, and follow-ups to refer back to throughout the year.