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PERFORMANCE REVIEW EXAMPLES BY ROLE

Software engineer performance review examples

What good looks like: Ships reliable code, makes good technical calls, and makes the team around them faster.

Engineering reviews go wrong in two ways: they only count output ("closed 40 tickets"), or they turn vague ("strong engineer"). These examples name the behaviour and its effect on the team and the product.

Replace [Name] and [example] with the person and a real piece of work.

Strengths: exceeds expectations

  • [Name] breaks big pieces of work into small, safe changes. [example] shipped in five releases with no rollback, which let the team move faster with less risk.
  • [Name]’s code reviews teach, not just approve. Newer engineers say their comments are the fastest way they learn our codebase.
  • [Name] spotted early that [example] would not scale and proposed a simpler design. It saved weeks of rework.
  • When production broke on [date], [Name] stayed calm, communicated clearly in the incident channel, and wrote a blameless post-mortem that led to two real fixes.
  • [Name] asks "what problem are we solving?" before writing code, which has cut scope on several features without losing value for users.

Solid: meets expectations

  • [Name] delivers the work they commit to with good quality and few bugs.
  • [Name] writes clear pull requests; adding the "why" behind a change would make reviews faster still.
  • [Name] is dependable on their own area. The next step is sharing that knowledge so the team does not rely on one person.
  • [Name] estimates reasonably well and flags delays when they see them.

Needs improvement

  • Several changes this year went out without tests ([example]) and caused avoidable bugs. From next quarter, I need tests on every change to [area], and I will pair with you on the first two.
  • [Name] tends to work alone until a piece of work is "done", so problems surface late. Share work in progress by mid-sprint so we can catch issues early.
  • Comments in code reviews have sometimes come across as dismissive. Explain the reason behind a suggestion and assume good intent.
  • [Name] often picks the most interesting task over the most important one. Let’s agree priorities together at the start of each sprint.

Self-review examples for a software engineer

  • I led [example], which reduced [metric] by [number]. I’d like to take on more design work next year.
  • I improved our on-call runbook after the [month] incident; we have not had a repeat since.
  • I want to get better at estimating larger projects. I under-estimated [example] by about [number] weeks.

How to make these phrases land

  • Pair every comment with a real pull request, incident or project. Engineers trust feedback that points to the work.
  • Use one phrase per point and follow it with what happened. A phrase without an example reads like a template.
  • For areas to improve, say what good looks like and what support you will give.
  • Nothing in a review should be a surprise. Raise problems in one-on-ones during the year.

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Review examples for other roles

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