7. Guidance on Year-End Self Evaluations
What to write and what not to write so that your managers read them a
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Welcome! I’m Vincent and this is a Product Manager’s Notebook, a series of notes for people who are interested in sharing and learning the art of product management and career development. You can read my archive here.
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T’is the Season
It’s the end of the year. Bring on the annual evaluation season.
At Bloomberg, an important part of the evaluation (just known as “Eval”) is the written self-reflection. Typically, you write your reflections for the year in two sections.
In the first, you reflect on the year gone by.
In the second, you think about the year ahead.
Your manager does the same for you. It's simple enough. Not mandatory.
Most people write it, to varying degrees of detail. I pity managers with 20+ direct reports, who need to write for each one. You must imagine, some are longer than others and there must be some that just read something like:
Manager's evaluation:
* Vincent did pretty well this year.
* Turned up on time
* Didn't make me look bad (mostly)
* Did some useful things
<end note>
Your written evaluation stays part of your permanent employee record, viewable by future managers who can use it to get a sense of your ambitions and growth path.
Dangerously, there's no word limit.
One moment please, let me fetch my best quill. *dips feathered quill into ink* 🪶
Ahem.
“T’was the Year of our Lord 2024…”
Do it enough, and you get into a rhythm. You start keeping notes for yourself throughout the year to refer back to. In my last 13 years at the company (with the exception of that one year that the system glitched, wouldn’t let me submit, and I’ve clearly let this go), I’ve always written mine. And even in the year the system glitched, I wrote one and sent it to my manager by email.
Every year, without fail, I write my self evaluation.
But my approach to it has been evolving.
Reflecting on past reflections
I used to always want to give as full an account of my work as possible. After all, you want your work to be recognised by your management, and if you won’t give account for them, then who will? As a result, my evaluation would look a little like this:
1: This is what I did, how I did it and this is how that worked out
2: This is what I did, how I did it, and this was the result
3: This is what we did, how we worked on it, and how it panned out
In recent years, my manager told me:
“I don’t need a list of all of your achievements and tasks. All that tells me is that you were very busy, and I’m well aware of that. Tell me about the impact that you’ve had this year, areas of growth and where I can help.”
Wise words. So here’s what I’m doing differently this year.
The Game Plan
Here’s what my self-reflection will look this year:
Here are the main 3 outcomes I’ve achieved.
How can I quantify the outcome, either with data or with customer success stories?
What did the problem look like and why did I prioritise it?
What worked well and what could’ve been done better?
Where do I need help and direction?
Questions in my head as I’m writing:
How do I want my manager to think of me as he reads this?
Am I overstating my contribution/impact or understating?
If I only have their attention for 3-5 minutes (you’d hope there’s more, but let’s be real) to read my Eval, will this distract from what I want them to know?
What you leave out is just as important as what you leave in
If you trust your management and have a clear line of communication, it should be acceptable that not everything needs to be mentioned to be accounted for. If things have been going as planned, you should have had regular check ins throughout the year and there should be no surprises - for either party.
Do they need to know about that bug fix we solved? Maybe, but also, maybe not.
As I grow in my career as a PM, I'm beginning to make a conscious effort to cut down the “how”. By this point, I trust that my management knows that I know how to work with stakeholders, collaborate, create wireframes, write user stories, use JIRA…all of these are assumed skills that I’ve consistently demonstrated over time. As
Yue Zhao
from
said in “How you communicate signals your Seniority”: keep thefocus on the results and the outcome.As with any story, what you leave out is just as important as what you leave in.
Reflection = Therapy = Clarity
I always find self-reflection a useful exercise. You’re reading this on my Substack so that says enough. A manager I know calls it the “annual self-therapy” exercise.
That seems accurate, and not a bad thing.
I hope for you that, as I personally often find, upon reflection, that this year’s you has grown from last year’s you. The work that you put into yourself will always pay off, and that you keep learning and getting better next year.
Final cheeky note to my manager if you’re reading this: I promise - once again - not to write you a book, but you can expect a pretty good story for the holidays. Based on true events.