Performance Management As An Engineering Manager

Well, first of all, it shouldn't be getting to the point where you're saying you are not getting a promotion at the six month cycle or whatever because you should be having those underperforming conversations with them along the way. Welcome to the Ladybug podcast. I'm Kelly.

And I'm Emma.

And we're debugging the tech industry.

There's so much going on in the AI space it's hard to keep up. But here's something you might not know. Graphs can give your AI agents the context they need to work smarter. Want to see how? Join us at Nodes 2025 on November 6th. It's a free online conference where developers, data pros and AI engineers from around the world share how they're using graph technology. From powering AI agents and improving data intelligence to building better knowledge graphs and graph powered applications. There are over 140 technical talks over 24 hours, so you can attend the live sessions from anywhere. To register for this free conference, visit neo4j.com nodes this is the third time.

That we are recording the introduction to this episode.

At least we only got a minute in both times we did.

But if you are listening and you are in content creation, just make sure that your microphone is hooked up to the right input before you start. Because re recording the same introduction three times, it's. You can't reuse the same content. It's just not as funny.

I can't. Yeah, I can't use the same story I just used twice now.

Well, I guess we'll never find out about the rat and Kelly's car. In any case. Today we're talking about performance management.

Yes, definitely a little bit of a spicier topic, but probably one of the most important topics that we can cover on this podcast. Because performance management is necessary and not really fun.

It can be fun, but it does cover the good, the bad and the challenging.

Yes. So yeah, so I mean why, why do we need to talk about this? Why do we need to manage engineers performance in the first place?

Frankly, my short answer is we shouldn't have to. It should be driven by, to some extent by the engineer. Actually we have this phrase called like drive your own development. So there should be some initiative taken on the part of the team member. But to some, you know, to some degree it is also our responsibility to provide constructive and positive feedback and make sure that we're providing people with opportunities that align with their career goals and all of those things.

Yeah, I think it's necessary. I think it's necessary because we are not very good at taking that step back and figuring out what we need to be better at our work and kind of showing up to work and all the professional side of that. So I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to do. Performance management. But we also think about performance management often from just like a negative. Somebody's on a pip. And sure that is part of performance management, but performance management is more broadly focusing on the growth of your team.

You're going to have to explain what a PIP is.

A performance improvement plan. It is when you've done everything you possibly can to help keep an engineer on track and for some reason they keep on falling off that track. And this is the kind of last step step before they get managed out of the company.

Well, we'll talk a little bit more about that later. But I think the first question that I have is how do we actually measure performance? Because this is, it can be tricky. I mean, it's easy.

Just count how many lines of code they write.

Yeah, okay.

Done, done. Next.

But it is tricky to measure developer productivity. There are a lot of resources out there about how to measure productivity. But, and you know, productivity does relate somewhat to performance. How do you measure performance at your company?

So are you doing the things you say you're going to do and the time you're going to do them at a high quality bar is, is the summarized version of it. Are you, you, you said. What was it? Drive your own.

Drive your own. Development.

Development, yeah. Own your outcomes is the way that we phrase it here. I'm looking at what work are you doing? What is the quality of the work that you're doing? Is it being done on time? And if it's not being done on time, why is it a, like you're getting pulled in too many different directions. You don't know how to do something. It is, you're running into other, you know, third party kind of blockers. Maybe there's like resource constraints on like we, we have too many design projects we need to work on at the same time. And so getting designs late, like we're looking at that. But then the quality piece is what's also important. And, and how, how you're showing what kind of impact you're having on the team as a whole. Not just on the work that you're doing. But are you, are you playing nicely in the sandbox with everybody?

Nice. We have more like concrete boxes not to check off. But of course there are different levels for like associate engineer versus senior engineer. And staff and. But we have many different dimensions that we cover. I think we've got like five different dimensions. Some are collaboration focused, some are technical oriented. And within those we have different. I think we, I think there's steps in between. I always get confused, which is like the higher category. But the steps are like, they change in scope depending on the seniority. Like a senior engineer I would expect to pick up and drive initiatives from start to finish, you know, bringing blockers or things of that nature to leadership. Whereas an associate I would expect to partner with, you know, someone more senior on a, on a work stream. So yeah, I think that's similar with.

Like a career letter.

Yeah, yeah. And we'll talk more about like progression frameworks later. But I think based on that it's pretty easy to assess whether or not somebody is meeting expectations, exceeding or just not meeting in general. But we do, we kind of focus on like three aspects which are like, how is their competency in their domain? Um, are they t shaped, are they growing their skills? How are their like achievements? Are, are they achieving what they've set out to achieve? And then behavior like how do they collaborate, how do they communicate? Things like that.

Exactly. Yeah, we do, we do monthly talent reviews is what we, the mtrs is what we call them. Managers will answer, I think it's four or five questions for each team member every single month and then go over those answers with the team member. And it's a very structured way of saying like the corp. And they're. They're weighted different. So like the first question is, are they, you know, are they meeting the like the goals that have, they've set out for, for this particular team member? Are they like meeting them? Are they exceeding them? Are they hitting some but not all of them? That kind of stuff we ask like how. What's the word that they. That was used there? One of them is around like performance management. Are we having like a performance related conversation with them? No. No with a starting or. Yes. How are they relating to our company's principles? Um, do you have examples of those? And then the last question is around like, how are they showing up to work essentially? Are they their engagement level? Basically, are they, you know, medium engaged? Highly engaged in like being engaged is fine. Um, and that's the thing that this whole, this whole monthly talent review is stressing is that you don't like. It's to men, it's to like measure performance. But with knowing that a small portion of the company will be high performers and most people will fall in that performing range. And that is absolutely fine.

Yeah.

And like it's not going to prevent you from getting raises and promotions necessarily. You just might get a bigger one. Yeah. In a high performance level.

Yeah. I tell people on my team who are going through a lot in their personal lives, like if they're getting married or someone is, they're taking care of a sick parent or whatever it might be like, hey, you should just focus on like, don't focus on over exceeding expectations. Like, you know, set your boundaries. Don't take on too much work. Like most people will be meeting expectations like that. That will be the category that they fall into. They should fall into at most times otherwise they'll burn out. Unless they're going for a promotion, in which case they should be exceeding expectations pretty frequently.

Absolutely.

Yeah. And I like to think of our role more as like a coaching role. Oh, maybe. Yeah. There's a book. What did I. What is that book? There's like the Coaching Habit, I think.

The Coaching Habit? Yeah. It's a great book.

Yeah.

Is that going to be your resource or can that be my resource?

Oh man.

If you want to change yours, it's.

Going to be my resource because I. Yeah, but I did, I do remember like in that book, it was pretty short. But your job is, is to coach people. It's not just to manage the logistics of their career but like to provide ongoing coaching. And that doesn't mean giving them all the answers. It means helping them find the answers for themselves sometimes. So yeah, we'll talk a little bit more about that.

Yep. I also have my, my resource that is related. Same author that. Oh, so we'll, we'll get to that later. Um, okay, so let's kind of talk through goal setting and expectations because you don't know how you're performing unless you are actually, you know, you know what you're working against. Like what is, how am I being evaluated? And there are several ways that you can do this. Do you use any sort of like performance management rubric? Is that what you were kind of talking about before?

Yeah, but that doesn't come super frequently. It's not something that we look at regularly unless they're going for a promotion or they're like serious performance issues where there's just a mismatch and expectations on the role. But in general I like to do goal setting with people every six months. I know that seems long but we're on six month planning cycles so it's good for me to know on a half year basis what Projects to align them with. But so before I go on parental leave in a couple weeks, I'm doing an hour and a half long goal setting session with people where the first half is centered around your values as a person and a human being. Because our personal values, they really trickle into what we give energy to at work. And then the second half is like, okay, short term, medium term and long term goal setting. So that when I am gone for seven months, my replacement has really good information on how to match people up with good opportunities. But I use figjam from figma, which is really fun. So it's interactive. It's not too like.

Corporate.

I guess I try to stay away from like the just boring documents. And I've looked into smart goals. This time they're not something that I've ever heard of before.

Oh man, I.

Have you heard of them?

Yeah, part of most of my grad school involved circles.

Okay. I've literally never heard of them before.

Yeah, they're. They just like are drilled into my head, which is why I giggled when I saw smart goals on the, on the agenda and I was like, okay.

Well you can then perfect. You can tell us all about it. Okay.

SMART is an acronym for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant time. Yes, that's how you spelled smart. What that means specific. Is this something? Like what are we actually targeting? Like, what are we trying to accomplish here? Who is responsible for this? And is it something that we know we can actually measure? Is this something that we know we can attain? Smart goals are not meant to be like your vision statement where it's like this very vague, really exciting north star that we're kind of working towards. Smart goals are much more tactical and shorter term measurable. If you cannot measure the success of a goal, there's no way you know whether or not you actually achieved it. When you do objectives and key results and you have key results that are like ship this feature. The problem with that is it's binary. You either did it or you don't. That is technically measurable. But you might want to say you might have a goal to something around like be your. Your accuracy for estim tasks could be one like you. You're generally like way off by like things take twice as long as you really expect them to. So you might set a smart goal that's measurable around decreasing the. That differentiation from, you know, 50% difference to, or 100% difference to 50% difference just to kind of take it. Bite size, for example. Achievable. Again, these are not meant to be like vision statements. They have to be something you can actually attain. Otherwise you're going to be constantly striving for something you can't actually do. Relevant. Does this, does this goal you're setting matter? You know, if I am setting a business goal of being conversational in French by the end of May, it's not going to help the company whatsoever. That might be a personal goal just because I'm going to France again in May, but you might want to do something that's a little bit more like work related and then time bound. And you should set time parameters around whatever it is that you are. You're measuring. So I try to shy away from doing like in the next six months, I want to do this thing. Unless it's something that's going to require change over time or it's a little bit more of like a long tailed measure. Your. Your company's net promoter score is a long tail measure. You want to look at that piece over time. For example, I try to pull them in a little bit earlier. Maybe like on a month or, or quarterly basis is. Is fine as well. Sometimes just depending on what it is that we're actually measuring. Smart goals. I told you. It is drilled into my head.

Thank you for coming. And it's also written on the agenda in front of you.

But you know, that is true. But I didn't use your examples. I used my own.

Yeah, okay, that's good. Good. Yes. So, yeah, I mean, I gotta be honest, I'm horrible at setting goals for myself.

Okay.

Yeah, I just. I don't know. I set goals with other people. I think it's important, but I just, I don't. Dog food. I don't eat my own dog food.

What's up saying I don't even have dogs? You don't practice what you preach. Well, who lost call of that? I don't eat my own dog food. I don't eat dogs.

No.

What kind of podcast is this?

Living in Sweden? Is this my brain? Okay, anyway, but you don't do it for yourself. I should.

I do.

I have more trajectories than goals, I'd say, because goals for me are like finite things. I have like vision boards. Like, I have things that I want to achieve in my future that I like. I don't want to say manifest, but I like, think about consciously. But I have more trajectories of like. Like, instead of saying like, I want to, you know, like, I'm going to use the weight loss example.

I was going to say, yeah, this was very.

I know that's a touchy subject, but it was relevant for me at postpartum. Like, it was something important to me to feel better. But so instead of saying, like, oh, I want to lose 30 pounds, I don't set a goal of that. What I do is, well, maybe the byproduct is I set a goal of I want to train four times a week. But my traject is more like, I want to live a healthier lifestyle and be mindful of what I'm eating and be active during the day. Right. Yeah. And the byproduct is I achieve the goal of losing weight. This goes back to Atomic Habits, which we've talked plenty about, but, yeah, our.

Favorite book to talk about. Yeah, I set. I set pretty specific goals for myself. It's one of my favorite things to do, Kind of reflecting on the past year and then setting goals for the next year. And I break them down into quarterly goals because I'm nerdy like that. But each quarter I have, like, there are things around. You know, I am. I'm registered to run my first marathon in October. So that is a. Like, that is a goal that I have for the year. I'm not actually starting training for that yet because it's far too early to do that. But one of the things I also wanted to explore was either signing up for the new Pilates studio that opened near me, or working with a personal trainer, making a decision, actually starting with that. And so I'm going to Pilates several days per week because it's quick turned into one of my favorite things to do for. For fun. It's like, those kinds of things I set. I have. I have goals around language learning. I actually am learning French, but around, like, hitting certain milestones or, like, practicing so many days or for a certain amount of time per week, just so I'm continuing to invest in that learning because that's the kind of thing that just takes a lot of time. I can't just say, like, I want to be fluent by May. One, that's not achievable. And two, it's not specific.

Well, are you one of those people who has to have a duolingo streak?

No, actually, I do not keep streaks at all. I. I intentionally break streaks.

Oh, okay. That's good. That would give me anxiety. No, I had team member who. We were at an off site. We were literally in a club, like, an after party for our, like, team event.

And it's like one in the morning.

And I'm like, what are you doing? And he's like, I can't lose my duolingo streak.

I'm like, yeah, see, that is exactly. You're, you're now doing it to heap the streak and not doing it because you want the practice. It's. No, it's now turned into a negative reinforcement for you. So that is okay. Keep streaks.

Psychologist Kelly has come out.

I know too much about myself as a perfectionist to know that I have to, I have to intentionally break a streak on forming or else I will start to obsess over it.

Yeah, that's smart though.

Boundaries.

I should probably do that. But in any case, okay, we could have a whole episode on our personal life goals. But let's talk about something spicier, which everybody probably wants to know about, which is how do you handle underperformers especially? Here's a spicier question. I'm going to kick it off. Okay, let's say you have a team member who is very adamant for the past six months if they are going to go for a promotion this cycle and they think that they are have been exceeding expectations since the day they joined, but they have been severely underperforming. So you have very mismatched realities. How do you handle that?

Well, first of all, it shouldn't be getting to the point where you're saying you are not getting a promotion in this at the 6 month cycle or whatever because you should be having those underperforming conversations with them along the way. It should not be a surprise. And if it continues to be a surprise when you're talking to them, the way you're communicating it to them is not getting through through to them. And so you might need to change up your, your approach. And this, this comes into how you give different people constructive feedback. They're going to take it differently. And sometimes for some people, especially like in this kind of situation where they think they're doing a lot better than they actually are, it takes just real data to show that they actually aren't doing as well as they think they are. But there should absolutely be a paper trail of having this conversation that things are not going as well as you think they are. And sometimes like I, in this conversation, if this, if this has happened in the past, I will ask them like, you know, explain to me like, I'm trying to figure out how to, how to phrase this for the podcast. I'm just going to say it, don't say it this way, but like, why do you think you're as good as you. You are.

Yeah.

Why. Why do you think you deserve this? That's actually not a bad question to answer. Ask actually, like, you know, show me. Show. Like, explain to me what strengths lead to you getting this promotion. What. What am I missing? Yeah, that you seem to think you have.

Right. Most people want direct feedback. That doesn't mean you have to be like, rude about it. Right, That's. We talked about radical candor as a resource like an episode or two ago. But to be transparent and honest, you have to tailor it to each individual. Right. Like, find out how people want to receive feedback. Figure out how blunt you can be to get the point across, of course, without being rude and still being respectful. But it's a, it's an art and I think that's where I struggled.

Yeah, no, I mean, that makes complete sense. And also like, how people want to receive feedback, it changes based on, like, there's a timing component to feedback and it's in two forms. One is, is. Is. Is whatever I'm giving feedback on, like recent. Because if something happened months ago, it's hard to actually give feedback on that at this time. The second part of timing of feedback is, is somebody in the right frame of mind to actually receive that feedback? So, I mean, both of those play. Play a role absolutely in, in these performance conversations. So, okay, so we have this example of, of an individual who thinks they're doing a lot better, but they're actually not doing well. Um, let's take another example here where we have an individual who just has consistently been underperforming and it's not so, like, they're not showing up to work kind of underperforming, but it's just like, just not good enough. Like they're just missing the mark a little bit. And now we need to get to the point where we're like, are we having a performance related conversation around this and what does that performance conversation look like? Because again, we're used to having these more constructive performance conversations when things are just drastically bad. Like, you're constantly missing deadlines, but sometimes things are just not good enough for the expectations of this role. And that can be a different kind of difficult conversation to have because then you have to be like, you know, do we need to put you on a performance improvement plan? Are they, are they in the. Like, do they understand where that gap exists? And are. Do they know, like, this is what's expected of them and this is where they're actually falling on that, that expectation scale? Like, they are falling short and here's what they need to do to actually get to the point where I need you, like, show more ownership in your work. I need you to not just suggest ideas, but choose an idea and, and run with it and explain why you're choosing this. Out of the three ideas that you're bringing to the table. I need you to, you know, speak up in meetings and, and I can't have this. You know, you know, you have these thoughts that come after the fact that you come to me about instead of giving that feedback directly to your peers. And as a result, you're not being heard. And then you get angry because they're not doing what is currently in your head. And you're telling me, I'm not going to relay this information to your peers all the time. Like, you're an adult and you need to be able to have a conversation about it.

Yeah, it's definitely tricky. Actually Reading a lot of, like, relationship books about communication also helped, like being in a relationship with someone from a different country, even though if you're speaking the same language, like you both grew up on different sides of the world, they have different, like, context. And so like, but my husband tells me this all the time. Like, like the thoughts in your head, like, I can't read them. Like, if you, if you need something from me or like, have expectations on me, you need to tell me. I'm like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. I'm like, okay. But a lot of that translates into this role as well because you're just dealing with people. But yeah, yeah, I would just say be, be cautious of a one size fits all solution here. You're going to have to tailor it to each individual based on your level of trust and candor and all of those things. And yeah, I think it's probably good to evaluate at what point you should bring something up as an area of improvement. Like if someone is, let's say somebody is consistently missing meetings or they're joining really late and you have to like, message them and be like, hey, are you coming? At what point do you decide? Like, okay, this is clearly a pattern of behavior that needs to be addressed. And again, like, the more real time, the better. That's okay. But this is also something else that I struggle with because, like, if I have something minor, like this, like, minor constructive feedback that's not truly impacting performance, but could if it goes unaddressed, right? I'm like, okay, do I send a slack message? And just like, because this has just happened again for like the third or fourth time and just get it done in real time? Or do I wait an extra week and then address it in person face to face, even though a little bit more time has passed? And I like, I was about to send a slack message the other day, but then I was like, oh, shoot, I'm going to be off for two days and it's already like late afternoon. I'm like, I probably shouldn't send this message now. Like, hey, a little bit. Like I could have, but I don't think it would have been super nice to like drop that and then go away for two days. So I'm like, okay, in that case, this is why I say it's not a one size fits all. You really have to analyze the situation because I'm like, all right, like we got a one on one next week. I'll just address it at the beginning of it. It's not really a huge deal, but it's better to do it like face to face maybe.

Yeah. So I think it's like, timeliness is important, but also it's reading the room as well. As you just said, sometimes it's okay to wait, no, wait long time, but like to avoid it. But yeah. And then just generally speaking, things that should be relatively obvious but bear repeating is any kind of time you're having a conversation that involves constructive feedback, documented, document what you talked about, what the resolution was, and what next steps are. Because there could come a time when you put this individual on a performance improvement plan and you have to actually manage them out of the company and you have to let them go and they're, you know, I've had this happen in the past where somebody's been like, you know, you never gave me any of this feedback. This is coming, you know, out of left field. This, I've never heard any of this before when I could point then back to several conversations we had around these things, which also tells me as their manager that maybe I was not being very clear about the severity of the conversations that we were having. You know, it could be, it could be many things.

So. Right, right.

Let's, let's switch to the other side. And we've talked about, you know, the underperformers. Let's talk about high performers because we spend a lot of time on underperformers and those like low to medium performers who have a lot of potential to become high performers. But then we kind of forget about how to, how to boost our high performers and how to retain them and how to motivate them. So what are Some of the things that, that you do at Spotify.

I don't know if it's like a Spotify thing. It's more of like a me thing. But I remember I mentioned this in a previous episode, but I had a manager do a moving motivators exercise with me where we ranked what motivated me based on different aspects. So money, recognition from peers, exciting projects, et cetera. I'd highly recommend doing that with every person because for me, I'm like, okay, I have a high performer here. I know that their number one motivator is they like to work on projects that really challenge them, but they're. They're in the quadrant of being just challenging enough where they can get it done and not like, I forget what it's called, like, the quadrant of, like, unattainable because it's way outside their comfort zone and there are too many unknowns and stressors. So, okay, I'm going to match them up with this exciting project or send.

Them off on an embed.

Right. So knowing what motivates your. Well, all employees, but specifically the high performers and what's important to them in terms of how they are rewarded for their performance is a big tip. Yeah, yeah.

And this also comes from Kim Scott. But the concept of a hyper or of high performers being either rock stars or superstars, with the idea that you have two types of high performers, those who are very, like, steady in their career. They're. They're like constantly showing up. They're seen as a subject matter expert. They like unique challenges to kind of push them outside of their comfort zone versus the other kind of high performer who are the ones who are always looking at what's next. What's next. They're very in tune with their gaps, and they want to know how to, how to fill those gaps so they can continue to grow. They usually require more intentionality around how to keep these individuals motivated in terms of pushing them outside their. Their comfort zone to address those gaps versus the others that could be in a more, like, steady state. Not necessarily that you don't do anything about those other, like, steady high performers. They still need to be motivated in some way, but they're going to be probably motivated a little bit more by money, recognition, you know, working on exciting things versus what is going to get me to that. That next level.

Yeah, I hadn't heard that before. That's actually. It describes a good makeup of my team. Cause I never thought about that before. Huh.

I will send you my, my notes because that's a. That's a whole module on my, on my course. Oh, that's very interesting. Two kinds of high performers, one type of medium performer, two types of low performers.

So interesting. Okay, well, if you want to know, because now I want to know what the two types of low performers are. You're going to have to go check out Kelly's course.

A little teaser on that. 2. Two low performers are expected growth and no growth. Expected growth. These are the individuals who by all means, should be doing better than they currently are. And they're just falling short for some reason. You spend time with these individuals to understand what's going on. It could be something related entirely outside of the company. Family issues, health issues, you know, anything like that. It could be that they're bored or there's just like a mismatch in, like if you have like somebody on an embed and it's not going well for some reason, maybe that's just not a good fit for them or they're working on a project that just like it is, as you said, like, it's so it's pushing so far beyond their technical capabilities that they're starting to struggle. These are the individuals where you can set them right on the, like, on the right path. You just need to identify what that thing is or things are. Could be more than one thing. Low performers, no expected growth of those that you've been managing for a while and performance managed. And they just are not getting better. And those are the ones who you end up usually managing out of the company.

Okay. Wow. It looks like I need to take Kelly's course.

Maybe so.

Okay, well, as a last minute maybe.

That'S going to be my resource of the week. You could wait for the next.

Next episode. Oh, maybe it's not your course that I'm plugging in. Any case, one last note about high performers is you just have to be very conscientious that they're not going to burn out, that they are stable. Like I have. I had a team member join like months ago. Consistently high performer, just a joy to, to work with. But I had to tell them, like, I think I had said this before, like, oh, like I have to hop away for like an hour to take my kid to the doctor. They're sick. Like, I'll, I'll be on later tonight to make up the time. I'm like, go, go spend time with your kid, please. Like, I don't worry about you. I worry about you as a person and making sure that, like, you don't burn out. Right? Yep. Yeah.

Awesome. Awesome. I think that's a good way to. To end this one. All right, resources. You go first. You already teased it.

I didn't tease it. I, like, full on, like, just chucked it out the window. The coaching habit. Yeah, it was really easy. Quick read. I don't remember what the tagline is, but it was. It was just, you know, motivational. It makes you think a bit more about, like, how you approach.

Not problem.

Solving, but conversations with your team members. Like, instead of solving their problems for them, like, helping them come to these conclusions on their own.

Yep, yep. Um, my resource is actually the follow on to the coaching habit, which is called the advice. The advice trap. So this is basically going from, like, how do I. How. You know, how do I need to actually manage these individuals and coach them to kind of breaking down that. That. That thing inside of us that always wants to fix things and wants to provide them with the advice that they need to improve when maybe that's not actually what they need. Sometimes they just want to, you know, figure out. They need to figure it out on their own. But you might need to, like, guide them, provide them with, like, more context to come up with the solution. The whole teach Amanda Fish kind of thing.

Nice. Okay, well, there you go. Two more books.

We're just. We're. We're building up your library.

Love it.

Awesome. And that wraps performance management, so thank you so much for tuning in. We are on your favorite podcasting platform because you're listening to us right now, and I assume it's your favorite. Maybe it's not. We're also on YouTube for these wonderful videos that we're recording, and we're also on social media, so find us wherever you want to tune in and tell your friends we'll see you next week.