Making a Distinction Between Functional Skill Set and Institutional Knowledge in Employee Development

Earlier in the week I did a poll on topics and the number 1 pick by an overwhelming margin (beyond Sad Ass Salad) was "Business Domain vs Functional Domain in Performance Evaluations."  

Support you should expect from HR and your Org in prepping to give a Performance Eval

So previously we discussed the importance of being well prepared for your performance evaluation. However, every single different company is different both from an HR perspective and an Organizational perspective. However, they should all be able to provide you some foundational resources in 

• being able to clearly explain why they are getting the performance scores they're getting
• understanding how your eval may impact their salary next year
• understanding how your eval may impact their odds of a promotion next year

What HR Should Provide

HR should be able to provide you basic overviews of the current state of your direct report as well as some high level information on the process for 

Your direct report's job title (and tier if there is one) as well as their salary and the standard salary band for that title.

In many organizations, raise calculations take these 3 things into account along with your performance evaluation. If there is a standard raise calculation, you'll have a decent understanding of what their raise may be.

Your direct report's previous performance eval, if available

It's valuable to review past performance evals, not just to know where they've excelled or struggled in the past, but also to refresh your memory on past goals you've set for them and where their skill set is today versus the previous year. Especially when you observe noticeable improvement (and they're at the same job tier), that should impact your performance score today.

Each Performance Category

In general, performance categories are pretty broad from the HR level. This is where your own org and your seniors should be able to provide more granular guidance.

From your org (and your seniors)

Rather than "doesn't respond well to feedback", your org can give you more explicit guidance like "do you find yourself repeating yourself over and over in their PRs." In absence of any formal documentation, your org and your own manager should provide you with additional context in how your direct report treats their work and their teammates.  

How each Performance Category applies to your direct report's job function

This can provide you examples where to look or what to ask about from peers regarding their work. 

• Aptitude => Are they entrusted with more complex challenges than others? => do they ever get assigned an 8 point story to oversee
• Communication => Do you encounter surprises from them? => system behavior that a product owner did not anticipate and it's already in production?
• Versatility / Team Player => do they shy away from duties that may not be their primary? => are they an asshat when they're on-call?

For each performance category, a discussion of situational example or a behavioral example. Sometimes it's easy to hone in on a specific situation where they may have gone the extra mile or have fallen short, but it's important to make the distinction between what may have happened at a particular instance vs an established behavioral pattern that they have exhibited (and did they improve on it when given feedback about it).

Guidance on for gathering feedback if you're not a hands-on manager (because that's how the org structure is)

If you do not directly interact your direct report (I mean... that sucks) your organization should provide you with the appropriate tooling to gather feedback from those who are better equipped than you are. Discussion with tech leads and 360 Reviews are decent subjective methods in understanding one's performance. Quantitative tools may be a method to open up a conversation with a tech lead, but generally not a great way to gauge whether one is an asset or burden to their team.

My HR nor my Org has this

lol, buddy. sounds like you get to establish this yourself and set the precedence, should you choose to accept it.  Nobody will thank you.