Last year we got rid of our traditional annual review system and replaced it with sensible component parts (career guidance, skill assessments, etc.) It would take several posts to explain the reasoning and mechanics, so just trust me when I say it was a Good Thing ™.
One of the replacement systems is “one-on-ones”, a peer feedback mechanism. Periodically, everyone in the company is expected to reach out to a peer who has good visibility to their work and (hopefully) more experience to get some candid feedback. No form, no manager (unless that’s who you ask), no reporting other than the fact that it happened.
We published some good topics for one-on-one discussion on our internal HR sharepoint site, but they are largely focused on the softer stuff, not much on actual engineering. Then we ran across this Programmer Competency Matrix. If you’re a software engineer, take a look … it’s a fantastic resource for self-evaluation and guidance. We haven’t formally incorporated it into our systems, but we’re exploring it.
