Performance reviews

Information about performance reviews in Support Engineering

Overview

Support Engineering currently uses the following performance factor worksheets as an aid to evaluating performance:

Using the Worksheets: Tips

You might want to take notes as you determine each line item in each of your direct reports’ worksheets. One good place for those notes is the space in the worksheet between the responsibility (or value or remote work) title and the weighting. This makes it easy to deliver the review to your direct report entirely from the worksheet.

Updating this page

Updates to this page must be reviewed and approved by the VP, a Director or a Senior Manager of Support Engineering before merging.

No changes should be merged from 16 October to 31 December. This is to avoid changes during the Formal Talent Assessment cycle which begins on 1 November and concludes by the end of each year.

Performance factor description

When making changes to this section, make sure that you also change the corresponding entries in the “performance factor worksheet” tab in the corresponding Google Sheet.

Support Engineering Manager

Growth, development and hiring of team members (Weighting: 20%)

Developing:
- You are still getting to know your direct reports, and have not yet established a foundation to discuss career or learning goals.
- You are still getting familiar with your direct reports’ career or learning goals, and provide minimal input helping your direct reports set and progress their career or learning goals.
- You’re becoming aware of your regional team’s hiring needs, and/or are not yet ready to conduct interviews and grade take-home assessments.
Performing:
- You encourage and coach your direct reports to set their own career or learning goals in alignment with Support Engineering’s business needs.
- You are aware of your regional team’s hiring needs and contribute to hiring activities when the opportunity presents itself. You are ready to conduct interviews and grade take-home assessments when called upon to do so.
Exceeding:
- Extends Performing descriptor.
- You play an active role in your direct reports’ growth by connecting them with learning resources, creating opportunities for personal development and partnering with others to remove or smooth over obstacles to growth.
- You shape hiring strategy and process to mitigate or resolve people resource-related gaps and weaknesses in Support Engineering and partner with Talent Acquisition to ensure effective execution of the hiring plan.

Process development and improvement (Weighting: 20%)

Developing:
- You are just starting to build an understanding of Support Engineering processes and workflows, and where friction exists in how we structure and interact with work.
- You are still inwardly focused and haven’t started engaging with your direct reports and your peers to understand the day-to-day challenges of Support Engineering work.
- You’re still finding your voice and aren’t fully comfortable expressing your opinions or encouraging constructive participation in public discussions on processes and process improvement.
- You’re still working to get context and understand where you can contribute. As a result you do rarely propose, or play an active part in helping progress, process improvement initiatives.
Performing:
- You stay up-to-date on the challenges Support Engineering team members face in their day-to-day work and are able to understand and describe the conflicting priorities that cause them.
- You take the initiative to surface issues constructively and carefully use your voice as a manager to create psychological safety that enables others on the team to contribute to discussions.
- You propose and drive improvement initiatives, or play an active role in helping others progress implementation of their initiatives.
Exceeding:
- Extends Performing descriptor.
- You make use of effective iteration and decision making to gain support of and buy in from stakeholders both within Support Engineering and in the wider GitLab organization to drive improvement initiatives. You carefully monitor the impact of improvement initiatives and are quick to adapt or reverse implementation if the desired outcome is not achieved.
- You coach and enable your direct reports and other team members to own and independently drive improvement initiatives.

People care and performance management (Weighting: 30%)

Developing:
- You are just starting to build an understanding of most of your direct reports’ productivity, engagement with work and personal well-being. You are just starting to discover their learning styles and coaching needs and as a result may not be able to quickly identify changes or needs in the same.
- You are begining to develop an awareness of the quality of your direct reports’ work with customers and the impact of their contributions to the Support Engineering team.
- Identifying and taking action on underperformance is challenging.
Performing:
- You keep up to date with your direct reports’ productivity, engagement with work and personal well-being, and provide a listening ear, encouragement and coaching when necessary.
- You coach your direct reports to increase and/or maintain the quality of their work with customers and their contributions to the Support Engineering team.
- You identify underperformance of your direct reports and act quickly and appropriately to manage it.
Exceeding:
- Extends Performing descriptor.
- You identify issues which might impact your direct reports’ productivity, engagement with work and personal well-being and work with your peers and your manager to address the issues before they become problems.
- You enable your direct reports and amplify their voice where appropriate so they can model being a manager of one and values alignment in the areas of productivity, engagement with work and personal well-being to the Support Engineering team.

Managing customer service outcomes (Weighting: 30%)

Developing:
- You are just starting to build an understanding of service-related Support Engineering KPIs and the behaviors they drive. You are starting to build awareness of what positive customer service outcomes look like at GitLab.
- You make minimal use of customer feedback to do service recovery in individual cases, and/or improve the quality of customer service provided.
- You haven’t begun to respond to and/or take the lead on customer escalations or incidents.
- You do not actively monitor customer service-related Support Engineering KPIs and/or intentionally contribute to enabling the team’s achievement of those KPIs.
Performing:
- You make use of customer feedback and escalations to coach and improve the quality of customer service provided by your direct reports.
- You make use of customer feedback and escalations to surface flaws in the GitLab customer experience and/or how Support Engineering delivers customer support.
- You monitor customer service-related Support Engineering KPIs, and coach and enable your direct reports to contribute to the team’s achievement of those KPIs.
Exceeding:
- Extends Performing descriptor.
- You make use of customer feedback and escalations as opportunities for your direct reports to independently drive outcomes that increase customer satisfaction.
- You partner with your peers, manager and your direct reports to enable the team to become more effective at achieving customer service-related Support Engineering KPIs.
- You make use of customer feedback and escalations to partner with relevant stakeholders to drive and execute improvements and fixes to the GitLab product, customer experience and/or how Support Engineering delivers customer support.

Last modified July 9, 2024: Fix links and spelling (e30f31b6)

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