Setting Performance Goals for Low, Mid, and High Performing Engineers
Performance goals need to find the balance between an individual's own goals and the goals of your company.
Let's get the uncomfortable truth out of the way: your business won't be able to provide all of the growth opportunities that your team members are looking for. This is especially true for higher performers, especially at more senior levels. Leadership opportunities become more scarce the higher up you are. We’ll cover ways to set goals for higher performers in a section later in this article.
How many goals should each team member set?
As a general rule, fewer goals mean a higher chance of success. I think about it in terms of a "goal budget." Each person has 3 goal points. This could translate into three small goals (1 point each) or one big goal (3 points). A small goal is something that is fairly transactional (like developing an architecture document that can be done in a couple weeks), where medium and large goals might take months to a quarter to acheive.
SMART goals
It's important that any goal is realistic. The SMART goal framework can help you here:
Specific: the expectation should be clear.
Measurable: there's data or evidence to show if the person is on track.
Attainable: it's possible to achieve in the given time frame.
Relevant: it relates to performance objectives, business objectives, and the person's career objectives.
Time-based: it has an end state.
Just like with setting expectations, goals need to be clear and specific. A vague goal like "spend more time on technical strategy" won't pass the SMART test. But "Create, socialise, and present a technical strategy document about migrating to Kafka before the end of November" definitely does.
Setting goals for low performers
In some ways, this the the most straightforward scenario for goal setting. There are clear deficits that need to be corrected, so the goals need to align with those areas.
It's important for you to deeply understand the reason for low performance: is it a lack of capability where the person can be trained to learn new skills, or is it that the person does not understand expectations, and therefore does not rise to meet them?
In the first case of skills and capability being a limiting factor, it's important to pay attention to the attainable characteristic of the goal. Will they be able to level up in the time frame available for them? If not, what would be realistic?
If the problem is expectations, more of the work lies on you, the leader. That's because you're responsible for setting clear expectations. In this scenario, the tricky parts of setting goals are being specific enough (S in SMART), and finding the right measurements to track progress (M). You might already have a performance expectation like "keep your tickets in Linear up to date," but this team member consistently leaves out critical information, or you need to chase them down on ticket status. In this case, you need to spell it out: what exact type of information should be in the tickets? When should it be added? And how will you measure if they are hitting this goal or not?
Expectation descriptions can change based on the seniority of the person. Typically, the more experienced the person, the less specific an expectation should be, because part of being more senior engineer is translating something vague into something very clear. But even for a senior engineer, a performance review is not the time to be vague. If they continue to underperform, you're setting both sides up for a very tense relationship where the team member did not feel supported or like they didn't know what was actually expected of them.
Setting goals for mid-level performers
Team members should be driving their own career development, and it's your job to match their goals up with the needs of your company. If you have a defined career ladder, you can leverage it to find the kinds of opportunities that will take your team members to the next level.
For those team members who are solidly “meeting expectations,” it’s important for you to be on the same page with them about their career goals. Are they looking to get promoted in a few cycles, or are they content to spend more time in their goal and really master it? Depending on the answer, you’ll take a different course of action.
For the promotion course, look at your career ladder for direction.
It’s also totally fine (and under-appreciated, in my opinion) to have team members who are looking to spend more time in their role and really master it. These people aren’t competing for limited opportunities in order to be promoted, so you can be more creative about helping them build both breadth and depth in their skill set.
You can check out my list of 20+ Goals for Software Engineers for some inspiration here.
But, it's still important to be realistic about what your company needs. You might have a team member who has been itching to speak at a conference and become more active in the open source community. But, due to the economic downturn, your company has suspended all non-essential travel. Creating a performance goal of speaking at a conference just doesn't make sense in this case. But, you can figure out an alternative that would align to business goals and constraints -- maybe that means a virtual meetup, or joining a SIG (special interest group) that meets monthly.
Setting goals for high performers
For your highest performers, it's very important that you are clear and transparent about how quickly they can expect to be promoted, and what consistent "exceeds expectations" can mean for their salary. Time in role is often a consideration for promotions, and credibility and influence become more important the more senior a person is. I've seen so many disappointed senior engineers who expect a promotion to staff engineer because they're doing great as a senior engineer, but don't have the social capital and exposure to be effective as a staff engineer.
A few ways to deal with goals for high performers:
Put them in front of a new audience. This could be delegating a presentation in a company-wide all-hands or executive meeting, appointing them as the delegate from your team in a cross-functional meeting, or having them lead an initiative with a partner team, like data engineering. This can also include creating opportunities for them to lead communication with marketing or sales for a particular rollout. All of these experiences give them more exposure to other people in the company, and increase their credibility and influence.
Give them scope and autonomy. Technical excellence isn’t the only component of a great engineer. Scoping projects, developing solutions, and experimentation help engineers build the right thing in addition to building the thing right. Especially in a product company, these skills are essential for an engineer eyeing up a promotion to staff or above. Find a project where a high performer can have full end-to-end ownership, and give them both the space and support to practice these skills.
Challenge them to come up with their own goals. Part of maturing in your role means taking on more responsibility for setting direction, both for the team and also for their own career.
Example Goals for Software Engineers
I've compiled a list of 20+ goals for software engineers if you and your team members need a bit of inspiration.
