I’ve been reading and writing engineering peer reviews for a long time (almost twenty years - where does the time go?), and the vast majority of these are a waste of time for the reviewer and the individual in question. For the record, I think peer reviews are fantastic and we should leverage them more - but they need to be carefully structured and cultivated so that everyone benefits from the exercise.

The Problem

Many companies arrange promotions and performance reviews around a calendar cycle. This isn’t a problem on its own, but it can lead to stressful schedules and rushing through tasks according to perceived priority. For any reasonable individual the priority level for someone else’s peer review is probably low, and why shouldn’t it be? As I started, the value proposition for peer review content is generally low, so why bother? There’s a chicken/egg situation here: the value of a peer review only increases if we spend more time on the peer review, but it’s hard to justify spending more time on the peer review when there’s little value there. I think it’s worth going down this path to better peer reviews, and I think some video game concepts can make it easier to get a head start.

First, I want to clarify the category of peer review data I’m concerned about:

• employee does great at things, keep it up! - not actionable
• employee was super helpful for project x - ok, but why? and project x is complete, now what?
• employee is my goto for questions about y - ok, good data point, but so what? are you telling the person to continue having the knowledge they already have?
• employee is my guidepost for our performance pillar q - ok, also a good data point, but it’s not really an actionable point for the employee

These are all basically keep it up messaging. These messages tell an employee that there’s no major concern from the perspective of the reviewer, and that’s about it. Most great engineers want to hear about their gaps. Even more amazing is the fact that they want to hear about their gaps so that they can fill those gaps.

The Challenges

I find the dynamics of peer reviews interesting to think about and discuss, because it’s not a simple problem. There’s nuance, and there are meaningful challenges, but there’s huge benefit from getting improvements in place.

Caveats

I’m mostly talking about peer review for your peers who aren’t experiencing performance concerns. That translates generally to the “Meets Expectations” crew (or “Exceeds”). The folks who “Need Improvement” are easier to help, and I’ll say that you shouldn’t sugar coat things or hide their improvement areas with the skills that are satisfactory. Generally the “Needs Improvement” peer review feedback is more successful than the feedback I see for the other performance groups, and it’s a feedback category I’m mostly ignoring here.

I want to also carve out the “Promotion candidate” peer review feedback. I think this is unique as it’s less about moving forward strategically and more about what has already happened. It’s very important, but not a focus for me in this discussion.

Trust is necessary in all of these things. If you don’t trust your team/peers, and you don’t trust your team lead/manager, this all breaks down. This part isn’t easy in the slightest, but I’m going to gloss over that for now.

Liability

No one wants to be the reason that an employee “Needs Improvement” instead of “Meets Expections.” Similarly, no one wants to set the precedent that they’re better than everyone else or that they see the areas for improvement. Finally, most individuals don’t want to invite critical reviews aimed back at themselves (but you should, even if it’s hard - it’s the trust thing).

Power Dynamics

It is particularly difficult to nit-pick about the skills of your senior peers and team leadership. Even providing candid feedback to your at-level peers can be an awkward exercise that feels pointed at “who’s better.” This is an area of trust and diligence. We must have trust among team members such that feedback can be given with the confidence that the employee will listen and consider earnestly. We must do our work to ensure that our feedback is grounded in reality and when asked we can provide sound reason why we suggested this.

Subjectivity

What do I know? Just because I think this needs improvement doesn’t mean I’m right. What if someone else knows a different area for improvement that I haven’t seen or appreciated? These are all great considerations, but the whole point of peer reviews is to fill in gaps in our perspective. Add your data to the pile so that the individual in question can process it and make good decisions. Be ready to back up your assertions if they have questions, and be ok with the decision to focus on other feedback in the case where your feedback ends up ranked lower and deprioritized.

Video Games and Strategic Improvement

I often see hesitation that is grounded in the previous challenges. A Reviewer wants to tell a peer that they should work on some skill. The reviewer gets concerned that if a manager sees the feedback they’ll think that the peer isn’t meeting expectations. The reviewer thinks the peer will see the feedback and assume that the reviewer thinks the peer isn’t meeting expectations in this area. In the face of this hesitation, remember: team members tend to want your opinion. If you’re prepared to explain your reasoning most of these misunderstandings are easily squashed.

In order to get beyond these hesitations and frame things more productively, I propose two video game grounded concepts that have helped my fellow team members feel open to giving more useful peer feedback: Skills Bonus and 100%.

Skills Bonus

Have you ever played a game that offered you a skills bonus after a success? Some times this is after amassing a certain interval of points, or passing a certain challenge, or completing a level. The key is: you did something well enough to complete it (do you hear the unspoken “Met Expectations” in there?). And now the game says, here’s a generic skills credit, which one do you want or where do you want to use it?

Some games will offer you a few options, others will give you something like a credit to be spent in your personal attributes. Generally the outcome is similar and will do something like:

• Increase your range
• Increase your points multiplier
• Decrease damage/increase armor
• Increase speed

When you’re completing a peer review, assume your peer just finished something successfully and metaphorically received a skills bonus. The feedback they want from you is: where do I apply this skills bonus? More realistically, if I were to spend time improving something, where would my time be best spent (bonus points for and why)?

100% (Complete ALL The Things)

A few reference game types:

• Racing games with object collection, goals:
  • Get the fastest time
  • Collect all the objects
  • Find all the secret shortcuts
  • Find the ultra-secret object on each course
• Adventure games with sidequests and achievements:
  • Complete the main linear mission
  • Complete all sidequests
  • Unlock all achievements
• Multi-character games:
  • Win the game with character 1
  • Win the game with character 2
  • etc.

In many racing games, you can use the vehicle with the fastest acceleration or the vehicle with the highest top speed. Often those are different vehicles and in order to win the same course with either car, different strategies are necessary. In an adventure game, you might play as a wizard, rogue, barbarian, etc. It is almost always possible to win with every character, but the techniques involved may look very different through the various levels and challenges.

The 100% feedback scenario is effectively taking away someone’s hammer (it’s simplistic, but your peer can hammer in a screw just fine, but a screwdriver would be better). You may have team members who are fantastic at one or many things, and they can almost always apply their skills well and complete a project. Nonetheless, most projects can be completed in myriad ways, and there’s often benefit in experimenting and being able to choose among multiple solutions (even if you’re most comfortable with a particular category). Consider if you have a peer who’s solutions often follow a very predictable pattern, and when they’re asking about how they can best use their time to learn and grow - point out the pattern and maybe offer some alternatives (again, bonus points for why).

Bonus points for WHY

Remember, in a healthy team a peer review is an opportunity for someone to formally ask for your opinion. It is subjective, and it’s not necessarily authoritative. Consider that your peer likely wants to improve, and provide the best data you can. Then turn around and demand that same data from your peers. When they say, “keep it up - everything’s great,” throw it back at them and demand actionable instruction.

Whether it’s your own feedback or feedback you’re providing to your peer, be ready to establish why. It could be one or many things, but it’s important to ground your feedback. Some possibilities for consideration:

• If you want a promotion, this performance pillar needs more content
• If you’re interested in learning more about x, angle for this project - it will lead there
• Our team has obligation S coming up, we really need you to lean on some skill to make that easier
• You do y really well, up-leveling other members of our team in y would be great
• You’re a great barbarian, max out your strength first
• You always win with the tank, try the motorcycle for a new challenge

I got lost in my metaphor a little there, but I hope you get the picture. At least for a moment, think about personal development as if it were a game. Even in that magical setting, if it’s clear what a peer should up-level, why wouldn’t that hold true in real life?