Blog for Engineering Managers

Blog for Engineering Managers

Write better performance reviews in half the time

Most engineering managers spend 20 hours writing performance reviews that nobody finds useful. Here's how to write reviews that actually help your team grow.

Stephane Moreau's avatar
Stephane Moreau
Nov 11, 2025
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👋 Hey, it’s Stephane. I share lessons, and stories from my journey to help you lead with confidence as an Engineering Manager. To accelerate your growth see: 50 Notion Templates | The EM’s Field Guide | CodeCrafters | Get Hired as an EM | 1:1 Coaching

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Performance review season can be brutal. You’ve got ten engineers to review, each one requiring thoughtful feedback on a year’s worth of work. Meanwhile, you’re still running sprints, handling incidents, and trying to keep everything else moving.

So you do what everyone does: you block off entire days on your calendar, pull up a blank template, and stare at it while slowly dying inside. Twenty hours later, you’ve produced an AI-generated document that reads like it was written by a committee of robots. Your engineer skims it, nods politely, and you both move on with your lives.

There’s a better way.

Performance Reviews

Most manag…

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