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Get your work recognized - write a brag document

If you don’t remember everything important you did, your manager (no matter how great they are!) probably doesn’t either. And they need to explain to other people why you should be promoted or given an evaluation like “exceeds expectations” (“X’s work is so awesome!!!!” doesn’t fly). 1

So if your manager is going to effectively advocate for you, they need help.

Maintain a “brag document” that lists everything so you can refer to it when you get to performance review season!

Brag documents are good when you use them on your own to advocate for yourself.

One thing to emphasize, for people who don’t like to brag, is – you don’t have to try to make your work sound better than it is. Just make it sound exactly as good as it is! For example “was the primary contributor to X new feature that’s now used by 60% of our customers and has gotten Y positive feedback”. 1

Template 1

  • Goals for this year:
    • List your major goals here! Sharing your goals with your manager & coworkers is really nice because it helps them see how they can support you in accomplishing those goals!
  • Goals for next year
    • If it’s getting towards the end of the year, maybe start writing down what you think your goals for next year might be.
  • Projects
    • For each one, go through:
      • What your contributions were (did you come up with the design?
        • Which components did you build?
        • Was there some useful insight like “wait, we can cut scope and do what we want by doing way less work” that you came up with?)
      • The impact of the project – who was it for?
        • Are there numbers you can attach to it?
          • (saved X dollars? shipped new feature that has helped sell Y big deals? Improved performance by X%? Used by X internal users every day?).
        • Did it support some important non-numeric company goal?
          • (required to pass an audit? helped retain an important user?)

Outside of work 1

It’s also often useful to track accomplishments outside of work, like:

  • blog posts
  • talks/panels
  • open source work
  • industry recognition

General prompts 1

If you’re feeling stuck for things to mention, try:

  • If you were trying to convince a friend to come join your company/team, what would you tell them about your work?
  • Did anybody tell you that you did something well recently?

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