How to Write Peer Reviews for Fun and Profit

Peer Reviews Aren’t a Chore, They’re An Opportunity

Most companies have formal performance review processes that involve writing peer reviews. These are reviews that employees write about one another assessing skills, strengths, and areas for improvement. 

At large tech companies, these peer reviews are taken quite seriously. And as a PM, the number of peer reviews you are asked to write can get to be an overwhelming amount of work. On some previous teams, I was asked to provide 30+ peer reviews during the performance cycle. At a couple hundred words each, that’s a lot of time and effort. 

After a couple cycles of this, I perfected a way to write peer reviews for everyone that requested one while also not having it consume all of my time.

Here’s how I do it.

Always Accept Peer Review Requests

Meta and Google both provide a way for managers to request peer reviews for the folks on their team. Typically, managers target a particular number of peer reviews per report. The idea is to get a sense of their performance by averaging out the feedback of several people in different adjacent roles. 

I know firsthand from my experience as a manager at Salesforce and then Meta that it’s a pain to track down peer reviews for every member of your team. And when you come up short, you need to go herd cats to hit your target.

This creates an opportunity for you to quickly and easily demonstrate value to the team. Even though peer review requests are technically optional, unless there are extreme extenuating circumstances, I never turn down a peer review request. 

That may seem like an insane waste of time, but if you follow my guidance here, you’ll be able to write them quickly and cheaply. This makes peer reviews an activity that offers a very high return on investment.

Timebox Your Writing

One of the pitfalls I’ve seen many people fall into is thinking that they need to write novellas about every peer. That’s certainly well-intentioned, but it actually doesn’t help Vivek all that much unless he’s going up for promotion this cycle. 

If a peer isn’t going up for promotion, then a peer review is fairly binary. Either the person is doing well in their role or they aren’t. If it’s just binary, you can relax a bit. 

What I do is set a timer for 10-15 minutes for each peer review and just crank them out in one block of time. By setting a timer, you force yourself to only give feedback about the most important topics and ignore any temptation to write long and detailed reviews. Just hit the main topics and move on.

By Default, Don’t Share Feedback Directly With Peers

I realize this might be controversial, but I rarely share reviews directly with my peers. I instead opt to share with their manager only. This might seem overly bureaucratic, but I think there is a strong reason not to share feedback with people directly.

By sharing feedback only with a peer’s manager, it frees you to be blunt and to-the-point in your writing. Remember, you’ve only got 10-15 minutes per review, so you don’t have time to carefully wordsmith every phrase to avoid offending someone. 

If you do want to share negative or mixed feedback, you can do so quickly and move on. But I think you should reserve negative feedback in particular for outlier cases.

Give Negative Feedback Sparingly and Directly

Unless someone has really bungled something important, I try to be charitable in my feedback. We all have bad days and we all appreciate others giving us the benefit of the doubt. So if a peer hasn’t been an absolutely stellar partner or has made a few mistakes, I will generally overlook that and focus instead on their positive contributions.

But every now and again, you’ll work with a peer that is objectively toxic or incapable of doing their job effectively. In those cases, I think it’s always a good idea to speak with their manager directly and off the record prior to giving written feedback. Be direct about what you will write and the problems you’ve encountered. The manager may choose not to solicit your feedback that cycle for all sorts of perfectly justifiable reasons.

In even rarer circumstances, you’ll work with a peer that you think is actually great, but has made an important mistake. In that case, if you think that you can give that person constructive feedback in a non-judgemental way, pull them aside and ask permission to give them feedback. If they seem receptive, set up a dedicated 1:1. During that time, explain what’s going on and how you think they can fix it. Only after you’ve had that conversation should you give them written feedback.

Some of the most helpful conversations I’ve had in my career have resulted from these constructive feedback sessions, so if you feel up to it, definitely consider doing this. 

Peer Reviews Are High Return on Investment

If you follow all of the above steps, you’ll be able to help the managers on your team run an efficient performance review, reduce the time it takes you to write peer reviews, and give feedback in only the most receptive forums. 

For just a couple hours of your time, you can demonstrate that you are likable, and that’s worth a lot.