This page covers Performance Reviews, which consist of a formal review written by each person’s manager, in addition to a self-review written by the teammate.
We believe feedback is key to both personal and career growth. We ask all teammates to give and receive feedback regularly so we can improve consistently. The purpose of review season is alignment between teammates and managers on job scope and expectations, performance, and growth track. This is also our system for organizing promotions; managers reflect on teammate contributions and impact, and then calibrate their recommendations for promotions with fellow managers, and with department heads. (See more about our career framework, and promotions.
We use Lattice for performance reviews. Each time a review cycle kicks off you’ll receive an email and link to begin your review. The people-ops team will also share a thread with details and dates each cycle so you won’t miss a step.
Everyone at Buffer completes a self-review and receives a manager-review except new teammates who are still in the 90-day onboarding process, or who completed it within the last 3 months.
Once you complete your self review and your manager completes their review of you, you’ll receive a review packet so you can review the feedback privately ahead of speaking with your manager. Your review packet will always be accessible to you via Lattice so you are welcome to go back and review it ahead of your next review.
We generally do performance reviews twice a year, in May and October. (The timing is designed to avoid major holidays and heavy vacation seasons.)