Guide · Self-reviews

Self-review examples for engineering managers.

A manager's self-review is about the team's results and your part in them. The trap runs both ways: claiming the team's work as yours, or hiding behind "the team" so nobody can see what you decided. Write down the decisions, the people and the outcomes, and say which parts were yours.

What reviewers look for in an engineering manager

Team outcomes. What the team shipped against what it committed to, and how you handled the gap.
People. Growth, promotions, feedback given, and hard conversations handled well.
Hiring. Roles filled, the quality of the interview loop, and how new people ramped up.
Team health. On-call load, attrition, and whether people had time for focused work.
Decisions and alignment. Trade-offs you made, scope you cut, dependencies you unblocked.

Example: impact

The projects, people and numbers in these examples are made up. Keep the shape and use your own facts.

Impact • The team shipped Recipe App 2.0 on iOS, Android and web in the planned quarter, with offline sync on the Sync SDK. I moved meal plans to the next quarter in week four instead of letting the date slip. • Reduced on-call load from one week in three to one in six, by growing the rota and working with Ravi on the noisiest alerts. • Hired two engineers. Both shipped to production in their second week, using the onboarding plan I rewrote.

Separate "the team shipped" from "I decided". Reviewers want both, and they want to see the line between them.

Example: collaboration

Collaboration • Set up a fortnightly sync with the platform team. The staging environment access blocker had been open six weeks; once it had an owner and a date, it closed in ten days. • Wrote the quarterly plan with product and design as one document, so the team saw one priority list instead of three. • Gave every direct report written feedback twice this half, with examples rather than adjectives.

Example: growth

Growth • Supported Neha's move to senior. We agreed a growth plan in January, she led the sync conflict design, and she was promoted in the June cycle. • Learned to delegate the release process. It runs without me now, and I spend that time on planning. • Next half: a hiring plan for two roles, and saying no faster to work that isn't on the plan.

Phrases that land

"I decided X because Y, and the result was Z": ownership of a call, good or bad.
"cut scope in week four instead of slipping the date": the trade-off, with its timing.
"shipped to production in their second week": onboarding, measured.
"closed in ten days once it had an owner": unblocking, with receipts.

Phrases that don't

"I managed the team." That's the role. What changed because of how you did it?
"I'm a servant leader." Show it with one example instead of a label.
"Had regular 1:1s." Expected. What came out of them?
"I shipped Recipe App 2.0." The team did. Say what you did to make it possible.

Gather your evidence

Don't count commits. They measure the wrong thing, for you and for your team. Use git as a calendar of what the team shipped instead. This lists what landed on main, by date:

git log main --first-parent --since="6 months ago" --date=short --format='%ad %s'

The rest of your evidence is in documents: 1:1 notes, the decision log, planning docs, the hiring tracker and interview notes, and the blockers you escalated, with the dates you raised them and the dates they closed.

Let Sill keep the record

Sill records your own work, and that still helps a manager. The follow-ups you send, the decisions you note as tasks, and the receipts on every blocker you chased for the team, like day 6, asked 3×, are kept on iPhone, iPad and Mac. If you still write code, the Mac app adds your commits from local git history (messages and times, never code).

At review time, Sill Pro's Review generator turns months of that into a draft per project, including how long you waited on each dependency and how many times you followed up. Where Apple Intelligence is available it writes a first-person draft on the device, and nothing leaves it. The last 7 days are free; longer periods need Sill Pro, an optional paid upgrade.

Get Sill on the App Store — for Mac, iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. The daily standup and its set-time reminder are free.

More self-review examples: backend engineers · frontend engineers · iOS engineers · Android engineers · QA engineers · SRE and DevOps engineers · data engineers · product designers · product managers. Or start with how to write a self-review.