“To get what you want, you have to deserve what you want. The world is not yet a crazy enough place to reward a whole bunch of undeserving people.” – Charlie Munger

Engineers often bury themselves in code and the technical aspects of their work, which makes total sense, but every company has a built-in rhythm for checking in on your performance, rewarding you with pay bumps or equity, and moving you up the ladder. Think of these cycles (compensation reviews, stock refreshes, promotion windows) not as bureaucratic hoops, but as regular checkpoints: do your goals still match what the company needs? The company evolves and so do you.

This post isn’t about career “hacks” or shortcuts, you have enough of that out there, it’s about learning how your company’s reward framework works and communicating your real impact in its language.

Understanding your Compensation Package

When considering a new role, it’s critical to grasp the full compensation picture, not just base salary, but all the pieces that make up your total package:

Base Salary: This is the guaranteed amount you’ll be paid yearly. It’s your starting point and typically the easiest number to evaluate against market standards.

Signing Bonus (if offered): A one-time payment upon joining, often to offset losses from leaving your current job or as an incentive to quickly accept an offer.

Performance Bonus (Variable Target): This usually aligns with both company and personal performance. Typically, your target bonus is a percentage of your base salary, often ranging from 10% to 25%. Understand clearly what influences this payout, how frequently it’s paid (annually, semi-annually), and historical trends around achieving targets.

Stock Grants (Equity): Companies may offer shares or options as part of your total package, often referred to as “golden handcuffs”, is designed to keep you invested in the long-term success of the company. For example, a stock grant of $100,000 that vests over 4 years, results in 25% of that value for the next 12 months. If you leave early, you forfeit the unvested portion, which makes timing and planning around vesting critical when evaluating opportunities.

Example of the annual compensation package, having in mind the framework above, base salary, variable pay, and stock grants:

• Base salary: $100,000
• Bonus (15% variable target): $15,000
• Stock Grant ($100,000 over 4 years): $25,000 per year
• Signing bonus (one time): $10,000

The total for year one would be around $150,000, assuming full bonus payout. Of course, this doesn’t account for taxes and would be hard to provide a clear example given the tax deductions of each country.

After the first year, the annual compensation changes since there’s no signing bonus and assuming no salary increases:

• Base salary: $100,000
• Bonus (15% variable target): $15,000
• Stock Grant ($100,000 over 4 years): $25,000 per year

Totalling $140,000, assuming full bonus payout.

Before we move on into compensation reviews, it’s important to understand how stock refreshes work, because they play a big role in your long-term compensation.

Think of your stock grants like a bowl.

When you join a company, you’re given an initial equity grant, maybe $100,000 vesting over four years. That fills the bowl. Each year, as 25% of that grant vests, your bowl gets a little emptier. To keep you engaged and incentivized to stay, many companies offer stock refreshes, additional equity grants that refill the bowl. This keeps a rolling amount of unvested stock in place, tying part of your compensation to your continued performance and commitment. Stock refreshes aren’t always guaranteed.

Alright we walked through the basics of your compensation package, now let’s see how to navigate the performance review process.

Performance Reviews: Alignment Is Everything

Now that we’ve covered stock refreshes, let’s talk about performance reviews—because they’re where everything starts to come together.

In my experience, performance reviews have two sides:

• How you think you’re performing
• How the company sees your work

If those two are aligned, your own view of your impact matches how your manager and leadership see it, you’re more likely to have a favourable review. And favourable reviews often lead to tangible outcomes (the ones covered above):

• salary increases
• higher bonus payouts
• fresh stock grants to keep your compensation growing

Most companies have an internal site or intranet where they publish their performance review and promotion timelines. For example, you might see something like:

• April: main performance reviews (linked to salary adjustments and stock refreshes)
• October: off-cycle reviews or promotions by exception

You’ll usually also find:

• promotion guidelines, including what’s expected at each level
• a goal-tracking system where you can input and monitor your objectives

Before we move on to tips for tracking your work, use your manager and the company intranet to understand when performance reviews and promotion cycles happen. Most companies clearly outline this somewhere internally, including timelines, level expectations, and how decisions are made. For promotions, alignment is everything.

Talk with your people leader about what’s expected at the next level. Ask:

“What would promotion look like from where I am now?”

Then use your 1:1s to check in regularly, share progress, and ask for opportunities to demonstrate those skills or impact areas.

Be proactive and make sure you’re not just doing good work, but being seen doing it in the right context.

The Review Process

When review time rolls around, one of the hardest things isn’t writing a self-review—it’s remembering what you actually did over the past six or twelve months. It’s surprisingly easy to forget just how much value you’ve delivered, especially when you’re deep in the day-to-day.

Start with the big stuff EPICs

Your product management tool (Jira, Linear, etc.) is a goldmine. Scan through the EPICs you’ve contributed to—they usually capture your highest-impact work and make it easier to connect your contributions to real business value.

Mine your Slack history

Hit cmd+F (or ctrl+F on Windows) and search phrases like “yesterday” or “what have I been up to yesterday and today” You’ll uncover quick updates and forgotten wins, those casual check-ins that seemed minor at the time but actually reflect real, day-to-day impact.

Save your thinking, not just your code

Design docs, spikes, postmortems—these show how you approach problems, not just the end result. Keep a private list of links. During reviews, this kind of thinking often matters just as much as what you shipped.

Let your tools do the remembering

If you find it hard to keep a daily or weekly log (you’re not alone), lean on the tools that already track your work. Jira has your tickets, Slack has your updates, GitHub has your commits. When review season rolls around, these tools become your memory. Even if you don’t write things down consistently, you’ll have a trail to follow—making it easier to piece together what you did, why it mattered, and how it helped the team.

At the end of the day, tracking your work isn’t about proving your worth, it’s about making sure the right people understand the value you’re already delivering.

That’s all for now, I hope this post helps you navigate the performance review process and understand how to communicate your impact effectively.