I should always seek feedback about various aspects of my work and behavior, including, but not limited to the following topics:
- quality of work:
- my code
- my design choices
- my comments on pull requests
- the wikis I wrote for troubleshooting something
- etc.
- productivity/efficiency:
- the timeliness of my deliverables
- time it takes for me to complete/fulfill others' requests
- etc.
- effectiveness:
- how often need to go and fix/update the work I claim I finished
- how often my code introduces new bugs and how many
- how often my design decisions end up costing big redesigns and refactorings
- how fast/often I make decisions and get everyone onboard
- oral communication (during 1:1 conversations, group discussions, presentations, etc.):
- how easy it is to grasp what I say
- how good I am at explaining difficult problems/concepts/solutions in simple/simpler words and terms
- how engaged people stay when I talk about/present something
- how many clarification requests I get during a single meeting
- how eager people feel in asking me questions about something I worked on
- written communication (emails, documents, comments on PRs or others' documents, chat messages, etc.):
- how easy it is to grasp what I write
- how good I am at explaining difficult problems/concepts/solutions in simple/simpler words and terms
- how engaged people stay when they read what I wrote
- how many comments/questions I get on a document/email
- how many open questions are left after reading my wiki
- leadership
- how much/well I encourage my teammates to speak up and share their concerns
- whether I am a role model to some/all of my teammates
- how eager/ready people are to come to me for advice on work-related things
- how much my feedback is saught and followed
It is difficult to remember the things someone I worked with did a while ago, it's even difficult to remember the things I did, so if you want feedback on some work or interaction, do not delay the request for too long, ask after the work was done or the logical conclusion was reached based on the interaction.
I am the only person that needs this feedback and if I am not sincerely interested in the feedback and, more importantly, in building a plan to address the feedback, then I should not request it. People who provide the feedback already have that knowledge of me, people who do not know me, but want to know, can talk to the people who know me, including my manager, so there are ways to get to know about me. Plus, it's not that they can see the feedback from others anyway.
Asking for praise or flattering comments just to convince my management that I am doing well and that I deserve the raise or the promotion might work in companies where the culture is toxic. In normal places, and with decent managers, there's no need to convince the people that I am doing well if indeed I am doing well. My manager and the people I work with know best (even subconsciously) how I am doing. So if I want to improve myself and grow, I will only ask about the things that the people I work with think I am not doing very well.
If I always ask the same person or the same two people, then the feedback can be biased, because their opinion of me and my work is certainly limited to our interactions and how they accessed/saw my work. No matter if it is positive or negative, if I want to understand the reasons behind the feedback I should ask more people, people from my team, from another team, people that are more junior and people that are more senior. If I am honestly interested to learn and change, I need to get a collective opinion and then decide on further actions I must take to address it. In some rare cases this is not possible, because maybe I only worked with one person, or I worked by myself and only reported to my manager.
Sometimes giving context and examples of what I did helps my co-workers to provide more detailed feedback. I can ask about how well I handled the unplanned design changes, or how fast I addressed that customer issue, what the person I ask would do differently and why.
My company might advocate for feedback collection only once or twice a year. That might be too late to ask for feedback (the point about timeliness), or it might not be enough to ask everyone or to collect enough details. I try to continuously get feedback by either explicitly asking for feedback or even by just asking some questions which might not reveal my intent, but still provide me with useful input.
My immediate team is the people who I work with daily and I want good relations with them. That defines how much I enjoy my daily collaboration with the team, how much I consider myself a part of this team, etc. That is why I explicitly let my team know from time to time on different occasions that I am always ready to listen to whatever they want to say about me, especially the bad things. I can ask about it in my 1:1 calls with my peers, in a chat message, or in a group chat, and I should keep doing this regularly, so that people remember about it and new hires also get to know it.
Feedback from anyone and about anything is still someone's opinion or suggestion, does not matter how many levels higher is that someone or what role in the company they occupy, or whatever else. I will always listen to the feedback they have for me, but I will not necessarily agree and take action(s). Even if I disagree, I will not interrupt them or get agitated or anything else, I will just thank the person for the feedback, and then think about it, and then just decide not to act.
Topics are the same as in Collecting feedback, but ideally the requester asks for a specific topic or a scenario so the feedback needs to be more specific. If general feedback is requested, try to focus on topics that the person can improve on, and not the ones that s/he's already doing pretty well at.
Even before providing feedback, I think how the person will react to it. Are they ready to accept it and analyze it and learn from it, or in worst case just to ignore it, but not to hold a grudge or even to retaliate against me. This is critical. The most useful feedback is the one that suggests room for learning/improvement, and if the recipient is not mature enough they might take it as a reproach or a condescendence, and that might bite me back inspite of my honest and good intentions.
General feedback request is difficult to fulfill and will result in more general response, than if some specific area is being focused on. If the requester didn't ask me for something specific, then I'll go and check with them if they want just general or more specific feedback.
I try to explain what I mean exactly along with the formal part of the feedback. I also try to give examples that express the problems to be addressed. Finally, I try to give some options for next steps on how to address the feedback. This makes the feedback seem less condemning and more supporting, as well as expresses my real engagement and intention to help rather than judge.
Once I am asked to provide feedback, I try to do it within a couple days, because I do not know what the person needed it for. Maybe their career discussion depends on it and it is happening in 2 days, so sending the feedback in a week might be of no use anymore.
Some people are not ready or do not feel comfortable asking for feedback about something they know they're not good at. Observing people's behaviors and performance and providing them feedback on how they can do better or what they should change might be very useful for them, even if they didn't think so. In some cases, these people might request feedback when it comes to annual reviews and such, but then it might be late to fix things, or in best case they would have already had lost a lot of time.
I try to not forget about the 1st guideline here, but usually providing honest feedback to management is the best way to address some problems that otherwise won't be brouhgt up, or would be just frowned upon and left as is for a very long time. In this case, it is critical that with the things I complain about, I also propose solutions, or at least some approaches for improvement. This will make the manager confident in my ability to address some of the problems, but also leave room for them to think of the problem and come up with their own solutions if they deem the problem as important. Just having complaints every time will leave a bad impression about me on the manager.
Depending on the person I provide the feedback to, I should know what words and what tone to use. Some might be more sensitive and hence need a bit milder version, some might be ok with the blunt direct version. It's not about the content, but rather how that content is delivered, and knowing who can accept what level of mildness/bluntness is a good skill.
Jr. folks in tech industry (and I assume any other, too) are not familiar with all the processes, or they do not embrace them as in they do not realize the actual potential the processes have and how exactly they can help. For some feedback is just a one-time check-in with a list of pros and cons. When I give feedback (especially orally) I try to make sure the recipient understands what I mean, why I give that feedback, how the object of the feedback impacts them and/or others, and how addressing it will help.