Ask HN: How do you track your work contributions effectively?

3 points by 2bor-2n 1 year ago | 1 comment

I'm looking for better ways to track my work contributions and progress, both for my own reference and for communicating with my team/manager. Currently, I struggle with:

Remembering all the small but important contributions I make throughout the sprint/quarter Quantifying impact in meaningful ways Keeping track of indirect contributions (helping others, reviewing PRs, mentoring)

What systems/tools/methods have worked well for you? How granular do you get with tracking? And how do you present this information during performance reviews or 1:1s? Particularly interested in hearing from both ICs and managers about what they find most valuable in contribution tracking.

syndicatedjelly 1 year ago |

gh pr list --state merged --limit 250 --author <your_github_id>

Then fill in the details. I just spend a few hours before a review doing it, instead of painstakingly curating a list over time. Trust your memory, if something wasn't important enough to remember, then it probably wasn't important to begin with.

I do also keep a `career-dev` repo in my GitHub, and make a new markdown file for each year. There I can put things like Mermaid Gantt charts and other diagrams, including work artifacts, and then send the whole file to my manager. I got the maximum raise possible last year, and my manager greatly appreciated the work I put in to make his life easier in justifying a raise for me.