HACKER Q&A
📣 2bor-2n

How do you track your work contributions effectively?


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 Accepted Answer ✓
gh pr list --state merged --limit 250 --author

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.