Hey, what's up, John Sonmez from simpleprogrammer.com.
I got this question about structuring a weekly
report.
I talk about creating a weekly report in my
book Soft Skills: A Software Developer's Life
Manual.
In that book I've got a couple of chapters
where I talk about career stuff and about
how to really do well in a corporate job or
in a regular job.
One of the things I talk about, one of the
techniques that I've often used that I pretty
much use for every job once I figured this
out was this idea of creating a weekly report.
Basically I got this question about how to
structure the weekly report.
I'm going to answer that in a minute here.
But I want to talk a little bit about this
idea of a weekly report.
This is something that I sort of stumbled
upon.
If you've ever been a manager you know that
one of the most important things, one of the
most difficult things for your job is getting
people to tell you what they're doing or rather
to know what they're doing, to get the communication,
to check on your people and say, "Hey, is
this task getting done?" to know what the
progress is.
You're basically gathering information from
all these people.
A good manager does this is they gather all
the information and they send it on up, they
summarize it and they check the progress,
they make sure that things are going right.
They're keeping all the pots on the stove
cooking.
That's what a good manager does.
The reason why I'm saying that is because
as an employee what you can do to help your
manager to make them look good is that you
can give them that information.
Here's a quick tip for you that's going to
help you a lot.
It's something that you should do.
For every job whether you're asked to do this
or not and something—when I took a new job
this is the first thing I would do.
On the very first week I would send out what
I call a weekly report.
It's real simple.
All I did was this.
Every day I would track what I did.
What did I do?
Make a few bullets of what I did, what did
I accomplish, were there any big accomplishments
and any kind of kudos that I got in, kind
of thing like that and just tracked it.
I'm basically tracking my accomplishments
and my task and what I'm doing each and every
day.
At the end of the week I would send a weekly
report that's a summary of all of the days
that I did and then a little bit of more information
like maybe like a highlight of the week, what
I'm planning on doing next week, and maybe
if I have a question or I have something that's
blocking me.
I would send that out to my manager unsolicited.
The other thing that I would do is on the
first week when I send this out I would explain
this process and I say, "Look, this is what
I'm doing.
I just want to let you know, to make sure
that you know what I'm doing, what I'm working
on each day so I'm going to send you this
report every week if that's okay.
I've also CCed your manager on this just in
case you're sick or you're out or something
so that that information will go to someone
so they know what's going on just in case
that you are unable to get to this and to
report that information if you're out.
If you don't mind, I've just CCed him just
as an FYI.
Just so that he has this information.
No one ever complained about this.
They loved it.
It was a very popular thing to do.
It's such a valuable thing.
There are a couple of reasons why this is
valuable.
One of the main reasons why this is valuable
is because, like I said, you're helping your
manager by giving them all the information
they need.
You're one less person they have to manage.
You're basically like a free roll for them.
They're going to love it because they don't
have to go and check on you and figure out
what's going on.
Communication is so important.
As being someone who manages a team now, I
can tell you that if I have an employee, someone
who's working for me who communicates well,
I love it.
It's so awesome because I don't have to guess
what's going on, I don't have to bug them.
They're giving me the stuff.
It's so awesome.
You're going to be valuable there.
Not only that, but a lot of times a manager
will be managing a very big team.
If you can be the person who's always in front
of them, every week they're seeing what you're
doing, they're seeing what your accomplishments
are you're going to stand out and that's really,
really important.
Because it's really easy to do a whole lot
of good work and if no one knows what you're
doing and how hard you're working and all
these accomplishments that you're having it's
not going to matter, especially when review
time comes around.
That's another big point is when review time
comes around.
This is sort of a CYA.
I'll tell you a quick story.
One time I was working for a corporation.
I won't name the name here but they were doing
stack sorting.
If you don't know about that, stack ranking
basically, they have a certain number of people
that they're going to give an S grade to,
and a certain number an E and they basically
have to—they don't grade you on performance,
they sort you.
Only a certain number of people can get the
promotion or get the raise or be graded well.
Some people have to be near the bottom or
just meets expectations.
Well, I got near the bottom one time on a
review and I was kicking butt.
I mean I was definitely one of the most productive
employees, but the problem was I had just
been promoted.
In order to—political correctness type of
thing, people with more seniority that hadn't
been promoted for a while they needed to move
them up so they moved them up to stack rank.
I was not very happy about this because I
don't like that.
It should be a reflection of my ability.
I should be judged on—if I'm competing against
people, if I kick their ass I want to be at
the top, I don't want to be at the bottom.
Lucky for me I was able to send the review
board and my manager a list of 50 accomplishments
that I accomplished that year of big ones
too, right?
I knew exactly what I did every single day
of the year.
The evidence was so overwhelming that they
ended up moving me to the very top because
it would have been an HR nightmare to try
to justify having someone above me or moving
me that low when there was this documentation
that I made sure went into my HR file that
showed all these accomplishments.
I had it documented.
I had inconclusive proof that I deserved the
raise and I got the raise.
That's super valuable especially when you
have to fill out your review and you say what
did you do this year, what did you accomplish
and you can list so many things.
It's awesome.
It's really awesome so it's well worth the
investment of a few minutes every day to keep
track of this.
Not only that but it's a good CYA as well.
I also had an incident where someone who didn’t
like me was trying to get me fired.
They said, "Well, John is not doing much work.
I saw him doing this.
He was taking a long lunch."
Guess what, when it went to HR I said, "What
day?
What day was I not at my desk or not working
or didn't accomplish something?
Oh okay, February 3rd?
Yeah, okay, here's exactly what I did on February
3rd. oh yeah, and I sent it to my manager
and I CCed his manager so I didn't just make
this up.
I've got the email here."
Guess what happened?
Guess what the result of that was.
It was very clear who was trying to make things
up and who was being honest because I had
the inconclusive proof—the conclusive proof.
Anyway, it's extremely valuable for those
reasons.
It's something that's really easy to do.
Here's what you do and here's—I'll get to
the question here.
Here's the format, all you do is this, it's
real simple.
Every day you just take a few bullets of the
major things that you did.
The format that I would put it in is don't
send this every single day, send it once a
week.
Put Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,
Friday this is what I did, 3 to 5 bullets
at the most.
You want it to be quick for someone to read
so they actually do read it and just summarize
what you know and highlight the accomplishments,
make them look good, right?
Then put a little bit of a summary, maybe
a little bit.
You don't want to write a novel.
You want to make this real easy to do.
That's the format.
It's simple as that.
You can use your own format if you want.
Here's the thing, I'll give you this tip.
Do not make it too complicated because if
you make it too complicated, you make it too
much work for yourself you're not going to
do it every day.
If you don't do it every day the value gets
dropped off.
You've got to be consistent with this, right?
This is the key here.
Just make it simple, make it something that
you can do in 5 to 10 minutes.
What I would do is throughout the day as I'm
working on something I would just open up
my file and throw my bullet point in there
and I'd have that file ready for the end of
the week.
At the end of the day, 10 minutes before I
left I would go and I would straighten it
up and make sure I had it there for that day
so that I wouldn't have to sit there on Friday
and try to remember what I did on Monday,
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, right?
I've been there, done that.
You don't want to do that.
Anyway, this is something that's extremely
valuable.
Like I said, check out my book.
If you haven't gotten my book, seriously,
get it, Soft Skills: A Software Developer's
Life Manual.
You can get it here.
I also have an audible version where I recorded
the audio.
I threw in some extra content as well.
Definitely check it out.
If you do have the book, I would really appreciate
it if you leave a review on the book.
I really appreciate that.
It helps other people find the book.
Anyway, that's my tip.
Hopefully that answers the question here.
I've gotten a few questions about the reports,
but I think it's a really good technique.
I highly recommend doing it.
It's something that can really make a huge
difference in your career and it just—it's
going to make your manager's job easier.
If you make your manager look good it's going
to be good for you, I promise you.
Anyway, if you a question you can email me
at john@simpleprogrammer.com.
If you like this channel, subscribe to the
channel.
All right, I'll talk to you next time.
Take care.
