Feedback at PostHog
Sharing and receiving feedback openly is really important to us at PostHog. Part of creating a highly autonomous culture where people feel empowered is maintaining the most transparent and open flow of information that we can.
This includes giving feedback to each other, so we know we are working on the right things, in the right way. While giving feedback to a team member can feel awkward, especially if it is not positive or if you are talking to someone with more experience than you, we believe that it is an important part of not letting others fail.
'Open and honest' doesn't mean 'being an asshole' – we expect feedback to be direct, but shared with good intentions and in the spirit of genuinely helping that person and PostHog as a whole to improve. Please make sure your feedback is constructive and based on observations, not emotions. If possible, share examples to help the feedback receiver understand the context of the feedback.
Full team feedback sessions
We run full team 360-degree feedback session as part of every offsite. The session gives everyone the opportunity to give and receive feedback to everyone else.
Ground rules
Everybody participates! You should have a think and prepare in advance – don't try and wing it on the day.
Preparation includes reading our handbook about how to be a good feedback giver and receiver.
Feedback to be 70% constructive – this is an opportunity to help each other to grow.
Everyone is expected to give feedback to everyone, even if they don’t work together directly. It may be very short feedback, which is ok!
That being said, avoid piling on and repeating feedback others have given unless you have a different perspective or can add more context. It is ok to say "+1 to what X said about Y" and move on. Do not spend 2min repeating the same point that has already been made by someone else.
Everyone is responsible for noting down and actioning their own feedback (ie. the people team won't do this for you).
How to give good feedback
We know that giving feedback can sometimes be difficult, so here are a few tips on how to give good feedback:
If something went wrong, focus on what has actually happened, not on whose fault it is. Assigning blame is not productive.
Be as specific as you can with your feedback. An example can be helpful to give the recipient context.
Sometimes a question can be more useful if you feel you lack the full context. For example 'I've noticed that you sometimes do X. Can you explain to me what your thought process is when you are doing that?'
If your feedback is about behavior, focus on the behavior itself and its impact on you, rather than attacking the person's character. For example 'When you do X, it makes me feel Y. Would you be willing to do Z instead?'
Remember that positive feedback is really important – we should reinforce and affirm the things we want that person to keep doing!
We expect everyone to support each other by giving lots of feedback – it's not ok to stay quiet if you have something constructive to share.
How to receive feedback well
If someone is making the effort to give you feedback, you should reciprocate by receiving that feedback well. Being a good feedback receiver means that people will be more inclined to give you feedback in the future, which will help you to grow!
Here are a few tips to help you do this:
Assume positive intent on the part of the feedback giver.
Try not to hear attack - listen for what is behind the words.
It can be useful to paraphrase the feedback to ensure you have understood it correctly, or ask questions to clarify.
You do not have to accept all feedback! However, it's probably worth taking time to reflect on it, rather than reacting in the moment. There is a difference between acknowledging feedback and disagreeing with it.
How is this different from individual performance review?
The full team session prioritises openness, breadth and transparency of feedback, as everyone gets to both give and receive feedback in front of the entire team.
The performance review process centres on a single person for one hour, involves their manager only, and is intended to be more of an in-depth conversation about the future.
Quarterly team surveys
We introduced quarterly team surveys in Q1 2021 to give everyone the opportunity to share their honest opinion of how things are going. While we all give feedback regularly, we wanted to gather the feedback in a way that allows us to track it over time and see how we progress.
The questions are based on the ones used by Culture Amp and adjusted for our needs. The questions cover categories such as Company Confidence, Culture, Growth and Development etc.
The questions follow a simple linear scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). We also added an optional comment field, in case there you have more detailed feedback. In line with our values, we have decided to not make this anonymous.
We run the survey at the end of each quarter and share the results with the team afterwards. We also share some high level results on the people page.