Templates as Inspiration for Software Engineers and Engineering Managers

While I was at Uber I became somewhat known for creating templates documents, and encouraging engineers and managers to use them for things like perf reviews, work logs and others, as a starting point. I encouraged others to improve these templates, and to customize and make them their own.

I've "re-created" a few of these, and I'm sharing it with the same intent. I'll add new ones to this page, as I come around to the several other templates that served me over the years.

I do not suggest blindly copying any of these documents. Instead, use them as inspiration. They worked for me, in my use case. Others at Uber took them, changed them, and used them. Many others didn't use them at all. If you think they'll help: give it a go, iterate on them, and make them yours!

For software engineers

• Performance review template and an example for software engineers
• Work log document for software engineers
• How to lead a project as a software engineer

For tech leads and engineering managers

• Team standup template
• Tech lead expectations
• Performance review template for engineering managers

For job hunting

• Resume template for software engineers: the one I created for my book The Tech Resume Inside Out: what a good developer resume looks like. This clean template is successfully used by engineers who got recruiter calls from Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Robinhood, PayPal and others.

Subscribe to my weekly newsletter to get articles like this in your inbox. It's a pretty good read - and the #1 tech newsletter on Substack.