Why I Gave a Mid-Level Engineer a Performance “A” and What It Signifies

It is already July, and many companies are starting their mid‑year performance reviews. On July 14, 2026, I gave a mid‑level engineer on my team a performance rating of A.

Already capable of independently handling large projects.

In my view, an A must mean that the employee has exceeded expectations. Excellence is not just doing one’s job well; it is delivering results that were not originally expected.

If a senior developer simply completes the assigned work reliably without any issues, I generally would not give an A, because that is merely meeting expectations.

So what did this colleague actually accomplish in the first half of the year? He was mainly responsible for two projects:

Store scheduling system: the external scheduling system was not flexible enough, so we decided to develop our own.

Store semi‑finished product preparation dashboard: a tool that reminds stores to prepare semi‑finished products in advance, improving production efficiency.

I only reviewed the overall technical方案 at the early stage. The subsequent design, development, integration testing, launch, and project推进 were handled almost entirely by him.

During the projects, whenever problems arose, he dealt with them immediately. Only when my involvement was truly needed did we analyze the issue together.

The whole process went very smoothly. As a manager, I naturally want more colleagues like him, because then I can devote more energy to higher‑level matters instead of constantly monitoring project progress.

Management cost decreased, and the team’s overall efficiency actually increased.

The ultimate goal of management is not to manage more and more, but to manage so that you don’t have to manage.

The semi‑finished product preparation dashboard is not just an ordinary backend system. It involves hardware integration, BI data, multiple external system interactions, and coordination across different business departments. Such a project is inherently complex.

Nevertheless, it has been running stably since launch, with no major online issues. For a mid‑level engineer, I consider this performance outstanding.

Why did I give him an A? Because his performance exceeded my expectations. There is no fixed standard for “exceeding expectations”; each person may exceed expectations in different ways. In his case, it was his demonstrated ability to independently take on large‑scale projects.

In future similar large projects, I will continue to assign him as the lead, because I know he is highly likely to see the work through to completion. This trust is not built in one or two days; it is earned project by project.

Many people misunderstand what an A means. They think that as long as they work hard, put in overtime, and write high‑quality code, they should receive an A. In reality, those are often just fulfilling the basic responsibilities.

The real determinant of an A is not how hard you work, but whether your performance exceeds expectations.

This colleague earned an A because he can independently handle large projects. Others might exceed expectations in completely different ways.

All people who receive an A may have different reasons, but they share one common point: they exceeded expectations.