Oanda Year-end review

I had to do a self review and also review others. I did it on Nov 10 with help of grammarly

OANDA Yearly Reviews - Nov 10, 2022

SELF REVIEW

1.What are two examples of performance objectives (tied to your performance plan) you achieved over the last twelve months? What impact did they have? What evidence supports this impact? *

The two examples I can give for my performance objectives are

• Identified the problem, took Initiative, and implemented solutions

• Improved work quality wherever possible

Example 1

• My initial task was to work on improving and implementing new unit tests. I had two options

• • To use existing tests and build upon them

  • To use a better testing framework and execute all the tests from scratch

I chose the 2nd option here and implemented React-Testing-Library, a better framework than the existing Enzyme framework. I created a better structure for future tests so that we could have more confidence in our application. These tests are performing very well.

Example 2

• We had to implement IDScan for our documents. I took the Initiative on this project and implemented it in 9sf (our front-end app). Initially, I had to implement it only for OCAN division, and I laid out a foundation.

• Later we had to add more divisions, so I modified the code so that we just had to add the proper configs in firebase for all new divisions we might add in the future. That would get the division up and running without modifying the underlying code.

2.What are two examples of how you demonstrated OANDA's values: Be Open, Own it, Focus and Be Bold, in how you achieved your objectives? What was the impact? What evidence supports this impact? *

• I’m always open to learning & teaching, and I love it, as learning from and teaching team members will always benefit me in improving my understanding. To support this, I recently took the responsibility to mentor an intern with all he needs to know to get up to speed with the team.

• I also take the initiative and try to own something even when unsure what the impact would be. One of the team members working on a mobile app recently moved internally to another team. One of my colleagues and I took responsibility for this app even though we knew very little about it. I could get up to speed on this soon by talking to a couple of people and gaining a better understanding of this app, even though the mobile app was very new to my team. Finally, I got all the knowledge I needed to work on this, and I completed the development phase of this app. My teammate was equally responsible for this, and we coordinated well during the process. Though the stage was challenging, the result was always sweet.

3. What are 2-3 strengths you want to continue to build over the next year? How would you like to be supported in building them? *

• I want to explore new courses like React Native for mobile development on Udemy- This would help me build my next app, PIU.

• I also want to contribute to other internal projects and learn more.

4. What are some of the challenges or barriers you experienced in delivering your objectives? What can you do differently? How would you like to be supported in overcoming them? *

• It took me a while to figure out the codebase when I first started, as the code structure was very new, and the code was huge to wrap my head around.

• Because of this, I was slow during a couple of initial tasks and took more time than required.

• I wish I had known some tools that helped me navigate the code quickly, such as chrome dev tools features. I learned and improved debugging the code over time.

• To overcome these challenges, I wish we had better technical documentation for explaining the code structure with some flow diagrams, at least for a few more prominent features.

• Moving forward, I want to document the big picture of some features implemented with the help of technical diagrams where ever necessary.

OTHERS

Michael

1. Provide an example(s) of when this person demonstrated strong capability in their role. What was their behaviour/action? What was the impact?

Michael has a broad range of skill sets and likes to work on the backend more. Our backend services need to be modified as some of the services are getting deprecated, and Michael is actively working on the transition. It takes a lot of effort to re-engineer stuff, and Michael is extremely good at doing it. He understands the architecture better and tries to simplify them as much as possible.

Michael interacts with various teams and puts a lot of effort into improving the underlying architecture. He sets up timely meetings with internal and external teams to give a knowledge transfer to make all the team members aware of things he is working on, which otherwise take a lot of effort to understand.

He is not only good at all this tech stuff but is equally good at helping fellow teammates. If someone approaches him for help, he is very good at breaking down the tasks into subtasks, making it easy for a junior dev to solve that task and give the proper context of the problem.

I once had to work on a task and could achieve that, but my solution was inefficient and had some instabilities. After banging my head for a long time, I approached Michael and explained the problem to him. He looked into it for some time, and after getting comfortable with the situation, he found the solution and explained why and how it worked. I have learned a lot from Michael, who is an excellent inspiration for my teammates and me.

2. What specific actions can this person take to strengthen their performance? What impact would this have?

Michael is doing well in contributing to the team and supporting fellow team members.

Our team will do better if he continues to do the same.

Tom

1. Provide an example(s) of when this person demonstrated strong capability in their role. What was their behaviour/action? What was the impact?

Tom is bold, open to new opportunities, and doesn't hesitate to take the initiative on new challenges. He is technically sound and has an excellent approach to learning new things quickly. He is always helpful to his teammates and goes above and beyond to help them.

I was working on a task and wanted suggestions on approaching a few things as I had to choose between multiple options. Tom understood this, came forward to chat and spent time with me to understand the requirements. He researched the best approaches to this problem and explained the upsides and downsides of all the techniques we had considered. His research made my job easy, and I could complete the task efficiently. So the main point about Tom is that he never hesitates to help somebody as he has the right mindset to learn something new in everything, which is greatly appreciable.

Tom also likes to chat with different teams to understand what and how they're doing something.

2. What specific actions can this person take to strengthen their performance? What impact would this have?

Tom is doing well in contributing to the team and supporting fellow team members.

Our team will do better if he continues to do the same.

David

1. Provide an example(s) of when this person demonstrated strong capability in their role. What was their behaviour/action? What was the impact?

David loves challenges and would be the first to explore new challenging tasks. Our team had to work on a mobile app which was pretty new to us as we had dealt only with web apps and not mobile apps earlier. Even though David had very little expertise with mobile apps, he was quick to take up this task, knowing that it would be very hard during the initial phases as he would have to talk to different teams. Despite many difficulties, like talking to fellow members of the Krakow team in the early mornings almost daily, he set up the structure and a clear path for us to move forward with that app. This structure made it easy for other team members to take up the sub-tasks. He ensured that the team members understood and carried out the tasks smoothly. He was taking time to time feedback from us and was ensuring that the app quality was good all the time. We now have a working app which is a foundation for our next major project, thanks to David.

2. What specific actions can this person take to strengthen their performance? What impact would this have?

David did well in my team and added value to the fullest. Based on his interest and expertise, he moved to another group internally, and I am sure he will do well there too.