1

SLO Ownership & Error Budget

Definition, measurement, and adherence to SLOs for services owned.

Exceeds

SLOs are defined, well-instrumented, and consistently met. Error budget is managed proactively, not reactively.

Meets

SLOs exist for critical services. Error budget is monitored. SLA targets are generally met.

Below

SLOs are incomplete or poorly defined. Error budget management is reactive.

Example review phrases

  • "Defined SLOs for 6 previously unmeasured services—gave the team a shared language for reliability trade-offs for the first time."
  • "Error budget for the payment service was managed so carefully that we shipped 3 major features this half without a reliability concern."
2

Incident Response

Speed and quality of incident detection, mitigation, and post-mortem follow-through.

Exceeds

Incidents are detected and mitigated faster than industry benchmarks. Post-mortems lead to systemic fixes that prevent recurrence.

Meets

Incident response is competent. Post-mortems are completed. Most action items are addressed.

Below

Incidents recur for the same root causes. Post-mortem action items are not consistently completed.

Example review phrases

  • "MTTR dropped from 47 minutes to 12 minutes after they rebuilt the alerting and runbook infrastructure."
  • "Post-mortems they lead result in actual change—7 of 8 systemic issues identified have been resolved, vs. 2 of 9 on the previous cycle."
3

Toil Reduction

Systematic elimination of repetitive operational work through automation.

Exceeds

Continuously audits and eliminates toil. On-call burden has measurably decreased. Automation is adopted by other SREs.

Meets

Automates common operational tasks. Toil is managed at acceptable levels.

Below

Accepts toil as part of the job rather than eliminating it. On-call burden is growing.

Example review phrases

  • "Automated the weekly capacity review process—what took 3 hours now takes 15 minutes with better accuracy."
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Where do these examples come from in real reviews?

Most managers write performance reviews from memory—limited to what they personally observed. Confirm surfaces behavioral evidence from across the organization: who relied on this person, what they drove, how their impact extended beyond their direct manager's line of sight. Reviews written with Confirm's data are more accurate, more defensible, and faster to write.

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