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My startup company is trying something new. They are planning their first 'group evolution meeting'. We would have to answer two questions for each member of the DevOps team.

  1. What is he or she very good at.
  2. Stuff that they might want to improve at

The problem is that I lack a lot of professional experience (it's my first real job) and I just don't know what to say for a few people. I cannot judge their work since they are working on different projects (operations or backend) and they have more experience.

Another problem is that a few of the people are new to the team and I have not yet had any contact with them. They have been working on a different project so I have had no contact with them (except for the irregular dailies via Teams).

My contact with the other people with whom I'm not in immediate contact had been great. They were helpful but I don't know much about their personalities or anything else.

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  • @JoeStrazzere better to end that sentence with "..., yet".
    – Sourav Ghosh
    May 4, 2022 at 14:51
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    @JoeStrazzere The email I have received also says evolution. I assume the goal of the meeting is to grow as a team rather than to evaluate each other. It will probably be less strict than any evaluation moment.
    – Wojtek322
    May 4, 2022 at 14:51
  • If you are new to the company and are not familiar with everyone's job, then they will understand that you won't have much to say yet. Tell them, you will give more productive input after 6 months.
    – Job_September_2020
    May 5, 2022 at 3:11

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Think it this way: this group evaluation (or evolution) meeting has two agendas:

  1. To figure out the answers to the questions (for those who can answer)
  2. Find out the communication gaps present in the teams (for those who cannot answer).

It's not practical that anybody would expect you to evaluate someone you do not know - in case they expect that you should know person A, and you don't know them (in professional capacity), then there's a gap that they (manager / leaders / management) need to bridge.

An answer like

"I cannot provide the feedback for person A, as we did not get a chance to collaborate yet. Looking forward to the opportunity to work with them, and maybe during next meeting I'll definitely be able to contribute."

seems perfectly acceptable.

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    The second agenda may not even be there, they just expect people to say "I can't evaluate that person"
    – matt freake
    May 5, 2022 at 8:01

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