Do you talk about side projects during employee appraisal and target agreement

A few days ago I saw a post on dev to about someone becoming tech lead. Reading all their insights on how to become a lead and what their responsibilities are, I was wondering if I ever can become a lead at all.

Here is the original article by {% embed https://dev.to/sasidhar_gadepalli/transitioning-from-developer-to-tech-lead-tips-and-challenges-1k8d %}

The reason behind this is because I actually cannot show all my skills at the project I am currently working, where I am "just" a frontend dev. So I wonder if it is okay to talk about my side projects during employee appraisal and target agreement or if I should separate these two things.

Here is my comment to the article shared above:

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Great article @sasidhar_gadepalli .

This opens up a question which I do have for a while now. And hopefully, many others will comment on this as well. But first of all: Congrats to your new position 🥳

I agree with you on all your tasks for lead devs. It some companies it is common to have quarterly talks with each developer on what they want to achieve, where they see themselves, improvements and such. This is for personal grow, but also for the manager to get an overview, if the developer is right in their position, in this particular project, if the developer can grow and also if and how much raise they may get.

I really like that kind of approach, I see positivity for both sides. But I wonder if I should mention stuff I do beside work as well. Depending on which project you are, you may get not the most possible chance to show off what you can. You may "just be" one frontend dev out of many, unseen with other great skills you may have. In my case, I do a lot besides work, at University I am very active, the team leader in almost every lecture, attending hackathons/writeathons (and winning them), writing lots of blog posts, giving talks from time to time, maintaining my own open source projects an such.

I am way more present outside of work that at work. Is it okay to mention that? That actually I can do so much more but the role as a frontend dev does not give the possibility to show all my skills (so I may never be considered as a tech lead)? Or is it not okay to talk about it, because others are also evaluated by their skills at work, and maybe do nothing besides work and that would be unfair. How do you see it?

Thanks for you comment (maybe I will open a discussion on my own about this topic).

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I am very interested in what you readers are thinking about this topic.