Understanding performance reviews is challenging especially if you have not worked at a variety of firms. There will always be a human judgement portion which is not a hard science. That being said, reviews should be very specific to each position. When I moved from an individual contributor to a manager role, I was not happen that my annual review was average. Over the last 5 years I had always performed above average. What I didn't understand was that I was now being judged and reviewed as a manager. Did I build better models or conduct better validations than most of the team? Yes. Was I more productive? Yes! Did my employees improve on their performance? No. It was my job to perform individual contributor work well however it was now also my job to get my employees to increase their performance. As a team were were average. Managers are judged by team performance just as much as individual performance.
My best advice is to really look inward and figure out what you need to work on. This is always hard as we view ourselves differently than managers but this will help you become a better employee and person.
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