Brag Doc Template

    Engineering Manager Brag Doc

    A brag doc for an Engineering Manager is mostly other people's work — and the structural and judgment moves you made that let it happen. The trap is over-claiming engineering output or under-claiming the unglamorous people work. This template forces both into view: the shipped work attributable to your team, and the leadership moves that compounded.

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    What to include

    EMs are graded on team output, team health, and the bench you built. Each section maps to one of those. Be specific about what was YOUR move (a hire, a rewrite of a ritual, a difficult conversation) vs. what was the team's collective output you supported. Fill 3–5 specific bullets per section. Numbers, names, dates.

    Personalize

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    The template

    01

    Team Outcomes

    What your team shipped, with metrics. Frame outcomes as 'team delivered X, my role was Y' rather than claiming sole authorship.

    • ·Which roadmap commitments did your team hit on time? Which slipped, and what did you change after?
    • ·What top-line metric moved because of your team's work?
    • ·Which platform or infra investment did you greenlight that paid off?
    • ·What did your team deliver that was bigger than the prior year's comparable?
    02

    Hiring & Onboarding

    Who you hired, who you onboarded, who you retained — the bench-building work.

    • ·How many engineers did you hire? At what level? Cite ramp curves.
    • ·What did you change about your hiring process (loop, calibration, sourcing)?
    • ·Whose onboarding did you personally shape? What's their trajectory?
    • ·Which retention save did you orchestrate when someone was about to leave?
    03

    Performance Management

    The hard work — calibrations, growth plans, difficult conversations, PIPs handled fairly.

    • ·Who got promoted on your team this period? What was your role in the case?
    • ·Which difficult performance conversation did you handle? What was the outcome?
    • ·Which growth plan did you build that moved someone forward?
    • ·Which calibration disagreement did you push back on productively?
    04

    Process & Rituals

    What you changed about how the team works. Standups, retros, planning, on-call, code review — the operating system.

    • ·Which ritual did you introduce, fix, or kill?
    • ·What process change reduced cycle time, on-call burden, or planning chaos?
    • ·Which doc or template did you create that the team now reuses?
    • ·What did you delegate that you used to do yourself?
    05

    Cross-Functional Leadership

    How you partnered with Product, Design, Data, Sales, CS — and the alignment work that prevented expensive misfires.

    • ·Which cross-team initiative did you co-lead?
    • ·What scope or sequencing call did you change in a planning meeting?
    • ·Which exec narrative did you author or contribute to?
    • ·Where did you mediate a disagreement between your team and another function?
    06

    Technical Direction

    How much technical credibility you carry. Architectural calls, design reviews, technical strategy memos.

    • ·Which design doc or RFC did you author or substantially shape?
    • ·What technical bet did you make (or kill) that paid off?
    • ·Which review did you give that visibly changed an engineer's approach?
    • ·What technical-strategy memo did you write that the org adopted?

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    Weak vs. strong bullets

    The format does the easy part. The bullets carry the weight. A few examples to set the bar.

    Weak

    Managed a team of 8 engineers.

    Strong

    Led 8-person platform team through the Q3 migration: shipped 4 weeks ahead of schedule, zero customer-impacting incidents, two engineers promoted (one to Staff). Owned weekly planning + monthly skip-levels + hiring loops.

    Weak

    Hired engineers.

    Strong

    Hired 4 engineers (3 Senior, 1 Staff) in Q2-Q3. All four shipped a production change inside 6 weeks (team median previously: 9 weeks). Rewrote the technical screen after seeing it false-negative on 2 strong candidates.

    Weak

    Improved team process.

    Strong

    Replaced the 60-min weekly status meeting (12 attendees, attendance dropping) with a written async update + 20-min decisions-only meeting. Reclaimed ~9 person-hours per week and decision velocity (measured in PR cycle time) improved 18%.

    Weak

    Handled a difficult performance situation.

    Strong

    Built a 60-day growth plan with an underperforming senior engineer — weekly 1:1s on specific deliverables, pair-coding twice a week, peer review tightening. Engineer hit plan in 8 weeks, still on the team, shipped 3 promo-relevant projects since.

    Manual template vs. Bloom generated report

    Manual brag doc

    • Works when you already remember the right examples.
    • Requires manual sorting, rewriting, and evidence cleanup.
    • Best for a one-time draft or printable structure.

    Bloom generated report

    • Starts from the work you captured when it happened.
    • Organizes entries by goals, skills, impact, and review period.
    • Turns daily evidence into shareable summaries and PDF reports.

    You don't fill out a Bloom report. Bloom writes it.

    The template above is the manual version. Bloom is the generated version. Thirty seconds when something good happens — speak it or type it — and at review time the entire document is in your share sheet. Same shape as the template. Your numbers, your names, your dates. Already written.

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    Build the evidence before you need the template

    Templates help with format. A career journal helps with memory. Use these pages together: learn the structure, generate a quick outline, then keep the source material current in Bloom.

    Brag document guide

    What to include and how to write stronger bullets.

    Brag doc generator

    Turn role, goals, and wins into an outline.

    Bloom career journal

    Capture the evidence that feeds your brag doc.

    Frequently asked questions

    Can I use this as a Engineering Manager brag doc app replacement?▾

    You can use the template manually, but it will only stay useful if you update it consistently. Bloom is the app version: capture wins daily, then generate reports when you need them.

    What should a brag doc include?▾

    A strong brag doc includes dated wins, measurable impact, collaborators, skills, feedback, decisions, evidence links, and review-category alignment.

    Is Bloom a brag doc app?▾

    Yes. Bloom is a brag doc app and career journal that keeps the source material current, then turns entries into performance reports, recaps, and reusable career stories.

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