In June 2019 Julia Evans advised the readers of her programming blog to keep a “brag document.” She started from a common belief. “There’s this idea that, if you do great work at your job, people will (or should!) automatically recognize that work and reward you for it with promotions / increased pay.” In practice, she wrote, “it’s often more complicated than that.”
Her advice is to write down your own work before performance reviews. “And if you don’t remember everything important you did, your manager (no matter how great they are!) probably doesn’t either.” Work that is hard to see belongs in the document too, “because it’s the most likely to fall under the radar!”