A brag sheet is a running list of your work accomplishments. It’s not arrogant. It’s practical. When performance review season arrives, you’ll have everything documented instead of scrambling to remember what you did eight months ago.

The concept was popularized by Julia Evans, a software engineer who wrote about keeping a “brag document” to track wins throughout the year. Her advice applies across roles, but what you document looks different depending on your job.

This post shows concrete brag sheet examples for three common tech roles: Software Engineer, Product Manager, and Designer. Use these as templates for your own documentation.

What Makes a Good Brag Sheet Entry

Before diving into role-specific examples, here’s what separates useful entries from forgettable ones:

Include numbers when possible. “Improved performance” is vague. “Reduced API response time from 800ms to 200ms” is memorable.

Note the context. Why did this matter? Who was affected? What was the alternative?

Capture your specific contribution. On team projects, be clear about what you personally did versus what the team accomplished together.

Write it while it’s fresh. Details fade quickly. Document wins within a week of completing them.

Software Engineer Brag Sheet Example

Software engineers often undersell themselves by focusing on code written rather than problems solved. Your brag sheet should emphasize impact, not just output.

Example Entries

## Q1 2026

### Shipped: Authentication System Redesign
- Rebuilt login flow using OAuth 2.0, replacing legacy session-based auth
- Reduced login-related support tickets by 60% (from ~50/week to ~20/week)
- Improved page load time for authenticated users by 35%
- Collaborated with security team on threat modeling before implementation
- Wrote migration path that allowed zero-downtime deployment

### Solved: Database Performance Crisis
- Identified N+1 query issue causing 10-second page loads for enterprise customers
- Implemented query optimization and caching layer
- Reduced average response time from 10s to 400ms
- Prevented potential churn of 3 enterprise accounts ($180K ARR)

### Led: On-Call Improvements
- Proposed and implemented new alerting strategy for production incidents
- Reduced false-positive alerts by 70%
- Created runbooks for 15 most common incident types
- Mentored 2 junior engineers through on-call rotations

### Learned
- Completed AWS Solutions Architect certification
- Gave internal tech talk on distributed systems patterns (40 attendees)
- Learned Rust basics, built prototype CLI tool for team

What to Track as a Software Engineer

  • Features shipped and their user impact
  • Bugs fixed, especially high-severity ones
  • Performance improvements with before/after metrics
  • Technical debt paid down
  • Architecture decisions you influenced
  • Code reviews completed (especially thorough ones)
  • Documentation written
  • Mentoring and knowledge sharing
  • On-call incidents resolved
  • Tools or processes you improved

Product Manager Brag Sheet Example

Product managers often struggle to claim credit because their work happens through others. Your brag sheet should show the decisions you made and the outcomes that resulted.

Example Entries

## Q1 2026

### Shipped: Self-Service Onboarding Flow
- Led discovery research: 12 user interviews, 200 survey responses
- Defined requirements and wrote PRD for new onboarding experience
- Coordinated 4-person cross-functional team (2 eng, 1 design, 1 data)
- Result: Trial-to-paid conversion improved from 8% to 14%
- Reduced time-to-first-value from 3 days to 4 hours

### Decided: Pricing Model Change
- Analyzed usage data and identified pricing friction for mid-market segment
- Proposed and got buy-in for usage-based tier between Starter and Enterprise
- Projected $400K additional ARR; actual Q1 result was $320K
- Managed stakeholder communication across Sales, CS, and Finance

### Influenced: Roadmap Prioritization
- Built scoring framework for feature prioritization (RICE-based)
- Facilitated roadmap planning session with leadership
- Successfully advocated for technical debt sprint, improving eng velocity by 20%

### Customer Impact
- Resolved escalation for top 5 customer by coordinating hotfix in 48 hours
- Conducted 8 customer calls that directly shaped Q2 roadmap
- NPS for my product area improved from 32 to 48

### Learned
- Completed Reforge Product Strategy program
- Published internal guide on running effective user interviews

What to Track as a Product Manager

  • Features shipped and their business metrics
  • Experiments run and learnings generated
  • Decisions made with supporting rationale
  • Stakeholder alignment you achieved
  • Customer research conducted
  • Revenue or conversion impact
  • Strategic pivots you influenced
  • Process improvements for the product team
  • Cross-functional relationships built
  • Speaking or writing (internal or external)

Designer Brag Sheet Example

Designers sometimes focus too heavily on aesthetics or process in their brag sheets. Rather than focusing on either extreme, balance the visual work with the thinking behind it and the results it produced.

Example Entries

## Q1 2026

### Shipped: Checkout Redesign
- Led end-to-end redesign of 5-step checkout flow
- Conducted usability testing with 8 participants, iterated on 3 major pain points
- Reduced checkout abandonment rate from 68% to 52%
- Established new component patterns now used across 4 other flows
- Created detailed handoff documentation, resulting in zero design QA issues

### Built: Design System Expansion
- Added 12 new components to design system based on audit of inconsistencies
- Documented usage guidelines and created Figma templates for each
- Reduced design-to-dev time for common patterns by ~40%
- Led 2 training sessions for engineering team on component usage

### Research: Enterprise User Personas
- Conducted 15 interviews with enterprise users across 4 customer accounts
- Created 3 personas with journey maps, presented to product and leadership
- Research directly influenced H2 roadmap prioritization

### Craft
- Redesigned marketing landing page, improved conversion by 22%
- Created illustration style guide for brand consistency
- Won internal design review recognition for dashboard project

### Learned
- Completed Interaction Design Foundation course on UX research methods
- Gave lightning talk at local design meetup (50 attendees)
- Mentored 1 junior designer through first major project

What to Track as a Designer

  • Projects shipped with user impact metrics
  • Usability improvements with before/after data
  • Design system contributions
  • Research conducted and insights generated
  • Prototypes that influenced product direction
  • Accessibility improvements
  • Brand or visual identity work
  • Stakeholder presentations and buy-in achieved
  • Process improvements for the design team
  • Awards, recognition, or external visibility

Brag Sheet Template You Can Copy

Here’s a simple quarterly template that works for any role:

## [Quarter] [Year]

### Shipped
- [Project name]
  - What: [Brief description]
  - My role: [Your specific contribution]
  - Impact: [Numbers if possible]

### Problems Solved
- [Problem and how you addressed it]

### Influenced
- [Decisions or directions you shaped]

### Growth
- [Skills learned, certifications, talks given]

### Recognition
- [Positive feedback, awards, shoutouts]

FAQ

How often should I update my brag sheet? Weekly is ideal. Friday afternoons work well for most people. At minimum, update monthly so details don’t fade.

How long should entries be? Two to four sentences per accomplishment. Enough to jog your memory later, not a detailed project retrospective.

Should I include team accomplishments? Yes, but be specific about your role. “Led the team that…” or “Contributed to…” are both valid, just be accurate.

What if I can’t quantify something? Qualitative impact counts too. “Improved developer experience” is fine if you add context about what specifically improved and who noticed.

Is this different from a portfolio? Yes. A portfolio shows polished final work. A brag sheet is a running log of everything you’ve accomplished, including work that doesn’t fit in a portfolio.

Put Your Brag Sheet to Work

Building a brag sheet is the first step. Using it effectively is where the value comes.

Before your next performance review, pull your top accomplishments and organize them by theme. Look for patterns that tell a story about your growth and impact.

Career Minder automates this process. Log your work weekly in a Catch Up, and when review time comes, your accomplishments are already organized and ready to use. You can filter by time period, search for specific projects, and generate a tailored document in minutes.

Try Career Minder free for 14 days

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