Witnessing directly the intensifying digital platformisation of higher education trend while training for the qualification in tertiary-level teaching and learning at the collegiate University of Cambridge, UK, prompts this autoethnographic appraisal of how online assessment and evaluation of two academic core competencies—teaching and publishing—has played out in my immediate working and studying environment. Moments of silence, doubt, and hesitation provide an inroad for revealing and problematising the so-called boulder specs. Of particular interest and concern is the inherent power asymmetry characterising the reviewer/reviewee and the assessor/applicant dyads. Examining close up how the medium enabling the evaluation, i.e. the screen interface, interferes with the quality assurance procedures of peer review of teaching from the teaching expertise perspective and the co-authors’ statement used in academic staff recruitment and retention decision-making processes (at certain universities) intends to broach this uncomfortable, yet important topic through doing reflexive practice, pro-actively.