• Pronouns: he/him
• Reference Profile: Venturer
• Location: Philadelphia Suburbs (EST)

Welcome to my Manager README. If you're unfamiliar with the concept, you can read more about them here:

• Manager README (Website)
• The One About Manager READMEs (Podcast)

I like the idea of this type of document to help new folks understand what it's like to work with/for me. I really like when others make PRs for this document based on their interactions with me; sort of a 360' review.

Up until now, I generally thought a lot of this was covered in my Reference Profile but I found myself wanting to add more details.

You'll often hear good managers described as umbrellas, shielding their teams from "crap" from above. I strongly held this mindset for a long time, even after moving into the director role, to the detriment of my teams and their working relationships with other teams.

Something I learned from The Five Dysfunctions of a Team was realizing that my "first team" is my peers and boss. The way directors shield their reporting line from "crap" is by driving understanding and alignment BEFORE it is passed down. This also aligns strongly with the concepts of distributed leadership from Extreme Ownership.

So that's my role -- to work with the other engineering, lab, and company directors to hash out new ideas, problem areas, and drive alignment before delegating the execution to you. Now that will involve me asking you questions -- you'll know how to estimate and plan the day-to-day work far better than ever I will. But I will do my best to tell you when this is something that's being brainstormed versus something that needs to be acted on.

If you're ever in a situation where you hear different things from different teams / departments, please come to me. I'll follow up and make sure we all have alignment and a common understanding.

I used the Core Needs: BICEPS some PIoneers recently learned about from LeadDev to rank my personal hierarchy of core needs.

I also think it highlights some of my back of t-shirt; I feel pretty crappy in these situations:

1. A direction or decision is being dictated to me and I don't understand why it was made. (I'm not against "disagree and commit" by any means, but I want to understand why we're going with a particular solution.)
2. Someone makes a comment or decision that challenges my status, even unintentionally. I've seen this most when someone goes "around" me, either directly to my boss to raise a concern I could have handled, or to my team to assign work without including me.
3. Outages. My fight-or-flight mechanism kicks in a bit too hard during outages.

I like to ask questions and take notes ("Let me talk it out"). I know Zoom/watercooler conversations aren't the best way to share and absorb information in a remote workforce, so I will often send you random questions on Slack. I've started marking these as :priority-high: or :priority-low" so you know how quickly I'm expecting a response. And if you ever need more context on why I'm asking, please ask.

I also love blog posts with diagrams, charts, and code samples.

If I ask you a question and you don't know the answer, "I don't know but I'll find out" is a perfectly acceptable response. I do my best to model this behavior.

I follow the Manager Tools agenda for one-on-ones which goes like this:

The first 10 minutes are for YOUR agenda - anything you want to tell me, about anything. Your work, your family, your pets, your hobby, your challenges, your career, our working together. The primary focus of this meeting is going to be YOU. The middle ten minutes are for me, to share whatever I need to with you. We'll probably talk about projects you and I are working on, stuff I need from you, and things I've heard from up above. It will NOT be a team meeting with only one attendee; that is, I'm not just going to give you a ton of stuff to take notes on. The last 10 minutes are for us to talk about the future - your career, training, development, opportunities, etc. In my experience, a lot of the time you'll take 15 minutes, and I will too, so we won't get to the last segment. But that's okay, if we've covered what YOU want to cover, and I get a few minutes.

At the moment, I'm currently filling three roles which has me stretched a bit thin across managing fourteen people directly. Here's some items that I wanted to call out that'll help me during this phase.

I'm not going to be able to stay on top of each and every project in the detail to which I would normally like and I'm doing a lot of context switching. I got the tip to start meetings with the simple question "Here's what I remember from the last time we talked, can you catch me up on anything that's changed since then?" I would also appreciate it if you'd notify me of a big changes to project plans that come up in your day-to-day meetings.

I've also found that surprises and being caught offguard are hitting me hard during this time. I'd appreciate a heads up if you're planning any broad communication, push-back or potentially controversial move.

Finally, I'm going to be a bit more diligent about asking if my help or intervention is needed when you bring something to my attention. I'm happy to assist where needed but I don't want to overstep when you've got something under control.

I've been married to my high-school sweetie, Melissa, for 20 years (we met online before it was cool!) She's a crafty artist who loves watercolors, abstract art, and art challenges. Together, we have way too many board games, huge Steam (PC video game) libraries, and five cats (Chessie, Waffles, Snow, Ashbringer and Mad Moxxi). Our ideal weekend is staying at home and gaming, although occassionally we'll venture out to a Punk Rock Flea Market, board game convention, or museum.

• Manager Tools (Podcast)
• Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win (Book)
• Martin Fowler (Bliki)