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What is this?

This is my Manager README, a document that helps introduce you to my management style, philosophy, and expectations.

The intended audience is primarily anyone who reports in to me, though anyone is free to read it or even provide feedback on it!

Please treat this document as both a reference and a promise on how I will to conduct myself as a manager, and what I expect from you. Please note: This document is not a replacement for us actually getting to know each other.

I urge you to hold me accountable to my promises, and to call out anything that might be missing from this document. Without your input, I will not be able to improve as a manager.

My Role

I am here to make sure our team is successful, working on the next-most-important-thing™, and to help create a space where you can do the best work of your life.

More specifically:

• I am here to make sure our teams are pointed in the right direction and have all of the information, tools, and support to be successful and autonomous.
• I am here to help you improve your technical skills, grow your career, enjoy the work, and align yourself to our company's mission.
• I am here to make sure our team is getting what we need from other teams, and that other teams are getting what they need from us.
• I am here to collect and share context from across the broader company initiatives and mission.
• I am here to attract, retain and grow high performing individuals and teams.
• I am here to foster a culture of passion, innovation and collaboration, leading to a track record of shipping quality products and projects.

I also write code, and will generally be one of the primary architects of our systems, tooling, and practices.

Feedback

I firmly believe that feedback is at the core of building trust and respect in a team.

Three dimensions are required for people to continue to give you feedback:

• Safety (unlikelihood of being punished for giving feedback; should be high)
• Effort (the amount of work in order to give feedback; should be low)
• Benefit (likelihood of giving you feedback will impact your behavior; should be high)

Let me know if I don't do well on any of these three dimensions. I'll let you know if you don't do well on any of these three dimensions.

While I care about kindness, I tend to optimize for effectiveness when giving feedback -- and within that optimized effectiveness try to be as kind as possible.

Formal Reviews are not the only time we’ll exchange feedback. This will be a recurring topic in our One on Ones (more on that below). I am going to ask you for feedback on me, regularly. I am never going to stop doing this no matter how many times you say you have no feedback for me.

Disagreement is feedback and the sooner we learn how to efficiently disagree with each other, the sooner we’ll trust and respect each other more. Ideas don’t get better with agreement.

What should you do with feedback? Consider it. Acting on it is not always required. You’ll receive a lot of feedback from me and your peers. Most of it will be good, some of it won’t be. Like everything else, please think about each piece critically and decide whether to act on it or not.

One on Ones

Regular 1:1 meetings are extremely important. The cadence, length, etc. is totally up for discussion though. These meetings are designed to give you a dedicated time and place to ask anything and everything.

Hopefully, we talk about things you wouldn’t otherwise bring up in a group setting. I want our 1:1 to be a safe place; if this isn’t the case please tell my boss.

We will go through your agenda first and if time permits I will always have some questions. First and foremost these meetings are for you.

Urgent matters should not wait for a 1:1. Just pull me aside and we can talk.

Meetings Protocol

I go to a lot of meetings. I deliberately run with my calendar publicly visible. If you have a question about a meeting on my calendar, ask me. If a meeting is private or confidential, its title and attendees will be hidden from your view. The vast majority of my meetings are neither private nor confidential.

My definition of a meeting includes an agenda and/or intended purpose, the appropriate amount of productive attendees, and a responsible party running the meeting to a schedule. If I am attending a meeting, I’d prefer starting on time. If I am running a meeting, I will start that meeting on time. If it’s not clear to me why I am in a meeting, I will ask for clarification on my attendance.

If you send me documents or other materials a reasonable amount of time before a meeting, I will read it before the meeting and will have my questions at the ready. If I haven’t read the materials, I will tell you.

If a meeting completes its intended purpose before it’s scheduled to end, let’s give the time back to everyone. If it’s clear the intended goal won’t be achieved in the allotted time, let’s stop the meeting before time is up and determine how to finish the meeting later.

Career Development

Your career is yours to manage. You know best how you’d like to grow and in what areas. I am always available to provide feedback on your trajectory and will make suggestions on things you can do both inside and outside of the company that will allow you to grow personally and professionally.

I will try to push projects and tasks your way that align with your career goals, but It will be up to to you to seize these growth and learning opportunities and run with them.

At the end of the day, it is your career. Set your goals and let me know how I can best support you in achieving them.

Leadership Style

In general, I am pretty hands off as a manager. As long as I feel that you are on task, and on target, I will try to let you get in the zone and work with as few distractions as possible. I will only follow up on assigned tasks if I haven't gotten an update from you recently or if someone asks for details on your work that I don't have.

While I will do my best to avoid interrupting you, you can ALWAYS interrupt me. I am very good at context switching, and may only ask for 10 or 15 mins to finish my current train of thought before I am able to give you my undivided attention.

I tend to push lots of information out, usually over chat or on other communication channels, and assume everyone is doing the same. Take the time to process this information in the way that makes most sense to you. I'm happy to repeat myself, when necessary, but will generally consider the information published and available as soon as I hit send. Let me know if you ever feel like it's hard to keep up or if the signal to noise ratio is miscalibrated. Very imporant information will usually be delivered verbally.

I expect my team to own the work the they take on, and to see it through to production and beyond. This includes communicating regularly about the changes they are making or want to make to our code and documentation. Pull Requests, especially work in progress, are a great way to do this.

I am a big believer in “no broken windows” when building products: I like clean logs, clean exceptions, clean codebases, and elegant abstractions. If you see something that needs fixing, fix it. If you can't fix it yourself, ask for help. We shouldn't step over issues with our development environments more than a couple of times, since the impact to everyone on the team will grow expontentially if we do.

I never want to be a blocker to what you're working on. If you need me to chime in on something, hit me up on chat (if you just want a quick answer) or put time on my calendar (and don't feel you need to ask me before you do). If I am unavailable, do what you think is best. Just try to fit your solution into the existing patterns and architecture we currently have, as best you can. You would not have been hired if we didn't trust you.

You can send me DM on chat 24 hours a day. I like responding quickly. The more info the message has on what you need, the better I'll be able to determine how best to reply, and how quickly you need my response.

If I am traveling, I will give you notice of said travel in advance. Assume all of our meetings will still occur, unless told otherwise.

I work a bit on the weekends. This is my choice. I do not expect that you are going to work during the weekend without a specific request to do so. I might send you messages during off-hours, but unless it says URGENT, it can always wait until work begins for you on Monday.

I take vacations. You should, too. Disconnected from the normal day-to-day is when I do some of my best work.

North Star Principles

Humans first. I believe that happy, informed, and productive humans build fantastic product. I optimize for the humans. Other leaders will maximize the business, the technology, or any other number of important facets. Ideological diversity is key to an effective team. All perspectives are relevant, and we need all these leaders, but my bias is towards building productive humans.

Leadership comes from everywhere. I’ve wasted a lot of time in poorly run meetings by bad managers. As an engineer, I remain skeptical of managers even as a manager. While I believe managers are an essential part of a scaling organization, I don’t believe they have a monopoly on leadership, and I work hard to build other constructs and opportunities in our teams for non-managers to effectively lead.

I see things as systems. I reduce all complex things (including humans, to some degree) into systems. I think in terms of how things work together. I take great joy in attempting to understand how all the moving parts fit together, including our own group dynamics. When I see large or small inefficiencies in systems, I’d like to fix them with your help.

It is important to me that humans are treated fairly. I believe that most humans are trying to to do the right thing, but unconscious bias leads them astray. I work hard to understand and address my biases because I understand their ability to create inequity.

I heavily bias towards action. Long meetings where we are endlessly debating potential directions can sometimes be valuable, but I believe starting is the best way to begin learning and make progress. This is not always the correct strategy, and can annoy those who like to debate. Unless it's an obstacle that will block our momentum, sometimes it is best to keep discussions informal, and on the back burner, while we all continue to mull over the topic. It will generally make the next formal discussion more productive.

I believe in the compounding awesomeness of continually building/fixing small things. I believe quality assurance is everyone’s responsibility. (See also: "no broken windows" passage above).

I need you to know that sometimes I may be in HIGH ALERT mode, and some of my practices and principles may change. HIGH ALERT conditions usually involve existential threats to our company. During this time, my usual people, process, and product protocols are secondary to countering this threat. If it is not obvious, I will alert you that I am in this state along with my best guess of when it will be over. If I am constantly in this state, something is fundamentally wrong.

I am customer and user obsessed. We’re all here to create the best products that we possibly can. That starts with a laser focus on the needs of our users, customers and other stake holders.

I believe that critical thinking is an essential part of world class team. Nothing is sacred and we shouldn’t do anything “because we’ve always done it that way”. No cargo culting.

I believe self reflection is an important part of growth. You’ll miss opportunities without it. Make sure to allocate time for this essential activity.

I place a big emphasis on being intentional. We have too much to do for our work to be randomly be pursued. Intentionality is important to make sure we get the results we want.

I think empathy helps things run smoother, especially during difficult or chaotic times. Developing our emotional intelligence and having empathy for one's co-workers will help us to build strong teams.

My Assumptions

You’re good at your job. You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t. If it feels like I’m questioning you it’s because I’m either trying:

• trying to gather context or,
• trying to be a sounding board (See: rubber duck debugging)

You know best. I’ll work to provide necessary context and ask questions to help you vet your ideas but I won’t override you, unless not doing so would be detrimental to you or the company. I'm always ready to offer input, when needed or requested.

You’ll let me know if you can’t do your job. One of my main responsibilities is ensuring that you’re set up for success. Occasionally things slip through the cracks and I won’t know I’m letting you down unless you tell me.

You feel safe discussing your ideas with me. I find that ideas improve by being examined from all angles. If it sounds like I’m disagreeing I’m most likely just playing devil’s advocate. I try not to take things personal, and will never make things personal for you.

You will document our decisions. If we talk through a problem and settle on a course of action, you will immediatley update the relevant tickets, threads, wikis or other artifacts to capture what we discussed. This will help ensure we don't have to talk through it again, and that essential details don't suffer from a loss of fidelity.

How you can help me?

Do amazing work. This is the expectation. Let me know if there is something preventing you from performing at your best.

Disagree with me. The best solutions comes from a healthy level of debate. We need to be able to separate our ideas from our egos . I’ll challenge your ideas with the goal of coming to the best possible solution, I hope you’ll challenge mine. I might have more experience, but never assume that I am the smartest person in the room.

Tell me when I screw up. This is very important. I screw up and sometimes don’t notice. I need to know or I’ll likely do it again.

Communicate. One of my jobs is to provide context. Are you missing some? Let me know and I’ll fill you in or go find out.

Bring your friends. As a fast-growing company, we're always interested in growing the team (even if it doesn't seem like we have any open positions). You know who you want to work with -- so please refer them!

Personality Quirks

• I have been known to argue with “passion” - If I raise my voice a little or come off as dismissive, I'm sorry. I don’t like this about myself, and try catch myself when I am doing it. When you feel I have crossed the line, tell me.
• I have strong opinions, weakly held. I try to see an issue from all sides. Question everything, and we’ll all be better for it.
• I care about my words and endeavor to choose them carefully. I try to remember that not everyone shares my connotations, and will do my best to define the nuances in my words, when possible.
• When I ask you to do something that feels poorly defined you should ask me for both clarification and a call on importance. I might still be brainstorming. These questions can save everyone a lot of time.
• I can be hyperbolic but it’s almost always because I am excited about the topic. I also swear sometimes. Sorry.
• Humans stating opinions as facts are a trigger for me.
• Humans who gossip are a trigger for me.

This document is likely incomplete. I update it as often as I can and would appreciate your feedback.