This doc is an aspirational description of how I'd like to lead teams and work towards their mission. You are the audience. I hope this doc helps you know what I'm striving for and so you can give me feedback and we can work together to meet your goals. I'm interested in all ways I can raise the quality bar of my own work that will benefit you.
I want to support you through your work and growth. I hope to be open, direct, and reliable. We'll both make mistakes along the way and that's ok if we reflect and grow from it. I appreciate specific feedback delivered in a timely, kind way and will work to provide this to you, too.
I aim to work in service of you as an individual practitioner, your career, and of our engineering practice. To do that well, a trusting, empowering, supportive relationship between us is among my top priorities. I measure my success by both the outcomes from the engineering work and the strength and job satisfaction of our team.
I became a manager because I care deeply about engineers, our discipline, and how we collaborate with each other, our peers, and our stakeholders. In my career, I've been most effective when collaborating with people who want to grow, be challenged, and are open-minded, as well as developing practices and methods to do these things. And I enjoy doing it…a lot.
I am responsible for:
- Helping manage and build a successful, inclusive engineering team
- Setting context so you can make good decisions
- Seeing positive outcomes for our business and customers through our work
There's more details about me and my background at the end of this document, but if you want a quick rundown of how I prefer to work, I have a public readme on github.
Have fun and own your work. Remember that challenging yourself will mean making mistakes and that's ok. I will not hold mistakes against you because we are all learning and mistakes are one way to learn and learning leads to growth. Often making mistakes is one of the most effective ways to grow.
Health and safety first. I deeply respect and carry a strong work ethic. But my and your mental, physical, and emotional health is more important than anything else.
When you are sick, I expect you to take a sick day rather than powering through work from home. Rest. Offline. Don't check Teams, or "listen in" to meetings. We work on teams for a reason and one of those is so we can support each other and create some redundancies. Getting better is the best way to serve your team. When you are sick, please communicate to your team openly that you are taking a sick day and please also let me know. You do not owe anyone any explanations or details unless you want to share, simply say you will be taking sick time.
You deserve a workplace that feels safe, is inclusive, and welcoming regardless of your sex, age, gender, class, color, background, abilities, beliefs, preferences, and life circumstances. If it's not, please talk with me immediately. Without this, I can't expect you to do your best work.
I will do my best to be readily available to you during your first 90 days. We may meet, and talk more often than our usual weekly 1:1 time. I have a full calendar, so I may not always be available, but I'll do my best to accommodate you. Let's use this time to learn about each other so I can continue setting you up for success; please reach out to me if you want to pair/discuss something. Observe behavior around you and ask a lot of questions.
Our peers are design, product management, and other folks in operational roles. Healthy cross-practice relationships are important and I ask that you invest in these by staying open-minded, trusting others' expertise, and finding common goals.
Learning to build relationships, trust, and open dialogue with our peers creates more opportunity for collaboration, stronger ideas, pressure tested designs and insights, and healthier teams. When we are aligned with our peers, we have open conversations about how to meet our goals. Alignment does not equal consensus.
I care deeply about the creative process. Modern tools are incentivized to distract us.
Ways to combat distraction:
- You are welcome to spend some of your time unresponsive to inbound messages.
- Quit Teams/Slack, hide notifications, or pair with someone when you need to focus.
- Block off solo focus time on your calendar when you feel the need to do so.
- Know yourself and what you need to do the deep work.
- Know your own schedule and clearly communicate that to others.
I want to do what I say I will do and communicate proactively when I can't meet my commitments. I also ask that if you are overloaded that you proactively reflect on what you can set down in order to combat your own burnout - this may mean setting something down you've committed to or reducing the number of things you are involved in. It's ok to set something down you have picked up and ruthlessly prioritize.
Let me know when I get it wrong. I'll do my best to infrequently surprise you. To build trust with me, I ask you to do the same.
If you don't, someone will. Structure your days so you get time to work in flow. I cannot expect you to be successful without this! Prioritize, experiment, and ask me for help if you need support in knowing how/if to prioritize one thing over another.
Please reflect on how you like/need to take breaks. Think about what your ideal schedule is and consider making this OOO time so people cannot schedule over it. You know when you are at your best, please carve out room for that and try to limit how much you compromise.
Our 1:1s are your meeting. It is a regular meeting for us to talk about things like what motivates you, what's blocking you, feedback, as well as your wins, growth, and priorities. It's my most important meeting of the week and I commit to making space for it and to not move or cancel it unless it's unavoidable. I will not move it within the same week without talking to you about it first.
Feel free to reach out for more time if you need it. You're a priority to me and if I need to drop something, know that I will do that.
We are going to use a shared doc for our 1:1s. You should set the agenda, though I may bring discussion points too and will try to populate these ahead of the day of the meeting. Great topics include how you are feeling, moments to celebrate, challenges, fears, ideas to ruminate on, or something else. "I don't know what we should talk about" is a fine agenda item. If you need me to listen to you vent without giving advice, that is ok, if you are looking for help, let me know that, too. As an engineer, I have a tendency to want to brainstorm solutions with you - if that is not what you need, that is ok.
I aim to be punctual for you and others. If we need more time, I prefer we schedule a follow up rather than running over the clock unless you are free. My calendar is quite full on a regular basis, but don't let that stop you from scheduling time. If you don't see time that works for you, let me know and I'll make some.
When exploring a problem or idea, my outcomes are often better when I can think something through, discuss with my peers, or articulate my thoughts in writing. If you need a decision on the spot, let me know and if you can give me a heads up on what you'd like to discuss, that's helpful, too.
When in doubt, message me. I'm generally online from 9-6 ET on weekdays. Teams/Slack is the fastest way to get in touch with me for a semi-asynchronous short conversation. If my calendar is open, I'm usually happy to jump on an impromptu call as well.
When you help me know what you're working on, where you're blocked, and what you enjoy, I should be able to do a better job setting you up for success. I'm an inbox-zero and clear-all-the-notifications type. So if you don't hear back from me, that's odd. Ping again, I will not get upset.
I'll often ask about your decisions to learn about your thought process. Own your decisions and be willing to change direction when new information calls for it. I work to be as transparent as possible. I am comfortable giving direct feedback about work and personal development but I will always strive to deliver it in a kind and thoughtful way. I am likely to be more diplomatic while we are building our relationship.
Birthday parties are fun surprises. Two-week notices are not. I hope you and I work at this company for a long time. My advice is to stay somewhere where you have opportunity, where you are growing in a specific way that gets you to your long term goals. I believe it is my responsibility to help you think about and plan towards those long term goals, even if they are not at this company. But some day you may feel you've outgrown this job and you'll move onto a new venture. Let's work on that together.
I want you to be the happiest you can be. If you're unsatisfied at work or need something different, be open with me. I might be able to create/find an opportunity within the company, but if I don't know what you need, I cannot advocate for you in the best way. If the opportunity isn't at this company, I might be able to use my network to help you find something new. We can't always make something happen immediately, but we can openly communicate with each other and set expectations.
If you like the idea of making a README for yourself, I'd be interested in reading it!