Thanks for dropping by. After reading this readme, I hope you can learn how I think and how I work.
The best way I know to achieve excellence is for us to work as a team.
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As a team leader, I'm here to ensure I do my best to provide everyone a healthy and happy working environment. My line is always open for us to chat about how we can align our own values with our company's mission, vision, and values.
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I'm here to remove distractions and roadblocks that may hinder us from achieving our team goals. It is my job to communicate to other teams about what we need from them so that we can be at our best.
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Another big part of my job is to build a team that is not afraid of making mistakes. Mistakes are just the hurdles of a 110-meter hurdles race. Without those hurdles, we don't even have a race to win!
As a strong believer in continuous learning and self-improvement, the best thing my teammates can do for me is to give me feedback. Come to me with your happy stories, disturbing concerns, suggestions, anything that we can discuss to better ourselves and our team!
The biggest reason that got me into management is that warm and fuzzy feeling I get when I see my team members "level up". I just cannot stop smiling when I see my teammates become Ruby or Javascript rockstars; When they can code in a way that I can never imagine a few months earlier. I feel so proud when my colleagues turn from engineers to tech leads or from front-end developers to UI/UX experts. As your team manager, I'm all ears. Let's use our 1-on-1s to map out a plan for you so that I can be the catalyst for your career advancement journey.
I mentioned goals a few times. As a united team, let's establish our team goals. I like having a mixture of short-term low hanging fruit goals, a few mid-term realistic and achievable ones, and then toss in a couple of ambitious long-term goals!
Once we have our target set, all we need is just to get there. Easy :D
Let's be real. A big part of working together is about having group discussions, aka meetings. I believe every meeting should have an agenda that clearly tells all attendees the purpose of the meeting. It's easier than you may think, most of the time a clear meeting title is enough!
Still about meetings. Make part of the meeting attendees optional when possible. Let them decide if they can contribute to a meeting and if they should join.
A few ways to send messages. Here's my take.
Email is async. I may reply to you at lunchtime or end of the day.
Slack channel message is async. I may not respond to a Slack channel message if I'm not mentioned (@jim.li)
Slack DM and @jim.li channel message is sync. I am responsive and generally reply straight away unless I'm in meetings.
1-on-1s are very special meetings for me. I may provide some honest feedback to you, but this meeting is really all about you! I will be there to answer any questions you may ask. You can tell me about your wins, what you struggled with, how you think I can better support you, or maybe just your feelings about work or colleagues. This is the time for us to open up to know each other. You are free to ask me about any coding-related issues too, but those may be better handled during the week spontaneously. Remember you can DM me on Slack at any time.
I am a dad and a husband. I do quite some chores at home after work! When I do have my spare time, I love seeing the world through my camera lens (https://www.instagram.com/marsbomber/). I enjoy traveling and exploring different places. In July 2015, I had a 28 days 10,000 km family road trip covering Vancouver - Yellowstone - Salt Lake - Antelope Canyon - Grand Canyon - Las Vegas - Los Angeles - San Francisco - Portland - Seattle - Vancouver. My next goal is to drive from Vancouver all the way to Miami one day!