How I like to work as a Manager

Why this page?

This page is an effort to explain my role, my values, my expectations and finally my quirks.

This is a live document and it will change over time. Often I won’t live up to these values and ideas. But it’s alright! We all make mistakes. Hopefully, two things can emerge when that happens:

  1. I will learn from my failure.
  2. You will be comfortable to hold me accountable and keep me honest.

My Role

I have two main focuses: the business and the team.

From the business perspective:

  • Making sure we’re working on the right things at the right time.
  • Representing the team, and the business both internally and externally.
  • Hire great people.

From the team perspective:

  • Help you achieve your goals.
  • Support you in your personal development.
  • Help you understand the context, the “why” and the wider picture of the work we are doing.

My values

  • transparency - I will never withhold information that impacts you or your work. This is tightly related to how we communicate inside and outside the team. The best way for me to be aware of how and what you are doing is for you to show it to me. Either directly by grabbing me for a coffee, or indirectly via a Pull Request or a Ticket. Bottom line: I prefer you to push information to me, instead of me pulling it from you.
  • honesty - Independently of being positive or constructive feedback, I will be 100% honest with you. Failures are reviewed and serve as a lesson, while successes should be cheered and celebrated. The same goes in the opposite direction: I expect you to give me feedback from which I can learn.
  • accountability and ownership - if you are part of my team, I trust you without any reservation. When you are in charge of a feature I expect you to own it, not only from a technical point of view but also understand the whys, the whats and the whens. When you succeed I will make sure everyone knows about it. When you fail, I expect you to understand why it happened, learn from it and persevere.
  • empathy and kindness - Assume that the other person did the best they could possibly do in the given situation. A lot of time, when reviewing each other’s work, we lack the full context, which leads to knee-jerk reactions. Everyone has their own problems outside work. Be kind.

My expectations

  • I expect you to deliver on time and uphold our standards, but sometimes unexpected things happen. I hope, when that happens, for you to be honest with me about it. It’s easy to mitigate a bad situation when we see it coming. It makes it difficult if failure is around the corner and we just got to know about it. You can also expect that I will never commit to something that we, as a team, can’t deliver.
  • Be comfortable to grab me at any point and have a conversation with me, no matter the topic or the time. If you are blocked or something is bothering you, let me know and I will make you my priority. This might sound cheesy, but I serve you. My success is the sum of yours and the team’s success.
  • I expect you to keep learning and become a better professional. I like to think I provide the tools, the budget and the time for you to learn new things and improve your knowledge. If you need guidance on what you should focus on next, I will do my best to direct you to the right place or person.
  • During technical conversations, I like when people disagree with me. The best solutions come from a healthy level of debate. I will challenge your ideas with the goal of coming to the best possible solution, I hope you will challenge me back.
  • I don’t care at what time or where you work. On the other hand, I do care that you attend the meetings you have accepted, be available for your team and deliver on what we collectively agreed.

Quirks

  • When writing, sometimes I can feel cold, or blunt. I can reply to an entire paragraph with just a couple of words. I have a tendency to go straight to the point. I believe that hemingwayapp has conditioned me in some way.
  • I am curious by nature. I will ask lots of questions to try to understand a subject, approach, or process. Some people have found that I can feel confrontational, or annoying, because I am probing so much.
  • I am opinionated and passionate about what I do, this can lead to heated debates. Most of the time, my focus is the outcome. On rare occasions, my focus shifts to trying to be right. Please alert me when this happens.

Thank you for taking the time to read this document!