Manager README

“Allow me to re-introduce myself”

My name is Young and I look forward to getting to know you! In the meantime, here’s a bit about myself – some principles I follow, how I like to work and what you can expect from me. Hopefully these few bits can help break the ice and accelerate the build towards a solid working relationship.

TL;DR: I am here to make sure our team is successful – That we are working on what is most important to help our customers, improve our product, grow our business and having fun while we do it. My job is to create clarity for the team and empower you in this regard.

“I got you stuck off the realness”

Here are some first principles for how I like to approach things.

Journey over destination. Goals are important but life is short. Let’s make sure we have fun and treat each other with kindness along the way. I also recognize that we’re all in a journey of self discovery and learning how to become the best version of ourselves – myself included. We all have bad days – Let’s be compassionate to yourself and others.

People over process. We’re the sum of all of our parts and it’s important to me that people are treated fairly. Think of the Platinum Rule which asks “Do unto others as they would want to be done to them.” The ends do not justify the means - especially when any person will be impacted. No process is set in stone. If it’s not working for you or you see it not working for someone else, let’s bring it up for discussion and change it together!

Avoid premature optimization. Let’s focus and do what matters right now and get stuff done. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. If the problem is too big, break it down to smaller pieces - starting with the bits that matter most. If that’s not clear, let me know right away.

Anchor and visualize. Given a large surface area of complexity, I like to loosely pattern match on systems or frameworks I’ve seen and used before. That means, I can rush through some of the details where they don’t fit exactly. Call me out if I’m glossing over details that matter.

Validate assumptions. Opinions need to be backed by data. I have a strong bias for action so let’s take a hypothesis to try to validate it in a measurable way. Learning means we don’t repeat mistakes - Let’s make new mistakes. It’s only a failure if we didn’t learn something from it.

“You say one for the treble, two for the bass”

Having a cadence for work, helps us plan our time together. I value autonomy and want our time together to be effective and impactful.

Meetings are useless without a clear purpose/agenda. Any meeting with more than two people (not 1:1’s) should have a clear purpose to either make a decision or to discuss a plan for decisions also known as brainstorm. An effective meeting will have an owner that drives some outcome by sharing the agenda upfront, with any relevant pre-reads and end with clear next steps. If any of those are missing, then email or ping on chat.

Our 1:1 cadence will be at least 30m every other week. This is time for us to talk about topics of substance, as in things top of mind, not updates. We may use a shared doc to track topics if useful to you. As with anything, feel free to ping at any time – I’m very responsive regardless of the medium.

We’ll also have a weekly staff meeting with your peers for 60m. There will be an agenda doc to review metrics, discuss topics and more importantly align on decisions that affect the whole team.

Asynchronous communications are preferred. Status should be tracked in written format so meetings can be focused on decision making. I’m very responsive on email and chat. Expect response SLAs to be in the order of magnitude of days for email and hours for chat. I’m usually way under those SLAs. If an under hour response is needed (aka there’s a fire) – call or text. Please note I don’t expect these SLAs from others especially after normal business hours or weekends.

“Things fall apart, intentions shatter”

Setting Expectations. I’m still a work in progress.

I am an introvert and that means being around large groups, for long periods of time, is exhausting for me. I will need alone time to recharge. In smaller groups, I tend to be ambiverted – More introverted around extroverts and more extroverted around introverts. As a typical introvert, I prefer deeper connections with fewer individuals.

Tell me why, not what/how. Autonomy and empowerment are important for me. I respond poorly to micromanagement. Don’t tell me or others what or how to do something.

I love making things better but I often lose interest when I can mentally see how the thing is going to finish which might be weeks or months before the thing is actually done. Sorry. I’m working on this.

Talking behind other people’s backs is a trigger for me. If you have feedback for someone, tell them directly. Happy to coach you if it’s hard to give that feedback but let’s not make ourselves feel better by putting other people down.

Entitlement is a trigger for me. I react negatively to people who think they are better than others and think they deserve something without working for it. I can’t help you if you have a victim mentality – I’m all for therapy sessions but constant complaining about something without doing something irritates me to no end.

“This is how we chill from ‘93 til”

Some fun bits about me.

????? ?? ?? ????? I’m an immigrant from South Korea. We didn’t have much growing up. My parents ran a restaurant - where I often spent time working in the summers and after school. I worked full-time to put myself through college. I believe in working hard for what you want, no matter the odds. I always remember where I’m from and strive not to take anything for granted.

From the West, puttin’ whole counties to the test… Cali raised – Grew up in the SF Bay Area (Love my Giants, Niners and Warriors) and went to undergrad in SD and lived in LA. I’ve done my fair bit of traveling across the states and a bit internationally but California will always be home.

Turn on some music, I got my music… I’m partial to hip hop and r&b, especially from the 90’s, but am fairly eclectic in my tastes. If it was’t obvious by now, I especially love clever lyrics with deep meanings. “And that’s deep, how deep? It’s deeper than Atlantis.”