My ReadMe as a Manager

WTF is this?

You might be wondering what is this post about? I would for sure if I were to look at something like this. I mean who writes a ReadMe about themselves? But, hear me out on why I wrote a ReadMe about how I work and what I expect of the people I work with.

In a Nutshell

• This is a guide about how I work, communicate and the expectations I have from the people I work with.
• This guide would help us to work together in a seamless fashion and reduce surprises as much as possible.
• I'm looking forward to getting to know you and working together.
• This article is not intended to replace or override the relationship and mutual understanding we will build as we work together. Its intention is to give you an idea of how I think and how I work.

Who am I and what do I do?

I am Abhishek, the Director of Engineering at Fyle. I?joined Fyle ~6 years ago. I started as a frontend developer and as the 5th employee of the company. Today, I lead most of our customer-facing applications like the Web app, Mobile app, Chrome Extension, Outlook Add-in, Slack Bot, Teams Bot etc.

I am responsible for making sure engineering as a function delivers great value to the product and business. I am also responsible for hiring and growing different teams, coaching Team Leads and Managers, and helping you with your career aspirations

Work Timings

I usually work from 10 AM to 6 PM from Monday to Friday.

Management Style

I'm not a micro-manager and strongly oppose micro-management.

I expect the people I work with to be making decisions a lot without me. The decisions should have been well thought and have definite arguments/facts. In doubt, always reach out to me for clarifications.

I expect you to show clear ownership of any area that you are working in. I would expect you to drop notes in a public setting immediately after our discussion and tag me so that we're on the same page (as and when needed)

If there's any tech debt/bug in the area you're currently working in, I would expect you to highlight it and spend some time paying the tech debt or fixing the bug(s). I believe in the saying

Leave the code better than you found!

I take action items quite seriously and I expect you to know what yours are, when they are due, and get them done as per the promised dates. In case something is going to slip, I would expect you to communicate it as soon as you realize we can't hit the deadline/due date instead of waiting for me to check-in

I am quite data-driven, I like Mixpanel dashboards indicating the usage of current and new features, the more data you show me, the easier for me to agree with your decision.

I would expect you to include data as part of your Engineering Design and post-mortem of a feature.

Handling Conflicts

• I prefer healthy debates about any choices we make, I believe in the narrative of Do not reinvent the wheel. If something is available out there I would like us to build on top of it
• I strongly believe in the narrative of Good artists copy, great artists steal!
• Once a choice is made, I would like us to not go back on it unless we made a blunder to start with. If we did make a blunder, I would like you to own it up and put detailed notes of what happened and how we could minimize this in the future

1x1s

I like to talk to each of my direct reports once every week and once in 6-8 weeks for skip-levels. I would be setting up calendar invite for every person who starts working with me. In case I forget, please remind me to add it.

I usually use a separate 1x1 private Slack channel for all our 1x1 conversations. Few things that I would like to discuss every 2 weeks:

• how are your current initiatives going?
• How has your learning been?
• Are you being challenged enough and are you enjoying your work?
• Once a quarter I would love to discuss your career goals and aspirations

I like to come prepared and would prefer you to be prepared as well. To enable deeper discussions, I would be adding notes throughout the week to discuss in the next 1x1 meeting. I would expect you to add anything that you would like to discuss in the next meeting throughout the week.

Anything put in the 1x1 shouldn't need immediate attention and these would set the agenda for the next meeting. If there's anything urgent please DM me, like a P0 issue or any emergency where you need help.

If you want to reach out/talk to me earlier than our scheduled 1x1, please go ahead and set it up on the calendar, if the calendar is full, please DM me, I should be able to move my meetings around.

Feedback

I believe feedback is the only true way to grow and it is a two-way street. I will be giving feedback in our 1x1 meetings as and when required/needed and I will make sure the feedback is very actionable which you could follow and improve on a week-on-week basis.

I would be following up wrt to the actionable items to make sure we're working towards improving. I prefer giving feedback in private and lauding in public.

I would expect you to be very open about giving feedback to me - I wanna grow as well! The best way to gimme feedback is to be very direct and honest about your thoughts.

If you could gimme specific examples of what went well or what didn't - that would help me a lot to get better. Once we are on the same page wrt a certain feedback, I would be putting actionable items on me and would make sure I get better at it on a week-on-week basis

Things I am NOT good at - My Blindspots

I am a fast talker and at times you might feel I am trying to rush through a conversation, please feel free to ask me to repeat if you didn't follow what I meant. I am working on trying to reduce this, it would take a while for me to get rid of this completely - Please bear with me.

I would ask you to repeat a certain thing a few times - this would be because I am trying to understand things in detail and I might try to probe a bit deeper to make sure I have understood your viewpoint.

Things I do off work

I love to read, like a lot, and 3 books that I would recommend anytime

• Sapiens
• Shoe Dog
• Zero to One

I am a history buff and if you wanna talk about Indian History, World War 1, 2, Hitler, you know whom to ping ??

I have just started investing in the Stock Market and I have a lot to discuss and share! I can go on for hours and hours, talk to me, if you wanna lose your money! ??

I love to go to Maiyas for a cup of coffee, if you're in Bangalore, we should go there.

Credits:

• https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/my-design-manager-readme-brendan-mcweeney/
• https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/readmes/