Personal Handbook

Intro ??

It's my personal handbook where I've described my overall vision on building products, based on my almost 12 years of experience in Engineering and Management. This handbook is a short guideline to my thoughts and approaches in my professional life.

Values and Culture

Same values and culture drastically simplify collaboration and the overall performance of people working together. Remember, the "people first" is a key point to achieve any results. When people join my team only because of current vision/technology I'll get a problem when the pivot happens or technology changes. Here are my key values:

• People first or First Who then What (Good to Great by J. Collins). There is no sense, what vision we have if there are no right people to build it.
• Love your craft, enjoy what you do.
• Be a team player. Help others, share your knowledge, achieve the goals of your own as well as team goals. Think about a whole company as about a team, not only the particular team you belong to.
• Work with a product as if it is your own. Grow it, evolve it, experiment on it to reach the best ????

I always share my experience with my colleagues. Once in a month, I make a sharing breakfast (if possible) or overall meeting with a whole Development Department. On such meeting everyone can ask me any question, even "Why I'm working here", or "What I was doing during the last week", but more often is "What we'll do with product X" or "What is our vision". Vision - is a Universe-centric term, without it the product is impossible.

Formula of success: right people, focus on problems, product vision

I use a product-engineering approach in problem solving. It's important for engineers not only perform tasks, but also understand the business problems which they are working on. While working in small teams, teammate should be able to influence the system design, product design, and make a great contribution to the growth of the company. Creating an environment that provides the necessary support and mentoring for the long-term development of employees is a goal.

I'm trying to share the Guiding principles, which are?moral values that set a standard for behavior and attitude within a workplace. My values:

• Be honest
• Communicate effectively, notify about problems as soon as possible
• Mistakes are normal, learn from them and share this knowledge
• Focus on a root of a problem, avoid superficial solution if possible
• The solution to the problem lies not in just solving it, but in making it the best solution. Although remember about caveats of premature optimization.
• An uninteresting task should be done in the best possible way. It's the way to find something new in the solution that you can learn from.
• The last one, most loved with a lot of sense ?? Technology does not replace people but complements them.
• First-class products are impossible to build with the seconds-class instruments (hardware, software, etc).

Organizational Frameworks

Don't copy others before you figure out why they did these specific steps. Stay small and nimble as much as you can to grow faster. Create, Innovate, Be ready to scale ??

Successful scale initiates from a small team where everyone does everything and then scales it, relying on the Spotify Squad model, to a group of teams with their Team Leader and Product Manager, and further with the SAFe or LeSS to Tracks, Individual Contributors, and Engineering Managers.

Don't hustle, wait to grow and then make the next structure step

Pay attention that some products need different methods to build them. From my experience, I had to develop IoT and SaaS products simultaneously. But those products were at different stages of evolution. So, we've decided to put the less mature and planned product to Kanban to speed up its development cycles.

Software Development Department (title doesn't matter) isn't a service for other departments. We're working together to build first-class products, that is why all engineers should be aware of the life of other departments. Communication is the key. From time to time initiate cross-department communication over the general vision. Such communications should cultivate new initiatives that could add value to the company and make the cross-department processes more flawless.

Management

For me, management is a classical term of 5 functional things: planning, supplying, motivation, coordination, and control. Not for each one, I pay the same attention while managing programmers.

• Planning. One of the basics that will keep a team and product healthy for long-term. 30% of the monthly time I pay for it.
• Supplying. Here I mean paying for 3rd-party solutions and various devices. It shouldn't take too much time and must be automated when it is advantageous.
• Motivation. One of the basics. My approach is based on the Herzberg's Two-Factor Theory. 30% of the monthly time I pay for it.
• Coordination. Mostly it should be covered with various automated metrics to catch up on gaps in my process fast enough. If it's impossible to use communication. 30% of the monthly time I pay for it.
• Control. If I have too much control something definitely went wrong.?The key decision here is the qualification of the team. The more qualified the team is, the less control I need.

Highly-qualified engineers require high-quality instruments. What they need, the company should give them. As a manager I always should keep in mind future budget ?? to give the worlds best to my engineers. If I hired the best one, I don't need to recheck their requirements, I trust them or ask to specify the details.

I'm mostly a process man with a strong focus on management. Nevertheless, I have a strong belief, that any manager should be hands-on his field of interest. In my professional life, I always participate in coding, system design, and PoC. Computer Science is a part of my life, especially Nonlinear system and Systems theory.

It's mostly about emotions than numbers

Remember that people aren't robots, they have emotions, that is why I follow the people first rule and consider the emotional part while making decisions.

Relations

A regular one-on-one meeting is a must. You should communicate with your teammates at any possible time, after meeting, in the kitchen, in the elevator, or even in the toilet. Call someone and discuss your thoughts, in a healthy culture, you will receive advice, or arguments that help you to move forward.

Respect the time of your colleagues. I always set meeting by the time multiple of 20 minutes and always prepare for the meeting (writing agenda, keep the topic in focus). I've rarely sent emails, more often have used Slack because there is an option to postpone a message. In such way I don't bother anyone in non working time.

Personal growth is bidirectional work. A manager should just show boundaries of the field of interests or possibilities, but the way is yours.

Hiring

For me, it's a very fundamental level to start anything. As I said people are the key. So, this process should be as perfect as a gem. I?spend a lot of time in communication with the recruiter and HR to figure out for which tasks we need an engineer. Technologies are secondary, but Computer Science and thinking power - are primary.

During my experience, I've built my own methodology and questions to discuss to find the best engineers on our market. Failures happen, but I learn on them and move further.

There is so much to say about offers, feedback, onboarding, mentoring, and setting first goals, that I'm thinking to tell it separately ??

Goodbye

The company grows together with its employees, it happens that employees grow faster or in another direction. We mustn't be afraid of letting people go, as it will be better for them, better for their growth, and possibly we will be able to work together someday again.

I always give honest and clear feedback to my colleagues, even when I need to fire them. Think about people at first, think about their future career, not about yourself.

When someone has passed a red line I always give them a second chance during a new probation period and will help to achieve discussed goals to keep them in a company. But if they fail after the probation period, just let them go, this work should be bidirectional, and fail is not completely mine.