# Nir Cohen's Manager Readme

**VP Engineering at Strigo**

# this.me

Hey, and welcome to Strigo.

You're reading this because we are going to work together to deliver business value as effectively as possible. For us to do that, I need you to understand how I think, what my expectations from myself and from you are, and how I behave in certain situations.

I am aware that clear expectations are a fundamental requirement for our relationship, and so I will try to avoid [Null Process](https://www.kateheddleston.com/blog/the-null-process) as much as I can.

This document, like me, is WIP, always. It does not replace 1:1's, but should rather be what you'd expect to find @https://docs.nir.me.

# What's expected of me

First and foremost, I need to make sure you're ok. Yes, business is why Strigo exists, but it will be worthless if we're not humane. Then comes everything else.

Everything else:

- **Provide context.** I will, to the best of my abilities:
  - **Help you put your personal life first**  (to a reasonable degree, don't abuse it). I will work **hard**  to prevent burnout.

  - **Draw a full picture of the business** and its priorities, so that you can make good decisions.
  - **Shield the team** from people trying to divert our attention and avert focus.
  - **H**** elp remove obstacles** that prevent you from getting sh!t done. [The ownership of removing the obstacles](https://hbr.org/1999/11/management-time-whos-got-the-monkey) is on you, but I will be there to help with whatever is necessary.

- **Enable growth and optimize velocity**
  - **Optimize for business goals. ** Our team exists to support the business and for no other reason. I will hold myself accountable for anything that prevents us from doing that. When I'm asked, I will answer that anything can be done, but that there's always a single top priority and that any changes in requirements (and there will be) have both side-effects and tradeoffs.
  - **Help you grow** your mental and technical self, as well as your self-management skills, [with regard to your expertise](https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/05/09/daniel-pink-drive-rsa-motivation/). If I'm not consistently **helping you to help yourself** improve, I'm not doing my job. Hold me accountable for that.
  - **Develop management and leadership.**  I will help you grow as a manager. I will prevent people who don't fit managerial roles from retaining the position. My philosophy on that can be found [here](http://sysadvent.blogspot.com/2016/12/day-16-trained-engineers-overnight.html).
  - **Attract the best talent, and fire when necessary. ** This means no compromises on the quality of our engineers in favor of having more people.
  - **Methodically and consistently increase overall effectiveness.**  I optimize for productivity. I will help you become as productive as you can be in the context of what you're expected to deliver as a function of your knowledge, abilities, and personal life constraints.

- **Change my behavior. ** I work to make you as effective as possible. I'll try and change to accommodate that. i.e. I won't likely say: ** **"This is how I am and that's it.".

# What you should not expect from me

- **To micromanage. ** I don't micromanage well, and [I'm fine with that](https://hbr.org/2016/08/why-is-micromanagement-so-infectious).
  - **To manage your time**. You're an adult. If you need help optimizing it, let's talk.
  - **To manage your tasks. ** Our team's business is to deliver a working product, not to finish tasks. Manage tasks as you see fit. ** **

- **To agree with you on everything.**  
- **To respond to Slack messages as soon as you send them. ** Unless something is urgent (in which case you should call or come over), I answer when it makes sense to me, or I will never be able to concentrate. This is especially true after work hours. I don't expect that from you either.  

**I will provide feedback.**

# What I expect from you

**Make your personal life your first priority**. I see my children at a ~reasonable hour every day and take my daughter to kindergarten in the morning. I spend time with my significant other, I go to the gym, play PC RPGs, and I pick my daughter up at different times during the week and leave early to do so. 

I expect that you do the same in the context of your responsibilities outside of work, or you will not be able to focus.

Having said that, there are exceptions (though we will have to try and keep them far apart). If production is on fire, we need to be there.

**Call me out on mistakes.** I'm a human being. Therefore, I constantly make mystaiks.

I expect that you will directly, authentically say it to my face, without holding anything back, as soon as possible. There's no reason to throw blame (as I won't with you either), but I want to know when something I do or don't do should be changed, and I want it to be changed as quickly as possible.

Know that your view of me is as important as my view of you. If you constantly feel uncomfortable with what I do or how I behave, it will affect business and other employees.

**Do as little work as possible to achieve as much as possible. ** I don't expect you to work long hours. Actually, I expect you to consistently optimize for less. I try to work around 7.5 hours a day, and almost always succeed. If you feel you need more time to work on something, do it, but don't work to work. If you can't concentrate, get up and go home, take a nap, whatever.

I expect that you overcome the following psychological barrier: "They say fewer hours, but they don't really mean that". I mean it.

I'm very aware of [Parkinson's Law](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Parkinson%27s_law) and live by [Deep Work](https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Work-Focused-Success-Distracted/dp/1455586692) (to a pragmatic extent - I'm not a cultist). Don't stretch time and achieve the same results.

I do expect that while you're still feeling productive, and unless you have specific life commitments, you continue to provide value during the day.

Specifically, more hours will be requested only in the context of specific goals we're trying to achieve or if production is alerting us that something's broken. I will work to minimize the goals that require additional working hours to the minimum.

That being said, you're not me. If you feel you need to behave differently, please do. 

**Optimize for business value. ** I'm not your business, Strigo is. If something is right for Strigo, optimize for it but **let me know** so that I can either help you drive it, or contradict it.

**Be available to others. ** We're a small team, which means that other people will need you. I expect that you're available to help them, as long as you decide the time for it. Don't let it defocus you. ** ** At any given moment during the day, you should default to "I'm busy, schedule time with me".

**Be able to change**. You're human, which means that you need to improve. [To improve you need to change](https://slides.com/nir0s/low-level-change#/) things with your behavior, methodologies, and approach. I expect that you accept that and invest time and your mental capacity in doing so.

**Take ownership**. If you find a problem, whether organizational or technical, take care of it. 

- Don't take care of everything though. 
- Prioritize by importance first, not by urgency. 
- Delegate by context, [but own it](https://hbr.org/1999/11/management-time-whos-got-the-monkey). I will help where necessary.

**Deliver based on mutual agreement.** If you say something will be done at a ~specific time, make it so (see Parkinson's Law as a reference). If you can't, raise flags. Software is work in X \* constants + Y \* trial&error + Z \* unknowns, so I will never ask you why you didn't finish something when you said you think it should have ended. Instead, I will always ask you to optimize for next time and hold you accountable for not raising flags when something strays off track.

**(Learn to) plan before executing. **A lot of developers like to start coding immediately once a task is given. I expect that you work towards not doing that. Not planning before execution very often yields undesired results.

**Let me know when you're not coming to work. ** I don't count vacation days. I believe that people become stressed when they need to juggle themselves, their kids and their partners because they had a bad 4 days and now there aren't enough days left. ** ** You should be able to vacate when you need to.   

Schedule a day off in your calendar and notify me on Slack. I will let you know when that's not possible.

**Do not email me. ** I follow emails for very specific purposes, none of those are for internal interactions. I'm on Slack or on the phone.

**Respect others' workspaces. ** Don't prevent others from doing their work. Respect other people's time, and their need for focus.

For me, headphones or a closed-door means I'm busy.

**To constantly give me consistent feedback. On anything, really.**

The primary way for me to improve is by receiving feedback.

T

# What I expect you not to do

- **Be an ass towards others. ** I will not tolerate it. It ruins others and the company.
- **Lie.**
- **Be me.** I'm me. You're.. well.. not. I will not ask you to behave like me. I've made that mistake in the past.
- **Execute without understanding the value. ** Make sure you know why you're implementing something. The quality of your work is directly proportional to your knowledge of the problem the user is experiencing.
- **Come to me with a problem before having thought it through. ** Offer a solution if possible. If not, let me know that you tried thinking of solutions, and "here are the problem's variables".

# Traits I value most

Authenticity, directness, discussion, feedback, and focus.

- I like people who say exactly what they think should change, without finding workarounds to say it. I believe this will yield the best results.
- I believe that discussion and feedback are necessary to improve the company, its products, and its systems. If something needs to change, I like that people talk about it, reach a conclusion, and then receive feedback to see that the solution sticks well. 
- I value people who focus on what's important at any given moment, to be effective and efficient (in that order). [Efficiency is worthless if we're doing the wrong thing](https://hbr.org/2017/03/great-companies-obsess-over-productivity-not-efficiency). Defocusing yourself and others wastes time - the most valuable resource we have as humans.

# How I am (not how you should be)

- **I have ADD on some level. ** I always appreciate help bringing me back into things.
- **I suck at niceties.**
- **I get irritated** when people repeat the same things more than twice.
- **I will sound too heated in discussions** in favor of good outcome and less waste (don't confuse that with anger).
- **I dislike complex solutions.** Like with math, if something isn't elegant, it's also probably not the solution. There's a certain aesthetic in designing systems I try to work towards. By the way, you will probably hear me say that quite a lot (the math thing).
- **I'm a freak for productivity**. You might hear that a lot from me.

# Feedback Protocol

As I previously stated, I will give you feedback, and expect the same. I will not place blame and will only get angry if I see that you're damaging yourself or others.

I want to remind you that I'm direct and authentic, so expect feedback in that form. I will not be unkind.

That being said, I will make sure that feedback:

- Improves results (i.e. you will get a raise).
- Does not cause fear (i.e. you won't get fired).

# Meeting Protocol

Meetings are a potential waste of time. For that reason, there are clear rules I enforce:

- **Single owner** that manages the meeting.
- **Clear agenda and desirable outcome in the calendar**. If there's no agenda, don't accept. I won't.
- **Start on time. ** If someone is late, start without them. If you can't, cancel the meeting. Don't wait for people! It's bad education.
- **Default to "Decline". ** People tend to schedule impromptu meetings. You should decline unless you know why you're invited. You should also decline if you feel you have nothing to contribute. Just make sure you let them know.  
- **Always decline or accept. ** When receiving an invite, either decline or accept. Tentative means people will have to guess and not responding will have them wonder.
- **Action items with ownership are mandatory. ** A meeting is useless if there's no TODO at the end of it. Also, if there's no owner to each of them, they won't happen.
- [Schedule ONLY if necessary](https://hbr.org/2015/03/do-you-really-need-to-hold-that-meeting). Use the link to decide.
- **Minimize attendance. ** Only invite required people. Don't invite nice-to-have-you's. A thumb rule is no more than five people (except for retrospects, etc..). More people, less potential value from the meeting.
- **Feel free to get up and leave** if a meeting is useless to you, or if you have nothing to contribute. Don't worry, you can do that to anyone, I included.

# How you should manage my time

My calendar is public. You can schedule time with me whenever you need it.

Regardless of that, whenever I'm not officially busy (i.e. focused on something, talking to someone else, or in a meeting), we can talk.

I'm working on myself to live by the calendar. I usually do, but not always. I will make it always.

# 1:1's are where we solve problems together

We will have a 1:1 at the very least once every two weeks, for 30 uninterrupted minutes.

You will be able to raise any issue that comes to your mind as long as it's personal or strategic. I expect that you come prepared, as will I.

While not binding, here's a proposed format:

- Any self-improvement idea/issue you want to raise.
- Any cross-team interface ideas/issues you want to raise.
- Any feedback that you have for me.
- Any feedback that I have for you.
- Any strategic (no tasks!) subject you'd like to raise.