# Abhilash's Manager Readme **Director, Engineering at Think and Learn** # # My role - Hire, engage, and grow top talent (that’s you!) that produce invaluable experiences for our students. - Help understand the larger picture. I’m here to help and support you, set the context for what you’re working on, to advocate for you and the team with the rest of the company. - I am here to make sure our team is getting what we need from other teams, and that other teams are getting what they need from us; I'm also here to help make sure we are working on the right things, which is not necessarily everything we are asked to do. ## What do you do all day? Is it just😴meetings? 🤔 - Well, yes and no. As we are a growing team, I spend a lot of time on recruitment-related activities. I attend meetings to understand the context of things so that I can set the right priorities and make us succeed as a team ## Do you code? - I don't code anymore. (Long long ago, I used to be a Java developer, and was fairly good with databases too.)  # My Expectations - If I do something that negatively impacts your motivation level, you would be doing me a huge favor if you let me know about it, as soon as possible. - Please reach out to me in case of any concerns on any other front. If you're not comfortable giving me some feedback yourself, I'd love for you to give it to someone above me in the management chain so they can anonymously relay it to me. - I am here to make sure you are both successful and happy: I want you to improve your technical skills, grow your career, enjoy your work, and believe in both our combined mission. - If I do something that feels more like telling you how to do your job than setting context, you'd be doing me a favor if you let me know about it, as soon as possible - I should never be a blocker to priority work being released or on any technical decisions. However, please document them somewhere. # 1:1s - One-on-ones are your time. I may probably have some things to discuss with you, but this is first and foremost your opportunity to let me know how you're doing, what you need, what you wish could be different, how you feel about our team and your teammates, what your career goals are... etc. If you'd like to give me a brief status update on things you're working on or that you're stuck on, that is fine with me, but those are generally better suited to a quick chat separately. - Frequency, length, and format: We will start with 30 minutes biweekly and adjust from there. Meet/Slack/Phone - let me know what works best. - The best 1:1s are focused beyond the moment: Your career development, team strategy, and opportunity, the greater Projects, etc. Feel free to come with a topic you’d like to discuss. I’d love it if you spent a few minutes beforehand preparing so that we can get the most of our time. - Ask me anything, the vast majority of the time I’ll answer. If I cant, I will say I cant. - Let us use a shared doc to track the agenda being discussed in each meeting. Note down things throughout the week that you want to chat about if you think that will help (It is hard to think of or bring up things spontaneously). # Personality quirks 1. I take abrupt pauses when I talk. I am aware of this and am working on it. 2. I can get distracted 1. When this happens, I may be short with you. 2. Please call me out on it if you feel this is happening, I am working hard on this. 3. I have [strong opinions, weakly held](https://www.saffo.com/02008/07/26/strong-opinions-weakly-held/). This does not mean they are correct or you should blindly believe them. I love to debate, understand and see an issue from all sides. Question everything I say, we’ll all be better for it. Please disprove me so that I can learn with you. 4. I am hard to read, especially while working remotely. 1. If you are unsure what I’m thinking, just ask 2. If my reply is - nothing, I would have meant nothing. 5. I hate surprises. Please keep me informed about your observations within and outside the team 6. I’m worried about wasting your time and unintentional micromanagement – so I may err on the side of fewer meetings. Please tell me if you feel I should be more involved, I will do that. I personally prefer the information to be available from a place I can pull from - a Jira report or a dashboard for instance. 7. I try to be up to date on emails, slack messages, WhatsApp, SMS, and I have a fairly bad addiction to Inbox zero. # Want to Talk? Let's Talk - My calendar may appear very intimidating. Most of them are less important than spending time with you if you want to talk with me. - Ping me via Slack or WhatsApp or call me, or block time on my calendar to talk whenever you want - When you ask "hey, do you have 2 minutes?" in Slack, please [add the topic you’d like to discuss](https://www.nohello.com/). Otherwise, I tend to think you are going to ask me "do you have 5 minutes for me to tell you that I’m quitting".  # What does helping me look like? - Saying yes, but always ask, [When](https://www.nirandfar.com/productivity-and-saying-no/). Don't drop things you are doing, and blindly say Yes - Telling me when something is screwed up. - Hold the mirror for me. Give me feedback – on me, the team, the way we are doing things. - If we agreed on something, keep each other honest on it. - Background - [here](https://review.firstround.com/radical-candor-the-surprising-secret-to-being-a-good-boss). As Kim Scott explains, caring about someone may mean telling them something that may hurt them at the time. If you don’t understand something I’m saying, you can always ask me to be more blunt — if there’s feedback to be given, part of my job to make sure you understand the feedback. If I use too much jargon, let me know. - However, if I am behaving with brutal honesty (plain-speak - Obnoxious Aggression), let me know. - If I’m getting too involved in a project that you think is going OK, please let me know you’ve got it! - If you have something critical to discuss, let me know. We will find some time. - If I dropped the ball on something important, let me know. If I’m unable to handle everything on my list, that’s often a sign I should delegate or re-prioritize. - If you see a discrepancy between this and my behavior, tell me that I am messing it up.