# Adam Gask's Manager Readme

**Senior Engineering Manager at OpenTable**

# Hello, I'm Adam (but everyone calls me Gask)

This is my Manager README, a document that introduces you to my management style, philosophy, and expectations. The intended audience is primarily anyone who reports to me, though anyone is free to read it - or even provide feedback on it! 

I urge you to hold me accountable to my promises and to call out anything that might be missing from this document. Without your guidance, I will not be able to improve as a manager.

# As your Manager

If you report to me, here are my thoughts, philosophies and expectations that you might find helpful.

> I'm here to help and support you, to help you grow and succeed, to set the context for what you're working on and give you clarity and rationale of why we are doing it. I'm here to advocate for you and the team, within the company. If you seek personal growth and development I will be your accountability partner and hold you to the high standards I'm sure you're capable of. Fundamentally I believe in working together to achieve incredible things. 

Clear, honest communication. I promise not to leave you guessing what I “really” think or expect you to read between the lines of what I’m saying. If it’s not clear, and you have a nagging feeling, let me know so I can fix it! It’s not intentional. I’ll also reply promptly to you, or let you know when you can expect a reply.

My values are:

- We are a team first, the team is greater than the sum of the parts.
- We win together.
- We work on impactful things.
- We have fun.

# High Performance

One of core tenants is that we should continually seek high performance. This means many things to many people, to me this means:

- Deliver what we say we will
- When we say we will
- To a very high standard

# Personality quirks

I've been described as an excitable puppy. I often need very little encouragement to be a little daft and have some fun. I don't take myself too seriously and can often be found telling fantastic dad jokes. I love solving problems and working as a team. 

# Good to know

I'm dyslexic and can sometimes say the wrong words without realising it. There can be errors in my spelling, or grammatical mistakes in my written work/messages. I leverage AI, which catches most of these, but a few still slip through. If you have any questions please do ask and I am happy to clarify or explain things further. 

You can let me know of these things in real time like "did you mean X instead of Y"? If the mistake is written, dropping me a DM or comments in my documents is appreciated. 

I have two little boys and do drop off and pick up from nursery/school a few times a week. I might need to nip out a little earlier on these days and flex my time to do my favourite thing of the week. 

# Feedback is very important to me

I strongly believe in an open culture of feedback and improvement. For myself, where possible, I prefer you to provide direct feedback, but anonymous feedback is better than none. Likewise, I’m dedicated to giving you clear and timely feedback and hope that you’ll give me the same. I believe that great feedback requires three attributes:

- **Safety**  (you should feel safe to give and receive feedback)
- **Timely**  (provide feedback as soon as possible)
- **Constructive**  (giving/receiving feedback should have a positive impact)

# 1:1 meetings

1:1s are really important to me. I believe that these meetings there for you to set the agenda.

- What would you like to talk about? 
- What’s going well? 
- What’s on your mind?
- Is there anything I can help you with, or that you need from me?

Please use the agenda document I provide to drive the meeting, I will often and topics to discuss, but this is and very much should be your opportunity to take charge. 

These meetings don’t need to be status updates unless you really want to talk about project status or if there’s something you’d like to show me. If there are things that I want to ask you, I’ll do it through other channels, but this is your time. The duration and frequency are also up to you, but I generally start with 30-45 minutes weekly and adjust the cadence once we’re settled in and used to each other based on what _you_ need.

# My calendar looks scary, but I’m here for you!

If you need to talk to me outside our usual meetings and see a good time on my calendar, please schedule something (you don’t need to ask first). If there’s urgency and you can’t get a meeting with me for a while, send me a message on Slack or by email and I’ll make time.

# Process and Software Development

I strongly believe in putting people over process and changing process to accommodate our needs and goals. I value in getting something done over sticking to processes which slow us down. 

These are my values:

- Deliver fast, slice small, learn fast.
- I value speed, including proactive efforts that keep us moving quickly (e.g. writing tests, refactoring legacy code before a new feature, pairing on work to improve our code quality).
- I value prioritising tech debt.
- I value learning and sharing knowledge to make our team better.

# Learn Fast, Learn Forward

"_Fail Learn Fast, Fail Learn Forward" _

We get better by doing and by trying, so figure out the smallest thing you can do, try it quickly and learn from the experience. Rinse and repeat :)

It’s better to take action and do _something_ than to do nothing while you think about it for too long.

# Bring me Bad News Sooner Rather than Later

If things aren’t going well, let me know as early as possible. It gives us both the opportunity to take positive action (whatever might be needed) sooner.

# Transparency

I value transparency and will be as open with you as policy, legal and broader company/personal sensibilities allow.