# Andre Vieira's Manager Readme

**Engineering Manager at Personio**

# Motivation for this document

Hi there!

This document was created with two purposes in mind:

- As an intro to my mind and how I like to work and operate, so that I can be made accountable when we work together;

- To help me create alignment and focus on my day to day. Everyone has their own set of values but sometimes it's easy to forget them.

# Disclaimer

This document only applies to me and should be in no way representative of the working culture in my present employer.

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# My role

As an Engineer Manager I'm here to achieve one single goal: Create fertile grounds for a healthy and high-performing team who wants to learn and contribute to the business cause. 

This includes:

- Removing roadblocks and aligning priorities, by ensuring individual contributors have everything they need to do their tasks in an optimal manner.

- Mentoring. Helping you learn and grow. Setting clear context so that any member of the team can be successful by their own definition;  
- Planning and working on business processes and technology to build an organization that focuses on their non-functional requirements;

Although I'm the Engineering Manager, I'm here to serve you, not the other way around. You work for this company, not for your manager.

# My values and expectations from you

What do I value the most?

**Professionalism.** I get frustrated when people are not professional. I generally like when people join meetings on time and also come prepared to those meetings. Please manage your inbox and IM in an efficient manner. Label your emails, separate them into categories if needed, RSVP to meetings and if you are not available update your IM status.

**Pro-activity**. Pro-activity is contagious and can be a huge asset to have. I'm usually inspired by colleagues that are proactive in their work. Colleagues that ask insightful questions and have an hunger to learn more. Don't wait to be spoon-fed. Take initiative.

**Direct and honest communication**. As long as it is constructive of course. I will be requesting changes and I will be providing improvement points and criticism when I find adequate. You might think at times that I'm not being fair. If that is the case, pull me into a meeting and tell me. I might be wrong. I often am.

**Don't bring me problems, bring me solutions**. That is how you can help me the most. As you know managers don't have an hyper-focused style of work. We use all sorts of working hats and deal with problems from all sorts of domains during the day. We are generalists. This means that it's not as easy for us to hear a problem and immediately offer the best solution without context and some time to think.

# What you can expect of me as a Manager

**Openness to failure. ** Expect me to make mistakes and hold me accountable when they happen more than once, because I will do the same thing with you. A mistake is only a mistake when you do it more than once. They are amazing learning tools.

**Questions.** I'll be asking you a lot of questions. That can be annoying at times but usually I do it to either better understand the current context of a topic or I'm just trying to make you think outside the box. 

**Truth and honesty.** These are the foundations of every relationship. Let's be honest and share success and failure stories.

# My availability

Despite how busy I might appear, I'm always available to assist you. Reach out to me. If you need to talk, lets talk. It could be about that interesting new technology you've heard about, that user story that is giving you too much trouble, that disgusting pineapple pizza you ate yesterday. Anything!  
  
I will be doing the same thing with you.

# 1:1s

I like to use a fixed structure to 1:1s. This does imply there's no preparation though. It's just that some managers like to adopt a rigid structure to these meetings which ends up being in mid-long term being a waste of time in my perspective. 

You decide how often you'll want them and also decide about what you want to talk. No one should be the designated lead of these meetings. Sometimes you'll be the driver, other-times it will be me. ** **

The major focus will be on you of course. Your work, your goals and your current development.

Once in a while I might bring a new format to these meetings  but I will let you know about that in advance so that you can prepare.

# Personality quirks

I've been told in the past that my written communication is very direct and strongly differs from my spoken communication. It's hard to include emotion in written sentences and I'm usually very straight to the point. If at any point you are struggling with that please reach out to me directly.