# Chris Lowe's Manager Readme

**Engineering Director at USAA**

# Dude, what is this thing?

Howdy! This is my Manager README, a document that helps introduce you to my management style, philosophy, and expectations. The primary intended audience is anyone who reports to me, though anyone is free to read it. Please treat it as a reference on how I will conduct myself as a manager, and what I expect from you.  

Feedback is highly encouraged. Call out anything that might be missing from this document. Without your guidance, I will not be able to improve as a manager.

**Disclaimer:  ** This document only applies to me, and in no way should be considered to apply to any other team or manager at USAA.

# What is MY job?

As an Engineering Manager at USAA, it is my job to:

1. Attract, Retain and Develop world-class talent (that's you!)  
2. Build high-functioning, well-executing engineering teams   
3. Set context for you and the team

For most people, I will not be your last manager so instead I seek to accelerate your career while under my stewardship and I will help you transition into a bigger, better role when the time comes. However, if you want to move on to another team mostly due to something we could have done different, you would do me a **huge** favor by talking about it and giving me the chance to make things right first.   
  
I attract talent by always being on the look out for great people. If you have someone you think would be a fit, I'd love to hear about it. Furthermore, everyone on the team is expected to participate in hiring, interviewing or developing new team members and, of course, themselves (self-development). 

I build high-functioning teams by giving high degrees of autnomomy, encouring growth and following up on work items and overall guidance for the team to improve. I expect you to continuously master your job as a software engineer - it is a life long persuit! 

I set context for you in meetings and 1:1s so the more engaged you are and ask questions, the more context you'll get and the better prepared you'll be. Context can be anything from the the latest financial results to macroeconomic trends to business unit changes and anything in between. I will also set context for the team in staff for things that affect everyone. If you want to hear about something, just ask!

# My Expectations

I drive towards 100% personal accountability. Most people love to admire problems, I want to discuss solutions. You are expected to make the workplace better - see a problem, fix a problem.

You will face conflict and strife on the team, that's natural. You are expected to approach every situation with two facets: a) approach from curious and b) assume positive intent. No one comes to work to cause problems (usually) so deploy empathy and try to work through issues in a productive, positive manner.

- Positivity
- See a problem, fix a problem 
- Be a multiplier
- Help define a vision and strategy for success

You will continue to become the best engineer you can be. To that end, I subscribe to the Software Craftmanship principles:

- Not only working software, but also well-crafted software
- Not only responding to change, but also steadily adding value
- Not only individuals and interactions, but also a community of professionals
- Not only customer collaboration, but also productive partnerships 

# 

# What do I value most?

Of all the things I exepect from you as being a member of our team (and contributing to it being high performing), these things I value the most of all:

- Imperfect action over analysis paralysis. I tell others that "you can't drive a car that's in park" and there are rarely any decisions that cannot be undone or tweaked later. I  **highly, deeply, vigoursly** implore you to read and understand this article: **[https://firstround.com/review/...](https://firstround.com/review/speed-as-a-habit/)**  

- Be an ego-less team players. Actively make others better and happier to be on the team. Don't care about who gets credit. 
- Embrace change. Our organization is in a deep state of change right now so being a change-agent and helping others get through it as a team will make everyone's life easier.

# Team staff and individual 1:1s

There are two meetings in a week you should consider mandatory: your 1:1 and our team staff. 

**One-on-ones**

- A bi-weekly 30min-1hr private meeting where we’ll work on challenges, goals, and priorities to support you and play to your strengths. This is **your** time and **your** meeting (but I schedule it because I'm more prone to schedule conflicts). I expect you to come prepared with topics. I will always have questions, ideas or feedback if we get to my topics as your topics are priority #1. 
- As part of this, I’ll do my best to create a safe space for you and to know you as a person, and connect together as humans to whatever degree feels best for you. The more you're willing to share, the better of a manager I can be to you. Apparently, people are complicated!. 
- I will provide clear, direct, 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. 
- That being said, if I mention something to you several times, take that as an indicator I want you to work on it. Sometimes I won't _specifically_ ask you for something because I want you to realize the context clues (I'm not being difficult, in later career steps this ability will be tantamount to your success).
- I believe that these meetings are for you to set the agenda. However, this is not the only time you can reach me - **if there is ever something on your mind - please reach out.** If I am busy, I will find time for you. Likewise, if we talk a lot normally and you don't feel a dedicated 1:1 is needed that week, you are welcome to request we cancel it. I don't want to meet just to meet.  

**Team staff**

This weekly 1hr meeting is a time for the whole team to come together. 

- I will cover topics relavent to the team, organization or company. I admit I find many things interesting and want to share topics that you may not equally find interesting. I would appreciate if you entertain me for the meeting. 
- Please provide me feedback on what topics are interesting, what's missing and how to make it a more effective meeting. 
- I encourage participation and discussion (most people don't want to hear me talk for an hour). I start almost everyone staff with time for peer-to-peer recognition. You are encouraged to find something to thank or recognize someone else for doing, however minor, as people are more inclined to help others who they feel positive about.

# Career Development

Similar to setting my expectations of personal accountability, your career is, well, yours. I will coach, I will offer feedback. I will provide you with outside perspective. You may know where you want to be, but when you’re living it at the moment it can be hard to see if there’s a gap and where. I will partner with you to line up the opportunities needed for the growth you are targeting.  
  
But at the end of the day, it’s _your_ career. You set your goals. You set your priorities. You determine whether you make the time to get there. Please keep in mind that these things take time and you have to play "the long game" as you likely won't be VP of Engineering next year!

# Personality quirks

**Here is an incomplete list of weird things about me:**

- I give medium to long answers to questions and end them with "sorry, I know that was a long answer." I try to provide context and background on explaining something. You can preempt/steer me by asking for a direct answer or asking for the background on it.
- I have bad time-management (I'm working on it!). If that bothers you, let me know ahead of time and I'll do my best to keep you up-to-date on my schedule and be on time to our meetings. Our corporate culture tends to have meetings run long as well. 
- I have lots of ideas. Sometimes they are good ideas, often times they are bad. Hear me out on them and work with me on if I'm requesting you to do something like change a priority or direction or just rambling and no action is required.
- I don't like feeling like I'm being ignored. Whether that is you not responding to an email or text (doesn't have to be instant) or being on your laptop the whole time in a meeting. It distracts me and it makes me feel like you don't value the work we do together. Please, "be here now."
- I don't like being the last to know. I give my team broad autonomy to go and do what they want but I don't want to be blindsided by requests or issues from other teams or management without hearing from you first 
- I try to stay current in news and pop culture. I may use words or phrases you don't expect a manager to use (🔥). Roll with me here. Also, I watch **wayyy** more YouTube videos than should be considered healthy but I now know **a lot** of random information!
- I coach and mentor by analogies. Youll hear me give guidance as the captain of your ship lost at sea. Or explain our company financials as a stack of donuts and Yelp reviews. Usually, they're pretty good (self-rating here) but sometimes make no sense or don't match the right context. Feel free to ask for a mulligan if I didn't hit the mark. 
- I prefer text messages/slack over email and phone calls. I am in a lot of meetings so most of m communication is asynchronously. If you need something, especially urgent, use these channels. I have no issues with face-to-face or email discussions, they just dont happen as often as the others.

# 

# Where to focus on your first 90 days?

When you first join the team, your singular goal should be building trust and relationships. 

I recommend doing the following:

- Get to know the agile team you'll be on - be proactive and reach out to them yourself 
- Get to know the unit you're in - start with "Hi, I'm new here but I think you're on my team?"
- Read the wiki and consume everything you can from it, asking questions to me or your team along the way

**Hard Truth:** in the first 60-90 days you will drain organizational resources to get you up to speed. This is expected and OK. What I expect from you is that every day you're getting better, expanding your network and relationships and seek to improve the team. Eventually, you will start contributing more than you are taking. **_My_** goal is to get you to cross that barrier as quickly as possible. 

# And finally, in conclusion...

I know you have a choice when it comes to companies and teams to work on. So a big THANK YOU for being you and for being on my team. I hope we have an epic time together, grow deep bonds and build some awesome (some might say, legit) products together. Welcome aboard!

# \*\*\* CHANGE LOG \*\*\*

- 11/01/18: Initial readme
- 12/8/18: updated sections: software craftmanship, delivering business value, expectations

zzScratchNotes (IGNORE)

didn’t mention delivering business value and having your folks work on important things that matter to USAA.escalation is not admitting failure Working with Chris: Be straightforward and honest. Be a team player, create an environment others succeed. If you see a problem, say something or fix it. Have self-awareness and try to better yourself. Be persistent! Ask questions and don’t be intimidated