# Christian A. Rodríguez's Manager Readme

**Engineering Manager at BrainHi**

# Motivation for this document

I sat down to write this document so I could detail what is expected of me as an Engineering Manager at BrainHi, and what I expect to accomplish in this new role. I hope that by reading this document you get a sense of what to expect from me moving forward, and also a sense of my expectations of the people I'm collaborating with. If you're reading this, that probably includes **you**.

# My role

My role as the Engineering Manager is to be **accountable** for the output of the Product & Engineering part of the BrainHi organization. That includes **feature delivery** , **product strategy** , **technical excellence** and the **operational success** of the BrainHi Product. Also, as the manager of the team my role is to be the voice of my team to the rest of the company, to **uplift** my team and help them **grow** in their careers at BrainHi.

I will help my teammates by driving most of the technical planning and supporting the **Product Manager** in preparing work for the engineering team. I will be measured by how successful the team is at delivering the projects assigned to us. I will also be measured by the success of the projects themselves in driving the business forward. I will also continue to support the team during day to day code reviews and writing code as staying close to the technical work is important for me to be successful in everything laid out above.

# What do I value most?

I value  **transparency** and **trust**. Trust in each other is the most important value for me, and creating a space where we can all trust each other is what I strive for every day. You can help me by being upfront about anything that's going on and know that I will do my best effort to support you in whatever way I can. 

However, I am also very upfront, and that can sometimes be seen as confrontational. I want to let you know that my intention is never trying to attack a person directly, but to question whatever idea we are discussing to its full extent. If at any point you have a feeling that what I'm saying is coming off as something personal, please let me know at some point so that I can course-correct.

I like fast turnaround and **acknowledgement** on **written communications**. A quick reaction on Slack or an acknowledgement message to know things that we’re discussing are moving. If it’s an “FYI” there’s no need to respond. I value communication a lot, and will strive to not be overbearing in how I communicate. I don’t expect you to respond to anything in real-time. However I do expect you to close the loop on everything we open. If it’s on my plate, I will do the same.

# My Expectations

Please feel free to **chat** with me over Slack **whenever**. If I'm available I'll try to answer directly, if not I'll answer when I'm back on the computer. If something serious or **client-facing** is going on, I encourage you to **give me a call** so we can hop online together and figure it out. Even if I'm not skilled in the problem we're solving, I will do my best to serve as a strong sounding board for you.

Likewise if I need to talk with you about something most of the time I will either bring it up during our 1-1, or ping you over Slack to chat whenever you are next available. If I feel it is something very important I will probably give you a phone call instead, to try and work on the issue with you quickly.

I believe **coding work** is done when the feature is out in **Production** , we have seen clients using it, and have completed whatever **Release process** we have defined. As we grow our team, I expect that anyone who is working on a project will work on planning, building and releasing the project. This includes, but is not limited to, both the Product Manager and the Software Engineers working on the project.

If you feel that there's something I did where I could have improved I also encourage you to bring it up, either over Slack or over a quick call. I will do my best to act on your feedback.

# 1:1s

The time during our 1-1s is for both of us to chat so that I can either help **unblock you** on any issues that you surface, or **get your insight** on the things I'm thinking about or working on. I have a **running Notion document** for every 1-1 we have that I will definitely share with you. The document will help set an **agenda** so that we can both come prepared depending on what we talked about previously and want to talk about. It will also serve to jot down any concrete **Call to Actions** that need to be acted upon by either of us.

**The time is really yours** to talk about anything that's in your mind or think it's important for me to know. I would also love to get your feedback on how I'm doing and anything you think I can be doing better, and would prefer to have that ongoing feedback happen in a 1-1 setting. If for some reason we need to cancel our 1-1 I will be pretty aggressive in rescheduling to make sure we have that time, because it's important to make space for that conversation, especially since we are remote.

# Personality quirks

I'm the type of person who is **hyper-online. ** I usually read most things people post really fast and sometimes tend to write my immediate thoughts before having enough time to think them through. I like to be up to date in my emails, slack channels, Notion docs, and any other work-related tool that we use to communicate. I also tend to be a bit strong in the way I communicate which may come off as aggressive.

Part of being hyper-online is that I tend to forward emails, newsletters or anything else that comes into my feed that I think people would benefit from. My intention is always to share knowledge on topics that I think would be interesting for folks at the company.

The main thing that I dislike is people committing to something and not following through. I believe we can avoid this by setting realistic expectations, and making space for any work during our planning process.

# Where to focus on our first 90 days?

For the first 90 days my plan is to **literally plan things out**. My goal is to drive a planning process where the team and I can set clear **goals** and **projects** to work on that are aligned with the goals. We will also do some prioritization and rough estimation to get a sense of the workload that we believe we can accomplish during this time. I believe this is the most important focus to start with, since it's an exercise that we will be performing for the first time.

Afterwards, I will focus on the same thing I have been doing which is helping push the technical side forward by doing the upfront spec'ing and serving as the Product Manager's technical counterpart. I will also have a new focus of communicating upwards with the Leadership Team and sideways to the Operations and Sales Teams, to ensure everyone is aware of the engineering team's status with respect to the plan we designed.

We will recalibrate that plan during a 30 day checkin, and re-calibrate after 60 days since things will definitely change. Given that we are a startup, those checkins I expect will be enough for us to stay nimble and flexible. Once we are close to the end of the timeline I will plan to do a similar planning process, incorporating all of the learnings of our first 90 days.

Because all of this is very new to both of us, it's important for me that you participate actively in this process and help the team move the needle forward. I believe everyone on the team has a unique perspective and insight that will be important in deciding what to focus on, and that definitely includes you if you are reading this document.