# John Cline's Manager Readme **Senior Engineering Manager at Blue Apron** # My Job 1. Attract and Retain World-Class Talent (that's you) 2. Set context That’s it. - If I do something that negatively impacts my ability to retain you, you would be doing me a huge favor if you let me know about it, as soon as possible - If I do something that feels more like telling you how to do your job than setting context, you'd be doing me a huge favor if you let me know about it, as soon as possible # Disclaimer This should not be read to in any way apply to any other group or manager at Blue Apron # This is Weird - Quite likely, yes - We'll learn more about each other organically - This was the best way I thought of to quickly and efficiently mention a few things - This is not a presentation, but an [infodeck](http://martinfowler.com/bliki/Infodeck.html) - Part of having this be known by the team is so that you can all hold me accountable for my commitments Heavily inspired by [Roy at Netflix](http://bit.ly/welcometonetflixandme) # How I Approach My Job I value: - Empowerment - Growth/development/coaching - Teamwork - Transparency - I am not the authoritarian boss - I believe in and practice [servant leadership](https://www.greenleaf.org/what-is-servant-leadership/) - Your role on the team is to ship great software to our customers - My role on the team is to make sure you have the skills, space, and context to do that in the best possible way - Outside of the day-to-day, your time at Blue Apron is one stop along whatever career path you end up. I want to make sure that you get out of your time here more than you put in - I am here to help you progress in your professional life (to whatever goals you want) # I Default to High Autonomy - My default management mode is to let you handle your work without much guidance or direction from me. - We hired you because you are smart and capable. I trust you to know your own limits and get support when needed. - I may provide suggestions, but I will try to not force a solution. - At the end of the day, you all own the code and know more than I do. I will trust your judgement. - Everyone is different, and I realize some folks need more guidance than others. If you need more direction from me, please let me know as soon as possible. - I’ll get better at finding this line as we get to know each other better. # Transparency - I will work to be as open as possible about what’s going on with our team, department, and the company. - My calendar is public, and very few events are private. - This company may require me to not tell you about something before a certain date (e.g. stock option plan changes which managers knew a week before they were announced).  This has happened once in the last year, when we IPO’d. This happened once in three years at eBay for a security breach. - This company cannot require me to lie to you.  That's never happened, and I've never been asked to do so. If asked, I would not do so. - I bias toward transparency and candor.  You can ask anything. Most of the time, I'll answer.  Rarely, I won't. I'm committed to never lying to you. # Personality Quirks - I can be hard to read - This is not intentional - I mean what I say - A non-response means I do not have a response (and also no judgement) - If you are unsure what I’m thinking, just ask (again, transparency) - I can get stressed out - When this happens, I may be short with you - Please call me out on it if you feel this is happening and I will address it - I have a tendency to want to be right - In discussions I can keep pushing a point because I think it’s right, not because it objectively is - Please call me out on it if you feel this is happening and I will address it - I have had problems in the past with not doing a good job sharing knowledge - When I first started managing, I would not pass on knowledge of systems - I would take certain pieces of complex work because it was easiest for me to do it - This disempowers the team - This prevents you from having the opportunity to grow - This makes me stressed out - I should never be a blocker to priority work being released or on any technical decisions # On Feedback - I love feedback - Feedback is critical to your success here, and mine - Three dimensions are required for people to continue to give you feedback: - Safety (unlikelihood of being punished for giving feedback; should be high) - Effort (The amount of work in order to give feedback, also known as "how much do you argue when people give you feedback?"; should be low) - Benefit (how likely is it that giving you feedback will materially impact your behavior? should be high) - Let me know if I don't do well on any of these three dimensions - I'll let you know if you don't do well on any of these three dimensions - I care about kindness, but I'll optimize for effectiveness and within that optimized effectiveness try to be as kind as possible - My job is to make sure you got the feedback - This is something I historically have not been good at, and am working on it (I have been too kind at the expense of being effective) # Work Hours - I'll endeavor not to talk to you about work things outside of work hours (~10a to ~6p), assuming we're not at some sort of after-hours work function - I may slip - Unless I clearly indicate it's an emergency, if I reach out to you via IM or email outside of those hours, feel free to ignore me until next day - Even within these hours, I don't expect you to be responsive 10a-6p.  Be reasonable. - I'm disinclined to call you or page you outside of business hours.  That means that if I am, it's an emergency. This shouldn't happen very often (so far, it has not) - All of this is just for me contacting you, not being on-call or being paged by production systems. - This does not apply to you contacting me. Feel free to reach me via IM, email, SMS, whatever, whenever you need to. # Want to Talk? Let's Talk - I am in a lot of meetings - Very few of them are more important than spending time talking with you if you want to talk with me - Feel entirely free to put time on my calendar to talk whenever you want # Put Time on Your Calendar? Sure….. My calendar for a random July week in 2017:   - 6 open hours out of 40 (it’s usually around 15).  - They'll fill up too Forget My Calendar: - You may not find a slot on my calendar in any given day - If you need to talk, let's talk - Let me know via IM or email and I’ll reschedule - Very few things I’m doing are more important than spending time talking with you if you want to talk with me - If you see “DNS” - it means Do Not Schedule, and is meant to give myself some working time. - You have complete permission to overwrite these blocks - My team is my first priority # One on Ones (1:1s) - By default we will meet every two weeks for 30 minutes - We will do 60 minutes for performance review and goal setting conversations - 1:1s are for you - You own the agenda in our 1:1s - I may have things I want to talk about (in the effort to further you or the team) - 1:1s are not for status updates unless you want to update status - Either of us might be up to 5 minutes late (5 minute lateness is normal for us here).  I'll commit to not be more late than that.