# Daniel Shir's Manager Readme

**Head of Accounts at Via**

# tldr;

- **About me:** I'm [Daniel Shir](https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-shir/) from Tel Aviv, Israel. I have over 20+ years experience in software development, 10+ years managing people
- **Approach: ** You'll often find me focusing on clarifying goals, prioritizing properly and making sure we deliver proper results to our customers  
- **Role at Via:** I lead the accounts department which is made up of two large groups - Rider Account (RAC) and Driver and Agent Management (DAM)
- **Expectations:**
  - **Me: ** Remaining flexible, keeping an open mind, fostering collaboration and knowledge sharing  
  - **You: ** To be goal driven, keep commitments, communicate well, embrace and learn from mistakes

- **Feedback: ** I can be very blunt sometimes, but you can feel free to do the same with me

# Motivation for this README

Well, to tell you a little bit about myself so that we can have a more productive working relationship. Every person is different and I'm sharing my motivations, values and quirks. Hopefully this will help us to work better together.

# About me

I'm Daniel Shir, and I live in Tel Aviv, Israel with my wife and 2 kids (5yo + 3yo). I love to read, run, cook, and everything coffee related. Before Via, I was the co-founder and CTO of Acumen.io, a startup focused on software engineering productivity. 

For most of my 20+ year career I've been an entrepreneur, my passion was in seeing customers excited about something that I built and created. I started my career in cybersecurity in the army, but afterwards I transitioned to real-time communications, then mobile, and finally data engineering (quite a ride). 

I'm a big fan of "calm intensity". I try to listen and gather as much information as possible before chiming in. 

# What do I value most?

- **Your Judgement - ** Got an idea you believe in? Champion it, you're the expert on the subject.
- **Experiments** - This is everything we do in software, we try things and if they don't work out we change them.
- **Feedback** - It's our way to craft a better company around us.
- **Autonomy** - Owning your work makes you make better decisions **.**

# Expectations - The Two-Way Street

**What you can expect of me:**

- **Adaptable Plans** : No plan is set in stone. It’s the act of planning, focusing on objectives and understanding their significance, that truly matters.
- **Collaborative Approach** : I won’t drop top-down orders. I'll lay out the strategy and impact, but I count on you to bring stakeholder insights to the table and speak up if things seem off-kilter.
- **Sharing Knowledge** : If I learn something vital, you'll hear about it. Knowledge hoarded is knowledge wasted.

**What I hope for from you:**

- **Keep Me in the Loop** : Need help or hit a snag? Let’s tackle it together.
- **Be Goal-Oriented** : Share your objectives and let’s brainstorm ways to get there.
- **Honor Your Commitments** : If plans change, give a heads-up.
- **Stay Balanced** : Slack isn’t your master. Keep your calendar updated, and remember, it's okay to hit pause on notifications and close it. Do reply to Slack and email messages within a few hours though.
- **Celebrate Team Efforts** : Give credit where it’s due.
- **Embrace Mistakes** : They happen. What matters is what we learn from them

# Management Philosophy

- Family first. When working I expect you (and me) to give 100%, but during family time you can disconnect completely. You'll see me doing this twice a week as I spend time with my kids.  
- I actively work to create leaders. Leaders create impact and impact is what matters.
- We all make mistakes, we're people. The important thing is to learn and adapt our processes so that they don't happen anymore.
- Communication is crazy important. Bad communication is to blame for 99% of the problems in an organization.
- I'm obsessed with developer productivity. If you feel like something is holding you back, say something.
- Not everything is fun, but we distribute the work anyway. Some tasks are abysmal, there's no way around it. If you're into war stories I have quite a few to share.

## 1:1s and Skip Levels

These meetings are yours. Share your goals and let me know how I can support you. To make the most of our time:

- Share your topics in advance
- Prioritize, and don't shy away from the tough stuff.  
- Think about whether a topic might be better suited for a team discussion.  

Let’s skip the status checks during 1:1s; we’ve got other platforms for those.

# Personality quirks

Every person is different, and we all have some quirks. Some of mine - 

- **Blunt ** - I can be very blunt with my feedback sometimes, if you find this uncomfortable then please say something. I don't take it personally, feel free to also be blunt.
- **Comfort in chaos** - I'm an entrepreneur with all that comes with it, I live very comfortably with unknowns and a good measure of chaos. 
- **Coffee** - if you run into me first thing in the morning, give whatever I say a "coffee discount".