# Gil Raytan's Manager Readme

**Director Of Engineering, Israel site manager at Twist Bioscience**

# Motivation for this document

My manager README was written to introduce my management style,&nbsp;philosophy&nbsp;and&nbsp;expectations.

I&nbsp;believe in constant learning and self improvement, and thus this document will be updated and improved on a regular basis, to reflect the process that my site and&nbsp;myself are going through.

You may find in here my promise for the way i will conduct myself as a manager, and my expectation from my managers, colleagues and reporters.

Feel free to provide feedback or discuss it with me

# My role

**I am managing the R&D site of Twist Bioscience in Israel.**

**My responsibilities are focused on&nbsp;leading and managing the people, projects&nbsp;process and products of the site to help the company&nbsp;achieve our goals.&nbsp;**

**Responsibilities**

- **People & Strategy**
  - Management: Build, train, and strengthen the management level in the site (to be able to effectively run and lead the teams)
  - Culture: build and continuously improve the values of the site: Resilient, professional Proactive, collaborative, ready to improve&nbsp;
  - Hiring & PR: Drive the Hiring and PR efforts of the site
  - Growth: Enlarge the career and growth opportunities for the employees on the site
  - Site management: Run and manage the policies of the site, provide our employees the environment and ability to succeed&nbsp;
  - Strategy: continuously identify organization / structural gaps and fine tune to meet the company goals&nbsp;

- **Technology**
  - Continuously oversee the technology stack, work with the stakeholders to allow exponential improvement introducing new tools and frameworks
  - Identify bottlenecks and gaps, `and work on plans (Architecture) to meet the goals and KPI set for the products
  - Leverage our technology and find opportunities to improve the business

- **Project & Execution & Process**
  - Work with the stakeholders, product teams, and managers to build the roadmaps of the site
  - Continuously improve the processes (dev methodologies, project management) in the site, to improve the throughput and the quality
  - Oversee the execution of the projects on the site
  - Ensure the reliability of the systems, improve monitoring and alerting procedures&nbsp;

- **Business**
  - Work with the stakeholders to identify business opportunities, and leverage them into actual business pillars
  - Improve our data, and insights to make a better decisions

- **Communication**
  - Maintain effective communication with internal and external stakeholders, and work on solving issues
  - provide accurate status and updates to relevant stakeholders
  - represent the needs of the site
  - Communicate the border picture to the team in Tel Aviv

In order to align the management and the employees in the site on the way i evaluate my (and the site success) i can up with the following&nbsp; **KPI's**

- **Projects**
  1. Throughput and quality (how many projects / features and of what quality we are able to deliver)
  2. Impact (What is the business impact of what we do)

- **People**
  1. Attracting, retaining and promoting talent
  2. Satisfaction level

- **Technology & Business**
  - New business opportunities&nbsp;and&nbsp; initiatives:&nbsp;Leveraging technology and business opportunities to support the company growth

# What do I value most?

- **Pro active and can do&nbsp;approach**  

  - The day to day in a tech company is not always easy. we face a large variety of challenges: (from&nbsp;technical&nbsp;to organization ones). We will be only able to prosper if we always ask ourself where can me make an impact, what can we do better, and make sure we do anything to make the hard things happen.  

- **Continues&nbsp;improvement:&nbsp;** ask yourself what can we do better, learn, retrospective, take action items and follow them. Thats the only way we will improve and get better.
- **Data driven decisions and conflict resolving**
  - Effective organization is able to make the right decisions quick enough. Gathering all the data we can, will enable us to draw insights and conclusions, resolve arguments, and run effective decision making processes.

- **Ownership**
  - There is only one person that is fully responsible for the success of what you do. Take ownership and lead the way.

- **Process oriented management**
  - Every interaction should have a defined process in place. Once its there, its easy to set expectations and execute with no need to touch base or follow up.&nbsp;On the other hand, if i do follow up or have a need to touch base too often - it either means that we need to set a new process, or that its not followed up as expected.

# My Expectations

## Engineering managers

Engineering managers are the key level of every technological organization. They are the ones who manager our people and execution and handle urgent requests and. If the teams are manages well, most likely that he organization would run a successful execution.

I am here to support my managers, and help them be successful in their role.

I see the managers the owners of two important pillars:

Execution and Growth.

The manger is responsible to lead the team, improve the quality and throughput and to meet the expectation of the organization.

In addition to that, a good manager will dedicate some of their time to grow to team.

\*&nbsp;Hire, train and developer our people, grow our future leaders and help everyone to be the best at what they do.

\*&nbsp;Identify bottle necks and opportunities, build and advocate for future plans that would help us iterate and be better at what we do

# 1:1s

I am having a weekly 1:1 with my direct report, as well with my main peers.

Each meeting would have a defined agenda (through Lattice - great App btw).&nbsp;

Our goal is touch base, discuss our most important topics and challenges.

Another goal, which is not less important, is to provide an ongoing feedback

We will take action items and review them in the beginning of the next meeting.

# Weekly Lunch time

It is important for me to meet with \*everyone\* in the team, hear how its going and&nbsp;get to know you better.

I am using our Lunch time on a weekly basis, to grab something to eat together and get a chance to chat.&nbsp;

# Hiring Process

Hiring is one of our key activities.

Once we decide the open a new position we will have a kick off meeting with the hiring team.

The goal is to align every interviewer on the profile that we are looking for, and the process we are going to have. A good process will give us the relevant inputs we are looking for, to help us form an opinion and make a good decision. It important to define what would be a success in the position, and to deduce the skillset we will need based on that.&nbsp;  
We make an effort to simulate the future work, and to tackle the day to day issues and topics we discuss. We want to give the candidate a good idea of what to expect in this position, and also to evaluate their skills with "real" scenarios and problems.

In order to grow, to improve and reach out goals, we want to attract the best talent for each position we open.

We have few goals to achieve during the interview process

\*&nbsp;asses the skillset of the candidate, and their professional fit.

\* Evaluate their soft skills and values, as well their ability to integrate the our group effectively.

\*&nbsp;Describe the most accurate and comprehensive picture to the candidate. help them imagine how is it like to work in the role, and understand if it meets their expectation and passion.

# On boarding process

Wohoo! You are about to join Twist! Exciting!

You will start your on boarding process with multiple sessions that giving a greater context on what we do.

The technology, system design and tech stack we use, the product, business, customers and processes.

The idea is to give you a chance to meet several team members from different roles and departments,&nbsp;and on the same time, to get the information which will help you see the whole picture.

After a short technical ramp up, you will start working on simple tasks that will give you a better sense of what your are going to do.

After 90 days, we will have the first structured feedback sessions. Its important for us to understand how its going, and what we can do better. We use each pf the on boarding processes to improve things on our side, update the docs, and iterate to have a better plan for next time.

&nbsp;On the same occasional we will define your OKR's for the first time.

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