# Jon Kruger's Manager Readme

**Senior Engineering Manager at Upstart**

Hi, I’m Jon, and this document is not about me.  OK, parts of it are about me, but it’s really all about you and helping you understand how I work so that you can thrive.  Just like everything, this document is a work in progress and I hope to continually find ways to improve it.

I hope that this team will be the best team that you ever work on.  I hope that we all do something great and that we get to enjoy doing it together as a team.  I hope that we love coming to work, not just because we like what we’re working on, but because we love the team that we get to work with.  The success of this depends immensely on you.

## Things I think are important in teams

- **No Limits** - I want people to feel like there’s no limit to the impact they can have here.  If you feel that way, you will start to think bigger. If you are feeling limited by something, please let me know.
- **Mutual Respect** - Team chemistry is sacred.  You don’t have to be best friends with everyone on the team, but we all need to treat each other with respect.
- **Learning Culture** - Technology changes exponentially fast these days, and we all need to take time to learn new things or we risk becoming obsolete (personally and as a company).  This shouldn’t only happen outside of work.
- **Technical Excellence** - What we do is hard.  If we do a sloppy job, that will come back to bite in the end.  We can’t achieve greatness if we’re not good with technology.
- **Distribute Knowledge** - I don’t believe that you gain power by hoarding information.  Don’t be a single point of failure, and work to break down knowledge silos.

## Traits I value most

- **Team Players** - Be a good communicator, work with others, value the success of the team over your own personal success.
- **Problem Solvers** - Find creative solutions to problems that you see, convince us why it’s important, and then execute on it.
- **Continuous Improvement** - Life is too short to waste time not wanting to be great, both professionally and personally.  Let’s all try to get a little bit better every day. I see “failures” as learning experiences, not something negative.

## Things I don’t like

- Not treating others with respect.  Notice a pattern here? :)
- Putting yourself above the team.  If the team succeeds, we all win. Don’t run over your team in an attempt to advance yourself.
- Talking about people behind their backs.  If you have a problem with someone, talk it out.  If you need me to facilitate, let me know. There is way too much at stake here.

## What I think my job is

- Empowering others and holding them accountable
- Pushing context down so that others can lead and make informed decisions
- Casting vision
- Training the next generation of leaders
- Protector of the team culture (along with the team)
- Helping to facilitate decision making
- Being a servant leader

## What I think my job is not

- Being a micromanager
- “Managing” things.  The word “managing” implies babysitting, and you don’t need a babysitter.
- Being the person with the most knowledge of the system
- Being the hero who takes all the credit
- Being the person who makes all the decisions
- Being the person who makes everything happen 

## How I work

- I have a long history as a developer and I really like writing code.  But I think it’s more important for me to be a leader, so I will prioritize being a leader over writing code.  I also didn’t go into leadership roles to throw away my technical skills, they’re worth too much.
- I have a wife and 3 kids, ages 11, 8, and 6.  I generally will not stay at the office late because of that.  I also log in at odd hours and work. This has caused some people to think that I work really long hours all the time.  That is not the case, and I don’t expect you to work the way I work. I value work/life integration (for myself), meaning that I don’t draw firm lines between work and life and different times of the day, but I place a lot of importance on my time with my family.  I want you to do it your way, you don’t have to do it my way.
- I want you to work in the way that best produces positive outcomes for you and the team.  If you need to focus for a day and you want to work from home, then do that. I will sometimes do the same.  I value results over seeing butts in seats.
- I sometimes think out loud or propose things to provoke discussions.  Please don’t just accept everything I say because I’m the “boss”. I welcome dissenting ideas and want to hear your opinion.
- We all have a finite amount of political capital that we build up with people, and every interaction you have people either earns political capital or spends it.  Understand that there will be times that I’m not able to make something happen for the team because I don’t have the political capital to spend on it (or need it for other things).  I will try to explain this when it happens.

## My expectations for people on the team

- Treat everyone with respect.  If you say something that is factually true but you say it in a disrespectful way, you didn’t win.  People hear disrespect louder than the truth you’re espousing.
- Communicate well with everyone.  If you’re working from home, don’t say to someone, “We’ll work on this tomorrow when we’re all back in the office.”  Get on the phone, get on a video conference, and work on it today.
- If you give me feedback, you are doing me a **huge** favor.  When you’re in a leadership role, it can be difficult to get honest feedback.  I have extra respect and appreciation for team members who do this.
- Let’s be open and transparent with each other.  If you don’t feel like I’m being transparent enough, let me know.  This is something I’m working on.
- Let me know if you’re running late, not coming in, or working from home.
- I don’t expect you to respond to emails or Slack messages during off hours.  I will try to not send things during these times, but sometimes I will. If I really need you to respond to something during off hours (like if production is blowing up), I’ll let you know. 

## 

## MY VALUES

## LEADERSHIP \>\>

- Set clear expectations and hold people accountable
- We shouldn’t hire smart people so that we can tell them what to do, we should hire smart people so that they can tell us what to do
- If I’m not trusting my people, that’s my fault
- Strong technical performers need a technical career path other than just management
- Show people the value of their work
- Give people enough context and information so that they can make informed decisions on their own
- Create a learning culture
- Encourage and develop leaders at all levels

## STRATEGY \>\>

- Find what brings exponential growth, not linear growth
- Technology changes faster than ever, and only the innovators will survive

## PLANNING \>\>

- Value long term thinking over short term thinking, but sometimes the short term is more important
- When you’re playing from ahead, you can take advantage of opportunities that you can’t if you’re playing from behind
- Being overly optimistic won’t change reality
- Bring projects to teams, not people to projects 

## PEOPLE \>\>

- Hire smart people and empower them to be awesome
- Find self-motivated people and create an environment that motivates them
- Hire T-shaped people (cross-functional specializing generalists)
- Emotional intelligence is extremely important, especially for leadership positions
- No limits – remove things that limit people’s potential impact and they will start to think bigger

## TEAMS \>\>

- No leader, no matter how smart, can compete with the collective intelligence of an empowered group of people working together well
- Optimize for high performing teams
- Do more of what works and less of what doesn’t
- Teams over individuals
- Goals over roles

## TECHNOLOGY \>\>

- Technical excellence is the fuel for high performing teams
- Maintaining software is like flossing – regular care and preventative maintenance prevents disease from setting in
- Expect change – build more modular systems
- Standardization is the enemy of innovation
- Automate as much as possible