# Krzysztof Witczak's Manager Readme

**Software Engineering Manager at Global App Testing**

# Motivation for this document

Communication is a skill. We all try to master it throughout our lives, but we still fall into multiple traps - all the time. It's easy to misunderstand each other, and remote workplace makes it even easier than before.

- One objective of this document is to help you understand my viewpoint a bit better, hopefully reducing chance that we will misunderstand each other in the future.

- Second objective is personal - writing this document is a short journey into more self-awareness :)

Version 1.0

# My role

My role as an Engineering Manager @ GAT means that I'm responsible for two, main areas:

- I'm a people manager for my engineers (usually 8-12 people);
- I'm a delivery manager for my teams (usually two);

People aspect is measured by metrics like:

- What is the work satisfaction score across my teams (eNPS)?
- What is the attrition rate across my teams?

Delivery aspect are measured by metrics like:

- Commonly used delivery metrics (DORA)
- Product engineering OKR's fulfilment

I do not receive tasks or jobs in order to improve these metrics - it's my job to measure them, analyse and improve if necessary. All actions related to recruitment, coaching, mentoring, process improvements are functions aimed at maintaining/improving situation in either people or delivery aspect.

# What do I value most?

- I value personal integrity. Transparency, honesty, being aligned with what I believe, and also admitting my mistakes.
- I value growth mindset. I spend a lot of time and energy at learning and improving myself. I believe more in hard work and GRIT, than talent.
- I value radical candor mindset. You can always count on me giving you feedback.
- I value ownership, autonomy and trust. I don't want to be micromanaged and I won't do it as well.
- I value order. I like when things are nicely organised, planned, well thought. However, I value more activity of planning, than following the plan itself - we need to be flexible.

# My Expectations

How to communicate with me:

- I like the most being messaged on Slack and have an async conversation. Sometimes I may need a couple of minutes to respond.
- If I notify you in Slack message or a thread, please give me a sign that you have read it or you will action on it. Sometimes it may be just a reaction like ☑️.
- I like the most when you give me feedback quickly, we don't need to wait for the next 1:1.
- I prefer well-formatted longer messages with a defined action and extra context, over multiple shorter messages that require me to drill down constantly.
- I love precision in communication.
- If you'd like to have a 5 minute call with me, please explain why. Otherwise I will get stress out that you want to quit!
- I also like exchanging recorded video messages on Slack. They can be very effective.
- If I ask you for updates or I'm nudging you to write something somewhere, that means I expect you to over-communicate a bit more.

My general expectations towards my engineers:

- I expect you to be accountable for your work and understand your role, your goals and the goals of your team. If you don't - let me know.
- I expect you to tell me about any troubles, blockers or roadblocks you encounter at your job. My duty is to eliminate these.
- I expect you to tell me, if you have too much things on your plate. My job is to balance the workflow - but I may miss things which are obvious to you.
- I expect you to work on your goals, that we've established together. I give a lot of heart into these - I hope you do as well.
- I expect you to make mistakes. If you don't, it means we're playing on "too easy" mode.
- I expect you to learn in your private time as well. Unfortunately, learning only at job is not enough to stay on the top of the industry. 

# 1:1s

- I usually schedule 1:1's on a weekly basis for 30 minutes with every engineer from my team.
- We will share a google doc that will contain agenda and notes from our meetings.
- I expect you to own the agenda of these meetings, and me to contribute to it.
- We can talk about current challenges or problems, give each other feedback for our recent work, talk about SDLC or improvements, your career, your growth, your goals, exchange things we've recently learned, perform mentoring sessions

# Personality quirks

- I like to joke a lot, and I sometimes use "funny voice" or "deep serious voice". That may be because of my RPG hobby... Don't be afraid to redirect me out of it if necessary!
  - That may also mean I'm more positively biased towards RPG players...

- I sometimes check Slack and other company channels outside of my working hours. If I - God forbid - start to message you out of your working hours, NEVER feel like you need to respond, unless it's an emergency.
- If you see that I'm annoyed from the start of the meeting, it may mean that I had a difficult meeting 5 minutes ago. Don't be afraid to call it out (and we can make 5 min brake) - I usually try to leave buffer of time to "go back to my neutral emotional state", but... I sometimes fail.
- I get annoyed for no reason by small sayings like:
  - "It's more optimal..." - no. It's either optimal, or not optimal. Sorry, that's what I learned on mechatronics studies.
  - "They always/you always do X..." - no. You're generalising now.
  - "It cannot be done..." - I'd rather say, that everything is a matter of time or a cost.