# Laurent Clouet's Manager Readme

**Engineering Manager at Qonto**

# Motivation for this document

My main motivation for this document is to help people that I manage directly or indirectly to understand my way of working, how I can help them and what are my expectations.

# My role

I help my organization to have teams that function well and deliver. I help my direct reports to keep their teams motivated by providing a clear strategy.

I am here if you need to remove obstacles and ensure smooth communication between different teams.

# What do I value most?

I like to keep clear and transparent communication with my direct reports. 

I ensure that teams are focused on the relevant topics and that they fully finish their projects before starting new ones.

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# My Expectations

My expectations for my direct reports are to lead their teams by taking the actions that they think are needed. I like to get updates from them on their actions and I am of course here to help them if they are stuck.

I also require them to push forward to fully finish their projects by properly testing them, deploying them, and analyzing their impact with metrics.

When we face live incidents, I ask for clear and concise communication in order to understand what is wrong and how we can quickly fix it. Afterward, I expect blameless postmortems, in order to understand what were the causes of the incidents and to define concrete actions to avoid such incidents in the future.

I do not expect my reports to work overtime. I favor communication during working hours and try to reach reports outside working hours only in case of emergencies. 

# 1:1s

I have weekly 1:1s with my direct reports. We can then use this time to align on different topics. I use shared tools in order for us to write upfront the possible topics to discuss, and to keep track of our previous 1:1s.  
I like when my reports bring up their topics and make sure to discuss them first.

I also have regular skip-level meetings with indirect reports, in order to get feedback from them and ideas for improvements. This helps us to keep open communication.

# Personality quirks

I have to constantly switch contexts from one meeting to another. Because of that, I can sometimes not fully get your requests without all the background information. One way to help me is to properly summarize your context and your problem when you need my help.

I really enjoy it when my reports share their ideas and proof of concepts about new things with their colleagues. Even if we cannot always turn these ideas into new features, it is always great to explore new areas.