# Fernando Serrano's Manager Readme **Engineering Manager at Yalo** # Motivation for this document This is my Manager README, a document that helps introduce you to my management style, philosophy, and expectations. The intended audience is primarily anyone who reports to me, though anyone is free to read it - or even provide feedback on it! Please treat it as a reference and promise on how I will conduct myself as a manager, and what I expect from you. I urge you to hold me accountable to my promises, and to call out anything that might be missing from this document. Without your guidance, I will not be able to improve as a manager. # My role [I'm the person who helps you](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servant_leadership), our team and the rest of the organization to grow gracefully and consistently. I'm constantly listening, observing and thinking what's the best way to combine your talent with the business needs in order to produce extraordinary results for both parties. I'm also constantly looking for the best talent. So you'll see me on the front line of the hiring process trying to bring awesome people to our team. # A bit about me I am an enthusiastic people-oriented person with the excellence to deliver process improvements and application developments. I'm passionate about organizational design and management because it's art, it's a team effort and makes a difference in peoples’ lives. I can envision people interactions and consequences. Efficiency, fairness, and simplicity is my mantra Do you want to know more? take a look [here](https://nandosb.github.io). ## Myers-Briggs type ![](https://s3.amazonaws.com/managerreadme/images/Screen Shot 2018-08-26 at 20.53.05.png) As many others human beings, I have [strengths and weaknesses](https://www.16personalities.com/istj-strengths-and-weaknesses). I'm aware of both and constantly trying to find the right balance. # What is my management style? I mostly lean on the following two principles to help you to success: | **1) Boost intrinsic motivators through autonomy, mastery and purpose model** [See more here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc) | ![](https://s3.amazonaws.com/managerreadme/images/Autonomy-Mastery-Purpose.jpg) | | **2) Situational leadership model.**[ See more here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situational_leadership_theory) | ![](https://s3.amazonaws.com/managerreadme/images/situational_leadership.png) | ## What else can you expect from me as your manager - **Provide context.** Most of my day is spent collecting, filtering and sharing context/information from across other projects, domains, and product lines. I’ll try to push information to you as much as I can but feel free to ask about anything else. - **Provide an outside(ish) perspective.** I won’t be working on your project day to day but will be close enough to have informed thoughts. - **Cheer.**  I will celebrate your successes. If you're not a person who self-promotes, please let me do it for you. Tell me when things go well, share the things which make you proud, and I'll cheer/share appropriately. - **Firefight.**  Accidents are not just a result of the isolated actions of an individual, but rather result from missing safeguards for when things inevitably go wrong. When that happens, I'll be with you providing support. Don't hide it, do the opposite, let me know as soon as possible. - **Your "poop umbrella."**  I'm here to combat anything that gets in the way of your productivity. So please be vocal about what's going well and what's not. I can't get rid of poop if I don't know where it is! # My Expectations Here is what I expect from everyone I work with: - Tell me the truth. Don't omit anything - Master your profession. Be passionate about what you do. - Meet your commitments. Do what you yourself said you will do. # One-on-ones I will put some time on your calendar each other week for one-on-ones. Chances are it will be for 30 minutes. If you need more time or more/less frequent meetings, let me know and I will adjust. One-on-ones are **your** time. I will probably have some things to discuss with you, but these are your opportunities to let me know how you're doing, what you need, what you wish could be different, how you feel about our team and your teammates, what your career goals are... etc. These are for the conversations you might not necessarily have with me when we're sitting at our desks amongst coworkers. If you'd like to give me a brief status update on things you're working on, that is fine with me, but those are generally better-suited to a quick chat or a Slack message while I'm at my desk. # Giving me feedback If you have feedback for me, please give it. It could be something you liked and would like to see more of, something you thought I could do better, something you thought I totally screwed up, or something that doesn't fit in any of these categories. Even if you think it might not be the case, I do want to hear it. And if you think I don't want to hear it, I'd love feedback on why you feel that way! If you can give me this feedback in-person, I'd prefer that. If you're only comfortable kicking off a discussion with an email or a Slack message, I would rather you do that than not bring it up at all. If you're not comfortable giving me this feedback yourself, I'd love for you to give it to someone above me in the management chain so they can anonymously relay it to me and I can work on it. # Career development - Your career is **yours**. - I will coach, I will offer feedback. - I will provide you with an outside perspective. You may know where you want to be, but when you’re living it in the moment, it can be hard to see if and where there’s a gap. - I will partner with you to line up the opportunities needed for the growth you are targeting. - But at the end of the day, it’s your career. You set your goals. You set your priorities. You determine whether you make the time to get there. # Personality quirks - I am a big believer in “[no broken windows](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory)” when building software: I like clean logs, clean exceptions, clean metrics. Once things go south here it’s very hard to truly understand the health of the system. - When you call me “Fernando” I’ll get serious and defensive. My parents used to call me that way when wanted to scold me. Please, call me “Fer” or “nando” - I firmly believe in autonomy and accountability. - Time heals all... bullshit! specific actions over time do. Let’s work on that. - Most of the time, hope is not a good plan.