# Thomas Peng's Manager Readme

**Data Engineering Manager at Zapier**

# Motivation for this document

I hope that the process of writing this and keeping this document up to date will help me learn more about myself as a manager/leader. At the same time, I hope this information gives others a base of information for us to build a good working relationship!

# My role

I'm the people manager of the Data Engineering team. Our job is to make all the data that we might need available for reporting and analysis. This team includes the following groups:

- Data Engineering
- Data Warehouse Engineers

My job is to cultivate a safe and rich environment for the team and individuals to grow and thrive. I do this by doing the following:

- Aligning our team's goals with the company
- Partnering with various teams who rely and depend on our work
- Providing clarity on the priority
- Supporting & Developing each individual to be an expert and excellent teammate

When it comes to mentoring and developing people, I will work with you to develop a growth plan and coach you through it. I can play a variety of roles depending on what you need. Do you need me to hold you accountable? Do you need inspiration? Do you need help figuring out direction? Let's work together and move forward. 

Here’s a list of what I’m responsible for:

- Building trust on team and with other teams
- Developing people
- Building awesome teams
- Reviewing and managing performance
- Coaching
- Understanding the root problem and guiding the team to choose solutions
- Overseeing and driving projects
- Analyzing risk probability, impact, and mitigations
- Hiring of team members
- Communicating the vision and architecture of the team

# What do I value most?

Honesty - Be honest with me, if someone else helped you with your work, give them credit! If you are unhappy, let me know so we can see if there's something we can do about it. If you made a mistake, come clean so we can solve the issue and then figure out if we can avoid it in the future. 

Feedback - I value feedback about me and my team. I promise you, I will consider your feedback and make adjustments if I agree. I take time to reflect on things so if I disagree, I will also let you know and propose alternative adjustments/changes. 

When there are conflicts, I like to realign and agree on the goal and review intentions. I also like to take time to reflect on what is causing the stress or conflict for myself or others on the team. Sometimes this can be done quickly and other times, it might require that people involved in the conflict cool off before coming back to resolve the issue. 

Weaknesses:

- Often when you approach me with a problem, I jump to offering solutions. I know that sometimes folks just want a sounding board or just want to be coached to find the answer. If I jump to offering solutions, tell me it’s not what you need right now. 
- When I’m under stress, I tend to be a lot more authoritative, curt, and direct. I usually realize this soon after it happens. I will need some time to reflect and recharge with quiet time. I will usually apologize if I acted inappropriately. 

# My Expectations

_Skills Expectations_

I have high expectations for you to be skilled and continually grow at your craft. We should definitely work to make sure you have lots of learning opportunities and projects to apply your skills!

_Mistakes_

When you make a mistake, it’s best to let me know right away. I’d much prefer to hear it from you before I hear it from others. I am here to support you and figure out how we can resolve the issue, move forward, and figure out what we can do to avoid similar mistakes in the future. 

_Health_

We work remotely and I expect you to take care of your health. Many people work through being sick. My rule of thumb is the following: if you wouldn’t step in an office with your co-workers because you’re sick, then you’re sick enough to take a day off and rest. I believe an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. We have an unlimited vacation policy. Please take the time for your physical, spiritual, and mental needs! 

_Disagree & Commit_

It’s inevitable that at some point you will have a different opinion of how we should do things as a team. First, I invite the team to disagree! Disagreement allows us to take on different perspectives and arrive at better approaches and solutions. Please speak up and share your opinions. Second, commit to the decision. Once a decision has been made you should commit to doing everything you can to make the decision successful. You can read more about disagree and commit [here](https://hackernoon.com/disagree-and-commit-the-importance-of-disagreement-in-decision-making-b31d1b5f1bdc). 

_Partnership_

Build partnerships with other teams. This means that you empathize with their struggles and understand the root cause so you can help figure out solutions. You will also have to push back on some requests because it’s not the priority or it’s not an issue that technology will solve. Being a good partner means giving positive and negative feedback and assertively pushing back. Being a good partner does not always mean saying “yes”. 

_Over-communicate_

There’s no such thing as over-communication. I know this one can be tiring, but if you find people asking you the same questions, take it as a data point and see if there are better ways to share the information. There are tons of pieces of information vying for people’s attention. If you have an important message to get out, say it, write it, slack it, and do it over and over until the message gets through. This is also where I can help, I will help you echo the message and also use my channels of communication to get the word out. 

# 1:1s

One on one meetings are your meetings. Please take time to prepare for them so that I can help you through whatever you'd like to talk about. 

I like to solve problems and sometimes you just need someone to listen. Please let me know when that is the case, otherwise, I tend to jump into problem solving mode. 

# Communication Preferences

I prefer that you communicate with me openly and freely via slack, phone call, video chat, document, or whatever. So start the conversation or dialogue first! That said, here are some of my preferences:

- For quick questions, please just feel free to use slack. If I think we need another medium, I'll let you know. 
- For processes, I can best visualize them with written use cases and process flow diagrams. 
- I like summaries of issues in a doc. Here are some of the areas where I will ask questions. 
  - What's the problem? 
  - What's the context?
  - What's the business benefit? 
  - What are the possible solutions? (if any. not required) 
  - What are the pros and cons of each solution? 
  - What do you recommend as the path forward?