# Jake Miller's Manager Readme

**Design Tooling Lead at Atlassian**

# Motivation for this document

Just to let you know what my expectations of you are, and how to deal with my eccentricities. Hopefully this will provide a great overview of who I am so I can help you best, and vice versa.&nbsp;

# My role

When I was first hired, Alastair told me my role was to "make prototyping better, in any way possible". That's been my north star since I've started, though I've since branched out to include design as well.&nbsp;I'm here to assist all of Atlassian's designers in the best way I can. If you're part of my team, this is our overall goal as well&nbsp;- make Atlassian's design branch better. This might be through improving the efficiency of designers, or by making our designs more consistent, running courses to upskill others,&nbsp;or by helping them with prototyping.&nbsp;

# What do I value most?

**Self Improvement**

If you aren't progressing and advancing your skills, I've feel like I've failed as a manager. I love teaching - it's why&nbsp;I ran courses for ages at Atlassian and all of my foundation leave went to teaching kids how to code. I don't mind failure one bit (failure can be a great learning experience), but I do mind if you don't learn from that failure.&nbsp;

**Bravery**

Don't be afraid to push forward on your own, or without the best of instructions. I'll probably push you to stretch yourself in this area as it's something I think will let you take advantage of our Be The Change You Seek culture. Even if you report to me, it doesn't mean that I'm right in all situations. Challenge me and be brave. The downside to this is often times the amount of planning I'm comfortable with might be lighter than others - I tend to push forward before things are clear. If we need to sit down and plan things more, call me out on it.&nbsp;

# My Expectations

**[DELETE LATER] Try to answer these questions:**&nbsp;How should people set time with you?&nbsp;When it comes to mistakes, what's the best way for employees to come forward? How do you define "Done"? When should people be available and how? (e.g. work hours, availability via chat/phone etc.)

You'll wear different hats when we're working on the tooling team.&nbsp;Each hat has different accountabilities I'll hold you to.

**As a design tooler**

I expect you to be aware and understand the needs of the designers that are out there. Empathy with their day to day nuances is a must.&nbsp;Since we push a lot of these tools externally,&nbsp;I expect them to be at a quality&nbsp;we're proud to ship out.&nbsp;

**As a prototyper**

I&nbsp;expect you to move quickly and not get caught up in the underlying architecture. Understand that we're writing disposable code to help test ideas, not bulletproof code that's production-ready. I also expect you to add your own design skills in areas where design is missing or incomplete. Often times we'll have to work on motion transitions on our own without feedback - you should be comfortable owning the design of that in a way that compliments the design we've been given.&nbsp;

**As a human**

I don't expect you to be here from 9-5, or to only take exactly X number of vacation days, or log your hours to the second decimal point. I expect you to get your work done and communicate effectively - that's it. I may ping you outside of work hours, but feel free to ignore that until you're in a work mode.&nbsp;

# 1:1s

We'll have weekly 30min 1:1s. The goal with these is to just have a personal reflection time, not so much to track the work you've accomplished during the previous week. Our team is small enough that I'll have full insights into what you're working on, so we don't need to focus on that so much. It's not the "what" that we'll be covering in these 1:1's, but the "why", the "how" - I&nbsp;want to reflect on&nbsp;how the decisions you've made have affected (positively or negatively) the projects you're working on, and how that tracks versus you're growth plan. We'll be tying a lot of things into your growth plan to ensure you're tracking nicely in both your personal growth and your career.&nbsp;

# Personality quirks

Meyer's Briggs:&nbsp;ENTP

I'm going to be outgoing and loud and generally American. Because of my comfort with poorly defined guidelines/planning, I'm often&nbsp;more disorganized than I'd like to be - it's something that I'm trying to work on. I usually prefer a tailored solution for tracking a project than a pattern that you force on every project, which can lead to harder tracking down the line. Call me out if you feel I'm not keeping things tied together for your comfort level.&nbsp;