# Ronak's Manager Readme

**Engineering Manager at Huntress**

### So uh, what is this?

- This is a quick introduction to me as a manager; Helps you to my management style, philosophy and expectations.
- You'll get individualized on boarding material, but this is a first step in setting expectations and answering some questions.
- We should be spending lots more time and energy getting to know each other more organically. 
- Parts of this document also tends to over-emphasize things that are more easily lost in the day to day hustle. 
- For example, I don't have a section on "Shipping Product" though it is really important.
- I just want to take some time to talk about things that are [important but not urgent](https://hbr.org/2018/07/how-to-focus-on-whats-important-not-just-whats-urgent).
- The intended audience is primarily anyone who reports in 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.

### A bit about me

- I'm Ronak and I'm an engineering manager here at Huntress. I worked at vmware building the next generation of MDR platform, before that I worked at Blackberry managing a team of engineers deliver robust solutions for the EDR product (Cylance Optics). Before that I worked at Networks in motion/TCS/Cometch TCS creating navigation solutions on mobile phones and delivering quality software product to customers.. 
- I love cooking food and I prefer vegetarian food.  
- On the professional front, I've enjoyed working with python since 2008.  I come from a C++ background.
- I love to talk about podcasts, especially the python ones and NPR.
- I am an avid reader and I am currently reading leadership books.
- I believe in constant feedback and improvement and I strive to do the same and encourage you to do the same.
- Feel free to tell me what I can improve.

### About Me / My Job/ My Role / My Responsibilities

As an Engineering Manager, I am here to ensure our team is successful, happy, and working on the things that are most important to improve our product and our business.

More specifically:

1. **I am here to ensure you find both success and fulfillment in your role. I want you to improve your technical skills, grow your career, and enjoy your work.**
2. **I am here to ensure we are getting the direction and support we need from other teams and that other teams get what they need from us.**
3. **I am here to build stuff along side you and to help deliver the work that is asked of us in the best possible way.**

- Set context for what you are working on / will be working on.
  - Empower and support you need to improve your skillset to achieve goals.
  - Help you understand priorities and focus over the next month/quarter.

- Advocate for you and the team with the rest of the company
  - Help you build effective relationships with others in the company

- Keep your job engaging so you will stay FOREVER … and possibly bring others like you onboard
  - If anything I do puts you at risk of this goal, please do me a HUGE favor by letting me know

- Manage and build highly functioning engineering teams
- I hate micro managing, but will use it as a last resort if the situation dictates
  - This should never happen if i do my job well

- Goal - If I can take a month off and doesn't make a difference in your day to day, then I did something well.

### What do I value most?

- 

My Expectations

- I expect you to love what you are doing, be passionate about software, but also an excellent collaborator.
- You can approach me anytime in any way based on the urgency.
- Don't make excuses when you fail. Instead, tell me what you have learned.
- **"Done" ** means any customer can use it safely, effectively and robustly. no further testing is required.
- I expect you to be professional. Always learn, investigate and improve. Use the necessary means to build a sustainable design. Respect other opinions and always test your code.
- Be creative. Be innovative. Be resilient.

### 1:1s

- First of all, this is one of my favorite times.  I love to understand your perspective and make your lives easier for you to do your job.
- Clear, gentle, honest communication. I promise not to leave you guessing what I “really” think or expect you to read between the lines of what I’m saying.
- If it’s not clear, and you have a nagging feeling, let me know so I can fix it! It’s not intentional. I’ll also reply promptly to you, or let you know when you can expect a reply, if you reach out.

These meetings are designed to give you a dedicated time and place to ask anything and everything.

- You decide the frequency.  Default is 30 mins every week.  We can adjust accordingly per your desire.
- Remote chats - I have a hard time focusing on an empty screen, unless I see your face over video. 
- Hopefully we talk about [things you wouldn’t otherwise bring up](https://medium.com/@mrabkin/the-art-of-the-awkward-1-1-f4e1dcbd1c5c) in a group setting. I want our 1:1 to be a safe place.  I would prefer you choose where the 1:1 happens.  
- I am open to taking a walk or go for lunch or coffee.  I believe that the setting can be changed.  Sometimes one feels more open to share thoughts than to be in an office conference room.  
- We will go through your agenda first and if time permits I will always have some questions. First and foremost these meetings are for you.
- Urgent matters should not wait for a 1:1.

I usually:

1. Share Organization news
2. Talk about Team news, my vision, and status
3. Provide feedback about your recent activities

and expect you to:

1. Share your feedback
2. Suggest continuous improvement ideas
3. Raise your questions, concerns, opinions, open issues

### How I expect you do your job?

- I expect you to operate with a full ownership.
- I hired you because of your experience and skills, and  **I am not here to tell you how to do your job**.
- I believe you are able to operate as a professional , and make smart decisions.
- I am here to provide you guidance and mentorship.
- When you need help, I expect you to not hesitate and ask for it.
- Don't make excuses when you fail. Instead, tell me what you have learned.

### Personality quirks

- Don't tell me that unit tests are a waste of time.
- I value documentation since that makes my job easier when all the information is part of the Jira ticket/PR.
- The ideal PR should consist of:
  - What is the issue (detailed description of what the problem is and how you solved it)
  - Ticket number 
  - How you approached the problem.  (What works and what you tried and did not work)
  - What and how did you test
  - What did you not test.
  - Added unit tests.  Provide reason on why unit tests are not updated.
  - Add screen shots if applicable on UI changes if any.
  - It should have all the information one needs to know to understand after 1 or 2 years of the PR being merged.
  - The fact is that no one remembers what they fixed and how they tested after 2 months.  Some one is going to appreciate your documentation when they are the one enhancing the feature you made or fixing a bug. 

- I’m a big believer in “[no broken windows](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory)” when building technology.  I like clean logs, clean exceptions, clean processes.  Once things go south here it’s very hard to truly understand the health of the system.
- When you ask “do you have 5 minutes?” in Slack or email, please add the topic you’d like to discuss otherwise I’ll think “do you have 5 minutes for me to tell you that I’m thinking of quitting.” -- we’re biased for bad news and I’m not different.
- I would expect one to ask me any questions, there is nothing like a stupid question.  I believe in [No Feigning Surprise](https://jvns.ca/blog/2017/04/27/no-feigning-surprise/)
- I believe in [Nohello](http://www.nohello.com/)
- There are times when I work off hours, either early in the morning or late at night, however I do not expect you to work or respond during the same hours. 

### Where to focus on your first 90 days?

- We work on a very diverse product and unless you are from the same industry, the architecture is a complex and involves a lot of moving parts.
- The next few weeks is getting up to speed on what the team is doing and why
- By your 90 day mark you should be telling me what you plan on doing.  I'd like you to be confident in forming a point of view on the work, your interests on a specific product/technical area and how to proceed.