# adrianchung's Manager Readme **Manager, Software Development at Miovision** # Motivation for this document This is my Manager README, a document that helps introduce you to my management style, philosophy, and expectations. You can have a glimpse into my hopefully-not-crazy-mind. This way we can start from common ground in have a discussion about how we can work effectively together.  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. Give me feedback. I love feedback! The more feedback I get, the better I can succinctly communicate my expectations of what to expect from me, and what I can expect from you.  # Disclaimer This document applies to me, and should not be considered to be representative of any specific team or manager at Miovision.  # My role My formal title is Manager, Software Development. I manage people, and I manage teams. I'm measured by: - The strength of my relationships with each individual within the team. My goal here is build people up, empower them, and have them achieve great things. - Ability for teams to stay focused and execute against business goals. When road maps or goals change, they should be communicated to the business -- no surprises!  - Developing the right systems and processes to ensure teams and people are operating efficiently. This includes things like working out cross-team support policies and procedures and finding proper tooling to help organize the team. - Our ability to retain and attract talent. People come and go, but I'll measure myself by asking the question "Did I do everything within my power to make sure that they were given every opportunity to stay, whether it be the work they are doing, their compensation, recognition, or anything else?" Is the answer "yes" to the questions "Are you feeling challenged? Are you happy in your role?" - How well I play the role of rubber ducky. I'm here to listen. I'll listen to anyone who needs an outlet to communicate ideas to, or who needs another opinion on any topic.  This isn't an exhaustive list by any means. These are the key pillars in my mind. I'm here for you. Help me find the best way to help you.  # What do I value most? Transparency. I will always be as transparent as I can with you. I'm hoping you'll be the same with me. The more information we share together, the more we can align in terms of company priorities, your personal goals, and how we can grow together.  Honesty. Lying is a no-no. I won't sugar coat things. I'll offer feedback when I think feedback is appropriate. I'll try my best to give you [radical candor](https://www.radicalcandor.com/about-radical-candor/), but occasionally it might come out as [obnoxious aggression](https://www.radicalcandor.com/blog/category/obnoxious-aggression/). It's not you, it's me -- I promise!  Hard work. Not everything comes served on a silver platter. Not every bug has an obvious answer. I value your ability to dig down and find answers, even if they don't come easy to you. Not only will you have an amazing answer to "Tell me about a time you solved a hard bug...", but you'll also feel that amazing sense of accomplishment that you solved a tough problem.  Ownership. Take pride of that-thing-you-are-working-on. Finish it. Test it. I want you to be vested into the product so that you can be proud of it and that you can talk about it amongst all your peers.  Continuous growth. We're all in this game called life. I value learning and growth, because that's how we apply new techniques for solving problems, or how we save time by doing things more efficiently. Let's win at life.  # My Expectations I view our relationship as a partnership. I want to work with you to be the best you that you can be so that you can bring the whole you to the team -- that means not just your technical skill, but all of your life experiences. We're all human beings. I expect us to connect on different levels so that we're not just interacting as robots.  Do your work. Seriously. We are blessed to have flexible work hours and unlimited vacation, but if the net result at the end of the day is that the team is not hitting agreed upon goals because of abuse of this flexibility, then we're going to have a not-so-fun conversation. That said.... Take vacation. I've been through the burnout phase before. If you need time off, take time off. I'd rather lose you for a few day than to lose you entirely.  Solve problems directly. I'm a big fan of cutting out the middle person if you can go directly to the source of your problem and solve it. Whether it's a people related issue, or a technical problem, if you can solve it yourself, go for it! I'm here to help unlock doors, but I'm not here to solve everyone's problems.  I'm a new manager. I will make mistakes. Call me out on them, or at least let's have a healthy discussion about it.  ## What will disappoint me? Here are things that I will not tolerate: - Big egos. Leave them at the door. I believe that with the right stakeholders in the room, a collaborative answer will always be better and more diverse than the opinion of a single person - Doing work blindly. - Being busy is not the desired outcome. I want you to be working on the right things at the right time. Ask yourself: - Is the work aligned to our goals? - Does it help us significantly reduce tech debt for future velocity? - What's the business case for doing X? - What stakeholders do I align with? - Complacency (s not an option). Don't stick with the status quo if the status quo isn't the right thing to do.  - Not investing time to build relationships. The people are the #1 asset the company has. It's silly not to spend time to learn about them. What makes them tick? What are their interests? What are their values? # 1:1s This will vary from individual to individual. I'm on year 2 of being a manager and am on my third iteration of strategies for scheduling 1:1s. but I've found that 30 minutes every 3 weeks is my default. This 1:1 is time for you and should be led by you. What's on your mind? What do you want to talk about? Where do you want to focus your time? Where do you want to grow your career into? It shouldn't just be about status updates, but about you -- your goals, aspirations, your professional development, and whatever else you want to share. I expect it to be driven by you, so please come prepared.  # How to set time with me I have an open door policy. Book time on my calendar, shoot me a slack message, an e-mail, or just show up at my desk in person.  It's my job to be there for you. Don't assume I'm too busy.  # Work Hours We have flexible work hours. Some people start as early as 8 am, some later at 10 am and go home accordingly.  You can work from home when you need to. Use your best judgment about what your commitments are and if you need to be in the office, or if you can re-arrange your schedule. Communication is key. Make sure the team knows how to get a hold of you and when you are likely to respond. If you have appointments mid-day, that's fine. Make sure you communicate to your team and your hours are made up when it's convenient for you. It's up to you to balance work and life. I'd like you to have every opportunity to do so.   # Where to focus on your first 90 days? It's not expected that you will be 100% effective in your first 90 days. We hired you because we believe you can get to 100% effectiveness and because we believe in both your soft skills and technical ability to pick things up. Instead, in your first 90 days, focus on learning the code base, learning the business domain, learn how the business makes money, learn about its products, culture, and the people. You'll have plenty of time to be productive.  How do you know if you're doing well in the first 30 days? Here are some things to consider: - As a developer, can you run and debug code on your system locally? As QA, can you talk about features in the product and walk through simple test cases for it? - Have you made improvements to our onboarding process or identified things that need work? Our onboarding is never perfect.  - Are you asking better questions over time? There's never a dumb question, but as you familiarize yourself with the product and code base, your questions should start having more context in it. - Are you getting a sense of "I know what I'm doing and why I'm doing this?" This helps answer how well you're familiarizing yourself with the domain.  # Personality quirks Oh boy, where to get started... - I'm a secretly extraverted introvert, kinda. I've taken all sorts of tests. I like talking to people. I also like turtling up. To be specific, for the DISC test, I'm a C/DS. According to the test, I have a blend of cautious, supportive, and dominant traits. My cautious traits are probably a little stronger than my supportive or dominant traits. Some words that describe me are: careful, focused on excellence, results-oriented, and collaborative - I repeat myself. A lot of times I forget who I talked to about a specific topic. My apologies if I sound like a broken record. You can just tell me! - I'm overt to bypassing formalities. Instead of saying "Hi!" and waiting for a response, follow it up with what you need or your question. It helps me iterate on our conversations quicker and prepare me for what I'm about to hear! - I get nervous when giving presentations to a medium - large group. I'm working on delivering content with confidence.  - I'm a pretty intrinsically motivated person. I love getting stuff done.  - Sometimes I think I'm funnier than I think I am. Sometimes my sarcasm is so bad that it isn't sarcasm. My dad jokes are rarely appreciated. Please appreciate them! # Feedback I mentioned it before, I'll close off by mentioning it again. I took an EQ profile test in January 2018. Clearly there are many areas that I can improve. I'm sharing this to show that I could really use your help to become a better manager. Your feedback is very important to me. You can deliver it in any form you prefer, in person, over chat, e-mail, or anonymously through one of your peers. If you're comfortable with direct feedback, I'd prefer that as I'm able to have an actual discussion with you over the feedback.  ![](https://s3.amazonaws.com/managerreadme/images/Screen Shot 2018-07-04 at 6.07.49 PM.png) Understanding that feedback is a two way street, I will do the same for you. Bring things up as they happen. It's much easier to reflect over a a month's worth of work rather than every 6 months during performance review time.  # Next Steps Go learn code, go test things, go whiteboarding, go talk to someone, go be productive!