# Prateek Gupte's Manager Readme

**Co-Founder at Relove**

# Motivation for this document

This is my Manager README, a document that helps introduce you to my management style, philosophy, and expectations. I wrote this document to share my expectations on what would make it most effective for us to work together, and so that you may hold me accountable to it.

# Values and Expectations

**Ownership -**  Ownership is a key part of my philosophy, there is a large amount of autonomy in how teams operate and that is possible only when people take responsibility for the outcomes.

**P**** roactive communication -** If you have encountered a road block or a problem, feel free to approach me early on rather that later. Approach me with the options that you have already tried and why they did not work. We will work out how to resolve the issue together. Do not wait for me to set your timelines and check with you for status updates.

**Ask**  **Why****?** - The why is important and what you do on a daily basis should connect to the goals of the company and the product. You should have a clear understanding of why you're doing what you do.

**Work-life balance** - ** ** I will never expect you to work weekends or nights. This is a marathon not a sprint, don't work in an unsustainable way.   
  
[No broken windows](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory) -  when building products, it's important to keep your house clean. I like clean logs, clean exceptions, clean PagerDuty. Once things go south here it’s very hard to truly understand the health of the system. People want to be able to deploy, test and monitor their code without having to differentiate between "legitimate”/sporadic failures.

It is up to you to manage your time how you see fit. I do not micro manage your time and how you use it. I am highly result-oriented and focus on the outcome. Be responsible for your own commitments.

I serve you, not the other way around. I’m always available to assist. Ask me.

# 1:1s

1:1's are the heartbeat of our work relationship. These are setup as an hour long monthly recurring meeting on the calendar. If there is any change in the time/date, the calendar meeting will be updated to reflect it. I will do my best to honor these meetings unless there is something absolutely urgent.

Our 1:1's are **not meant for general status updates** but a time for us to talk about the following:

- Your Career Growth (Goals, Opportunities)
- Your Performance 
- Deep Dive into absolutely Random Topics of Interest 

This is a two-sided conversation, please **come prepared** for it.

# How I communicate and where to reach me

For any informal conversation or discussion reach out to me on slack with the topic. 

I'm not a fan of excessive meetings, before you convert a conversation to a meeting please check whether this [requires a meeting](https://shoulditbeameeting.com/#/) or can be resolved through other mediums. (Email, Slack, Desk Chat etc)

If it does require a meeting you can send a direct calendar invite. Every Meeting should always include a clear agenda, a clear owner of who is running the meeting and what is the expected outcome. Include any reading material beforehand.

In the [DISC model of behaviour](https://discpersonalitytesting.com/blog/what-is-the-disc-model/), I am a high D and a high C,  which means I am very task oriented, focus on facts and details, and have minimal emotional language. What this means is that you can expect me to be direct in my communication; I don't use a lot of subtext. I also have pretty thick skin and appreciate direct feedback on my behaviour. 

# Personality quirks

My blunt and to the point attitude is highly task focused. I place a high value on time, both mine and yours, and will be very direct in my communication and might not make a lot of personal conversation during office hours. One of my weaknesses is that I can be light on praise sometimes, something I am working on.

# Where to focus on your first 30 days?

Day 1

Your first day should be spent getting setup with your dev server and acquainted with your colleagues.

Day 5

The first few days should be spent getting a high level understanding of the architecture/platform and understanding the process involved in releasing a feature/code. 

Find yourself a code mentor to help you make your first production release. This could be a tiny bug fix or even a small copy change. Get familiar with what it takes to ship production code as early as possible.

Understand the organizational structure and the points of contact for getting things done. Make sure you are a part of the correct Google Groups and Slack Channels.

Day 7

Make sure you have had your first 1:1 with your reporting manager. Understand all other processes in place such as SCRUM, Git Flow, and other tools such as JIRA etc

Day 30

You are ready to take on a new feature on your own. You know the product roadmap, priorities and current state of the projects you are involved with.