# Shaun Yap's Manager Readme

**Engineering Manager at N/A**

# My role

My role as your Engineering Manager is not to  **manage** , but to  **lead** you.

I strongly believe in providing my teams with the autonomy to be self-sufficient and in control of your own growth and trajectory. As such, I adopt a  **servant leadership** philosophy.  

Some of my main objectives:

- Ensuring that everyone has a unified understanding of the task at hand.
- Ensuring that everyone has the necessary resources to successfully complete their tasks.
- Ensuring that you have the proper support in place for your career goals.
- Addressing any obstacles and roadblocks that might be preventing you from completing a task.
- Ensuring that  **everyone ** feels safe, supported, and that you have a voice on the team. 
  - I will always have your back.  

# What do I value most?

- Above all, I value honesty and openness the most.
- Be respectful to one another. 
- Be a driving force for the betterment of those around you.
  - Lift others up - help nurture and foster the growth of those around you.

- Understand that everyone is unique.
  - Everyone has their own work processes; way of doing things; and preferences - be accommodating, understanding and respectful of that.

- Reasonable expectations of work-life balance. For example:
  - If you have a family/ personal emergency, you should never feel anxious or concerned coming to me for time off. 

# My Expectations

- Give your 100% when you come to work.
- Be proactive in communicating, as well as in giving feedback to others. 
- Be proactive in collaborating and solving issues together. 
- Try to frame your decisions (be it solutioning, coding, etc.) against the impact it will have for the team as well as the organization as a whole.
- Execute and deliver your tasks with a sense of ownership in mind.
  - Take pride in the work you deliver and understand that we are all owners of our output.

- In general, be a good person and treat others the way you want to be treated. We are all learning and we all make mistakes. Be honest while tactful in your feedback and expect the same from others. 

# My Preferred Method of Communication

- Whenever possible, I prefer async communication first.
- If you have a problem that requires my addressal, please try to provide as much context upfront.
- If an issue requires a call, please book it in my calendar - I do a very good job at monitoring incoming calendar invites as well as keeping my calendar up to date.

# 1:1s

I believe in a more casual approach in 1:1s where we are both able to more freely express our sentiments and feelings. 

As a guideline, this is an agenda format that I like to follow in our conversations:

- What are your victories/wins in the past week?
- Where are your losses in the past week?
- What areas would you like to focus on improving and what can I do to facilitate that?
- Are you facing any difficulties in your day-to-day workflow?
- Is there anything I can help you with to continue to guide your growth? (blockers, roadblocks)

Having said that, this is just a _guideline _and does not need to strictly be followed. 

Our 1:1s should always be a 2-way conversation where you are in the driver's seat to steer the conversation in the direction you desire. 

# Personality quirks

- I have a brain that runs at 100 miles per hour, any given time of the day.
  - As such, when we are talking sometimes, if it seems like my mind has suddenly wandered off, I promise you this is not the case - I'm just processing information (give me a few seconds). 

- I try my best to keep the work environment light-hearted and fun. I believe we do our best work in these environments.
  - If you ever want me to tone down on light jokes and/ or memes, let me know!

- I tend to reflect at the end of every day to see: what went wrong, how I can improve, etc.