# Taylor Arnett's Manager Readme

**Director, Software Development at AltaML Inc.**

# Motivation for this document

I hope that after reading this document you will walk away with a better sense of my management style, philosophy, and expectations. An important part of teamwork is understanding your teammates, and with COVID forcing more remote work, anything that can help with clearer communication is well accepted. I hope this document can illuminate some aspects of working with me, and if you find this valuable then please consider making one yourself!

Please don't hesitate to give me feedback on how I can make this document more clear.

# My role

My role is to ensure that the products built by AltaML are secure, high-performing, resilient, efficient and ultimately solve problems. AltaML's product ambitions are too much for any one developer to take on alone so I must ensure that AltaML's development teams have everything they need to help drive these key pillars of great products.

Another important aspect of my role is to make sure the individuals in the development team are growing and finding their work fulfilling. Please share your goals with me and I'll do my best to help you achieve them.

Let's build some amazing things together!

# What do I value most?

I believe that strong teams are critical to building strong products. With this opinion, I value strong team players that are competent and respectful. 

Every team and project is unique which exposes different gaps in skillsets to be filled. It's important that members of the team are honest and constructive about which gaps exist and how each member can fill a gap. When this happens, we all become "owners" in a certain area which provides us opportunities to learn and grow from each other. With this ownership comes responsibility and expectations which I expand on below.

# What you can expect of me?

I will always strive for these things listed below:

- Being honest and dedicated to the team
- That I will make some mistakes but active in learning from them
- Provide a clear vision of our goal
- Reduce ambiguity to the best of my ability
- Consistent and clear in my communication
- Be open-minded to new ideas

It's vital that you hold me to a high standard on these things. 

# My expectations

Although I stated some of the expectations you should have of me above, I expect you to hold me to all these same standards listed below!

## Teamwork

I expect that you will engage in constructive dialog about the decisions we make as a team and I expect that you will raise your concerns before tasks are issued and agreed upon. If the tasks have been scoped and assigned through constructive dialog, and there is consistent communication throughout sprints then there should be few surprises.

I expect that you will be open to helping your teammates when they need help, but I also expect that you will manage your time effectively so you can get your work done.

I expect that you will have an open mind when debating solutions, while always keeping the arguments respectful.

## Meetings

I expect that meetings will have an agenda set out ahead of time and that all parties involved come prepared as best as they can. Needlessly inefficient meetings are a big drain so let's keep them productive to the best of our ability.

## Work Hours and Availability

I appreciate individuals that are transparent about their needs for work/life balance. I understand that this can express itself with non 9-5 work days and I am totally okay with that, but I expect that you will get your work done and will be reachable within the core hours of the work week (10am-4pm). If you are ever not available for an extended period of time within this time frame, I expect that you will let the team know (apart from a typical lunch break). It really sucks to be in a situation where you're blocked by an unresponsive teammate.

## General

If you are working in the code more directly, then it's your job to defend the code -- I expect you to speak up if you think we are creating messy code, or the general programming practices are "trending towards zero".

# 1:1s

I like to use 1:1s as a way to break out of the typical conversations we have during the day to day operations. I prefer to not discuss technical things relevant to a given user story or sprint task on hand, as this should be done during regular operations. Instead, I prefer to use the 1:1 time to hear your observations of team dynamics, ways we can improve, identify personal goals, and track goal progress.

I like to do 1:1s no less than once a month -- ideally every other week.

# Personality quirks

I really like when people come to me with prepared questions, persuade using facts instead of emotions, and have tried a few things themselves before asking for help.

I will play devils advocate or take a stance that may not actually be my own if I feel it will help the decision making process.

I'm an extremely curious person so I tend to ask a lot of questions to best understand a given problem. Please don't take my questions as a sign of disagreement or a personal attack in any way.