# Nadav Cohen's Manager Readme

**Head of Engineering at Trayo.ai**

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# Motivation for this document
 | ![Why am I Doing This?](https://s3.amazonaws.com/managerreadme/images/why.png "Why am I Doing This?") |

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I'm writing this README, because I wish all of my managers had come with a user manual :) 

Another way of saying this is that I care about your own success, and by giving you clarity into how I operate (and fail), I hope to make our work together the best it can be for both of us.

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# My role
 | ![](https://s3.amazonaws.com/managerreadme/images/role.jpeg) |

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My role is to  help us win by being the best engineering team that we can be. We do this by making our customers happy, tirelessly improving ourselves, and making it all still engaging and challenging for each of us individually. You won't see me counting story points or bike shedding. You will see me caring deeply about these three team pillars. 

I don't believe in hiring smart, talented and motivated people only to then spend my time telling them what to do. I hire world-class talent (that's you), and then I listen and get out of your way as best as possible. This also means that I expect you to drive your own results, learn from your own mistakes and make your team better on a regular basis. I expect you to bring your deepest expertise to the table.

Sometimes I will make a decision based on my own deep expertise. When I do so, I will clearly say so. If you disagree with my directions or expectations, tell me. If I don't change my mind, then make a note of your objection in the conversation, and then bring this up again at a retrospective later on, so we can review when the urgency, risk or context have changed, so we can all learn. 

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# What do I value most?
 | ![](https://s3.amazonaws.com/managerreadme/images/moving_motivator.png) | |

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I value empathy, trust and collaboration: with each other, with our teammates and with our customers. I enjoy working together on problems and challenges. I _want_ to collaborate with you on the shared work that we have. That doesn't mean we'll pair program together, but it does mean that we'll figure out how to make our ideas into reality. 

I also value grit, determination and the pursuit of excellence. Our jobs are to solve business problems with engineering talent. Sometimes it means writing sophisticated or beautifully simple code. Sometimes it means avoiding the problem entirely or shifting its nature. The perfectly engineered system is the one that got us the results we needed when we needed them -- not the one that got the most stars on GitHub.  We're here to get the results that make us win, and I believe that creativity drives the best results, while urgency drives focus.  Together, we find the right balance at every moment.

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# What I need from you

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![](https://s3.amazonaws.com/managerreadme/images/yougotthis.jpeg)
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I need you to fail some of the time. Yes, you read that right. I need you to fail sometimes, because I need you to take risks, and failure is in the nature of taking risks. I fail regularly, so don't worry about it. We'll work together on tuning the risk profile to balance what you want, your comfort zone and the results required by the work to be done.

You should be learning, adapting and continuously looking for places to improve your own work and that of your team.

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# What to expect of me

| **I am a mix of several cultures, so expect me _not_ to behave in culturally expected ways.** | 
![](https://s3.amazonaws.com/managerreadme/images/mix_culture_hands.jpeg)
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| Always assume positive intent with me. I promise to do the same with you. | ![](https://s3.amazonaws.com/managerreadme/images/assume_intent.jpg) | |
| I have strong beliefs, loosely held. Show me a better alternative, and I'll likely change my belief. | ![](https://s3.amazonaws.com/managerreadme/images/strong_sticky.jpeg) | |
| I can talk too much and constantly wish I could be more concise (if this README could be half its length...) | ![](https://s3.amazonaws.com/managerreadme/images/2015-07-07-short-and-concise.jpeg) | |