# Yaniv Aharoni's Manager Readme

**Company Head of R&D at Sunbit**

# Motivation For This Document

This document aims to share with you my leadership philosophy and expectation. After reading this, you should have a better sense of what it is like to work with me.

I believe that the foundations of successful relationships are based on excellent communication. This document will take you through my managerial thinking and help us establish our relationship.

This README is just an intro, and we will spend more time getting to know each other in person.

My management skills are a work in progress as is this document, I value any feedback and improvements.   
I am here to ensure our team is successful, happy, and working on the most important things to improve our product and our business.

# My Role

I am here to ensure the team is happy, motivated, and successfully delivering against our business priorities

- Building a great team with world-class talents that can deliver great products.
- Setting a clear context so people can comprehend what is expected from them to be successful. 
- Make sure we hit our OKRs as a team and as a company.
- Provide clear tradeoffs and work plans to relevant stakeholders.
- Improving our development processes to provide outcomes faster, safer, and with more value.
- Mentor managers and ICs.

# What Do I Value Most?

**Feedback** - I'm not perfect! I make mistakes like anyone. I constantly work to improve, but sometimes it's in my blindspot. Your feedback is the best tool to help me improve and grow. 

On the other side, I will provide you with honest and direct feedback to help you grow. Sometimes it might not be convenient, but it is for your own good.

**Be a driver and not a passenger**  - control your destiny. 

- Be a leader, be an innovator, learn new skills, and stay on top of your game. 
- Hold yourself and your colleagues/manager/me accountable. It will help us move faster.
- Don't wait for others to do something that you can do yourself. 
- Be aware of your environment. Know the business roadmap, context, and goals. 

**Ownership** - Software engineering requires much more than just writing code. Our responsibilities are end-to-end, from design through implementation, testing monitoring, deployment, operations, and everything between them. Think about the impact and the value to your customers, whether internal or external.   
Look at the “bigger picture” behind your role and team domain. Think about how we can better help our customers and improve the outcome for our business.

**Know what you are doing** - always ask yourself: "why are we doing that? What is the value for the customer? Is it our top priority? Is it the right solution? Can we solve it differently?". Try to answer those questions for any project you work on, even if the requirements come from authority. We wouldn't want to spend time on low-value tasks or unneeded features.

**Efficiency in operations** - efficiency is a crucial part of our success. Without efficiency, our ability to deliver will go down, the time for feedback will rise up, and the investment return will get longer. Always ask yourself: "What can be automated?", "What is not efficient in our system?", "What is the technical debt we are leaving behind, and what is the impact?".   
The time saved will help the business run faster, deliver value to our customers quicker and help to return the investment sooner. For you, it will free up time to invest in your personal growth, learn and work on new things.

![](https://s3.amazonaws.com/managerreadme/images/Picture1.jpg)

**Collaboration** - healthy collaboration between individuals and teams is essential for our execution and growth. 

- Listen and be an active trusted team member. 
- Be positive. Always assume goodwill of those around you - it's about moving toward each other.
- Don't argue for the sake of arguing. State clearly your position and let it go. Once it's decided upon, get behind the final decision, disagree, commit and be onboard.
- Help others shine - senior engineers create senior engineers; don't feel threatened.
- Build your EQ! People and relationships are super important.

**Push your role boundaries** - Your role definition is the mandatory part of your job, but don't hesitate to go behind your role definition. Expand your ownership and contribute to others' initiatives. It will prepare you for the next step in your career. I will support you and never hold you back. 

**Humor** - Work should be fun!

# What Will Disappoint Me

- People who focus on their own personal brand at the expense of the company or team’s needs. Ego is important, self-confidence is important. Don’t confuse it with being right or doing the right thing.
- Doing work without understanding the value to the customer (internal or external). Being busy is not the desired outcome. Ensure your work brings value to the customers and won’t be a waste.  
  

# My Expectations

- Meet your commitment. A delay in your commitment can cause a chain of delays. If you can't meet your commitment, raise a flag as soon as you identify it and come up with a mitigation plan.
- Be transparent and clear in your reporting. Let me know about any problem in the execution, even if it's not convenient for you. Sometimes it's hard, but I will help you solve it.
- Don't do things twice. If you did it twice, you will probably do it soon the third time. Be effective and automate the process for your own sake and for the sake of your colleagues.   
Manual work increases our technical debt and reduces our ability to deliver fast.   
 ![](https://s3.amazonaws.com/managerreadme/images/Screen Shot 2022-04-18 at 13.20.25.png)

- Come prepared! For any meeting/discussion, arrive after having the right context, do your homework, and make the needed preparations for the meeting. Don't waste others' time.
- Done is Done! Declare as done only once all the tasks and objectives of your mission have been completed. Don't leave leftovers for later (those are technical debts). They will slow you down and will be a burden on your next mission at best or will be forgotten at worst. 
- I am a big believer in "[no broken windows](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory)". Keep your alerts, logs, and tests clean. We would like to be able to know the system's health easily at any time.
- I don't have a magic wand to solve conflicts. Going up and down in the reporting chain instead of solving conflicts directly with your colleagues is inefficient. Therefore, adopt direct dialog with your colleagues at any level and try to settle down your disagreement. If you didn't manage to solve it, no worries, I'm here to help.

# Personality Quirks

- In meetings, be attentive. Don't play with your phone, and don't open your laptop if it's not for the discussion needs. If you have nothing to contribute, you are excused. Just let the organizer know beforehand. 
- I have very little patience for lateness - a room full of people waiting for some late people is a waste of time and money. If you are going to be late, just let me or the meeting owner know.
- I like f2f or phone communication better than written. I think it's more efficient and less likely to create misunderstanding. For example, to communicate the progress of tasks, use our Jira, Confluence, or Slack, but when you expect a discussion let's converse.
- I sometimes work also on unusual hours (nights and weekends). This is my choice to do that. I don't expect you to do the same if there is no really urgent client deadline or critical severity. It's not a factor of my appreciation of you.
- From leaders in the organization (e.g. Senior IC, Managers) I expect to create the reality they'd like to see - tell me what you plan to do instead of waiting for me to offer a way or shape reality for you. If you're stuck, tell me, and I'll help. You're the driver.
- I tend to repeat myself - It can be annoying (I guess). I want to make sure you can apply my feedback, so I'll often try a few ways to bring constructive feedback to the table. I will also share the context I believe you need in multiple forums (1:1, group, etc.). 

# 1:1s

Mentoring, building trust, providing feedback, and consulting will be part of the meeting's agenda. We will discuss your career development in order to prepare you for the next step.

1:1 meetings are an opportune time for a manager and an employee to align and build a great rapport. The more you invest and prepare, the more you will get out of it. Being able to give feedback, knowing priorities, and ensuring alignment to OKRs are great outcomes for 1:1s

Our 1:1 is the official outlet to sync, but you are always welcome to schedule additional time with me. 

# Where to focus on your first 90 days?

The first 90 days are critical to success in the team. 

- Prepare your environment
- Understand the business
- Start contributing as soon as you can - learning via code is much more effective than learning from reading.

Your mentor and team will equip you with all the knowledge, tools, and support for your success. Take advantage of this time to learn and gain the needed knowledge for your role. Don’t leave unclear areas. Your mentor is here to support you.

The onboarding period can be hard and frustrating. Sometimes, things will go fast and others slower. Sometimes things will be unclear, and you feel like stepping in place. This is natural, ensuring that overall you are making progress. Don’t hesitate to share your feelings with your mentor, manager, and me