I cringe as I write this Buzzfeed style article but there is no more apt title to list down these ideas:
- Never ever be late for a 1:1.
If plans change, email, slack, snapchat, I don’t care. Just let them know. And yes, If you stood them up (perhaps twice), you are done. Its going to be very hard to comeback from that one. - Ask your team often “What am I doing wrong? How can I improve?”
Seriously. Verbatim as written above. Nothing proves more that you are not a conventional “boss” than asking “What am I doing wrong?”. If you wait for the yearly anonymous feedback, its too late. - Stop telling them to take initiative and help them “initiate”.
You loose them the moment you tell them to “take the initiative”. This is your job seriously. Don’t throw in the dirty towel. Help them get started in new directions. - Build a diverse team.
I get it. You mother tongue is Russian. You can fluidly converse in it and you are comfortable around Russian people. Dont let this comfort make you commit the hiring mistake. You’ll be surprised how quickly people are able to spot this. Appearance defeats good intent in this scenario. If you speak diversity, be diverse. - If they are interested in singing, you buy them the guitar.
Remember, at some point your desire to crank code all day was lost. They are no different than you. Build them as people first, not just as engineers. Get a reading group going in your team. Ask them to write about their work and go out on a limb to help them improve their presentation skills. - Have servant mentality.
You serve your team as much as you serve upper management. You don’t have a job if your team quits. So go out of the way to serve. - Read Rands.
If you haven’t heard of Rands, Congratulations you got the job which you are surprisingly not fit for. Now go read Rands.
