My manager README

Photo by Syd Wachs on Unsplash

One of the most important things I’ve learned as a manager is that setting expectations and context increases the likelihood of good outcomes and decreases frustration among people.

I first heard about a manager README when my manager pointed me to this article about setting expectations from Lara Hogan. I investigated a little bit about it and read a lot more of them. I think it’s a great idea so I’ve decided to create my own.

This is directed to you as an engineer reporting to me. I make this public to get feedback and iterate over it so I can learn and improve. This will always be a living document.

Whether you report to me or not, if you are reading this, please share your feedback with me so I can improve!

This is by no means a substitute to conversations or questions you may have, the goals of the document are:

• To help you read me better from the very beginning.
• To help you hold myself accountable in case I fail to deliver what I say here.
• To help you know what I expect of you.

Disclaimer: This should not be read to in any way apply to any other group or manager at Turo.

What’s my job?

• Attract and retain World-class engineers (that’s you!)
• Serve the team to operate at its full potential
• Grow the team both collectively and individually

As I’ll mention later, I expect your feedback for anything we do, but if you have ideas, opinions, or anything to say that can contribute to me improving on these areas, I will be especially excited to hear them.

What’s my approach and philosophy?

• Empowerment & delegation
• Servant leadership
• Candor

I also follow other principles but I consider these to be the fundamentals of my work.

Empowerment & delegation

I’ll summarize this in two quotes, and then offer some detail:

“It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do”.

Steve Jobs

“I believe that humans already have the answers inside themselves. My role is to help them find it.”

Lara Hogan

I default to very high autonomy and empowerment. I won’t tell you what to do, but I can help you figure it out together through coaching. If you want something different, let me know, I’m happy to work closer to you until you feel confident with that level of autonomy.

• You own your work

I set context, you set your own direction. I want to make sure you have all the context and data available (same that I have) to make sure you can make the best decisions. But you make the decisions and take ownership of them.

• You own your career and your growth

I will help you set goals, understand what your weakest points are or what I think is your best path to grow next. I will do my best to find opportunities for you to grow and align them with our metrics. But my expectation is that you own your own growth. You have to look for those opportunities as well, you have to be able to share your work and publicly expose how you are growing to me and to everyone at the company.

Servant leadership

I used to play basketball as a point guard until I finished college. I wasn’t specifically brilliant at any aspect of the game, I wasn’t fast or strong, I couldn’t jump really high, and I was not a great shooter, but I still got to play 80% of the game on my team. I liked to think that it was because the other 4 players did a lot better when I was on the court. I was able to potentiate their skills by choosing the right play at the right time, by reading the game and understanding where we could take advantage. This is how I see my role.

You, the Individual Contributor (IC), are the star in this team. You do the job, you build the features our users love, you build the architecture that allows us to scale to be used by millions of people all around the planet. And I’m here to serve you.

Some things I can do for you:

• Is there a meeting that sucks a lot of your time but you only need a summary? I’m happy to attend and make sure there is a summary for you.
• Will you need a contract and credentials to integrate with a third party? I’m happy to work on closing the deal and getting those before you need them.
• Do you need any specific trainning for your job? I’m happy to help you find it.
• Do you need to practice for a presentation or to get a first opinion on an architecture review document? I’m happy to use my time on that.
• A lot more!

As an IC, you should focus on code and architecture as much as you can, that’s what you do best. Anything that distracts you from that I’m happy to work on taking it out of your way.

Candor

I love feedback. I see feedback as the most powerful tool for growth. Feedback is critical for your success and my success.

I will care very personally about you. I’ll see your mistakes as my mistakes and I’ll feel I succeed only when you succeed. I’m very passionate about this kind of connection.

Because of that, I will be extremely honest with you. When I think you did something great, I’ll tell you. When I think you can do something better, I’ll tell you. Note that I can also be wrong in both cases so I’m always happy to discuss it together.

Please take a look at this quick post on how to receive useful feedback. Three dimensions are required for people to continue to give you feedback:

• Safety (unlikelihood of being punished for giving feedback). Should be high.
• Effort (the amount of work in order to give feedback, also known as “how much do you argue when people give you feedback?”). Should be low.
• Benefit (how likely is it that giving you feedback will materially impact your behavior?). Should be high.

If you think you are not getting enough feedback or you want feedback on a particular topic, please let me know.

How I work

You’ll learn most of these things about me as we work together, but here is a list of my expectations when it comes to regular situations that we run into every day..

• 1:1s
• Meetings
• Availability
• Recognition
• Estimation
• Fun
• Disagree and commit

One on ones

By default, we will have a 60 minutes 1:1 every 2 weeks. I’m happy to change frequency and time if you’d like to.

1:1s are for you. You bring the agenda and I’m happy to talk about anything you want. We can talk about technical details of our current project, or we can talk about our hobbies. It’s up to you, and I enjoy all of it because it gives me an opportunity to know you better and to know how you are doing.

This is not my time to provide feedback, although I may use it from time to time if the feedback is not urgent.

If you want to know more, I really like how 1:1s are defined in “The manager’s path” (feel free to ask me for a copy of the book).

Meetings

I try to attend only meetings that I think are relevant for me or where I’m strictly required. I work to avoid the rest. It helps me manage my time and focus on what’s important. You should do the same.

I like everyone to be focused on meetings we attend and not get distracted with other work (even if it’s just checking out slack). If you think other work is more important, feel free to reject the meeting or leave. When in doubt, let’s talk. If you reject or leave and I think you should be there, I’ll let you know.

Meetings should have a context, a goal and an outcome. The organizer should make sure all this things are clear via the invite and the meeting notes. Notes should describe the decisions taken and action items and be available to everyone, including those who could not attend.

While meetings are a very efficient communication tool, they interrupt your regular work, this is coding if you are an IC. I’m committed to organize meetings such you have as much uninterrupted time as possible during the day. Please let me know if you need help with that.

Availability

While I do my best to avoid unnecessary meetings, I’m still normally booked a big chunk of my time.

Spending time working on your needs it’s my first priority. If you need talking to me, book me anytime. You don’t need to wait for the 1:1. If you don’t find time in my calendar and you think talking it’s important for whatever reason, ping me, we’ll work it out.

Recognition

I like to publicly recognize the team and every one of their members whenever I have an opportunity. I do it for myself. I’m incredibly proud of the accomplishments by the team and its individuals and I want everyone to be aware of them too.

If you don’t want me to do it in your case, please let me know.

Estimation

Very few people like estimating (we have exceptions!). It’s not fun because it’s very likely we are wrong when we do it. I get it, it’s extremely difficult to be accurate, but we can get closer the more we practice.

However, there are two things that are extremely important to me, the team and the company:

• When do you estimate to complete your tasks or goals
• What’s your progress on those tasks or goals

Because it’s useful for so many people, we should be able to make estimates and progress publicly available to everyone.

Your time is incredibly valuable, you are making an impact on the company metrics directly, so we all need to make sure it’s planned and used efficiently. Progress and estimates are necessary for good planning.

There are different tactics that can be used to achieve better estimation and progress reporting, and I’m happy to work with you on something that works for both everyone.

Fun

I believe that we engineers are lucky people. We work in offices with air condition and heat, free snacks and food, seating or standing on a desk at our choice. We have a job most of us chose over a lot of options, with a competitive salary that allows us to not worry about paying the bills at the end of the month.

We should be having fun. We will have ups and downs, we will have bad days, but long term, if you are not having fun, please, please, please, let me know. It’s really important to me.

This does not mean that you’d rather be working than spending time with your friends and family or doing whatever hobby you may like. Every individual is different.

My personality

Transparency (a.k.a “zero bullshit”)

I bias toward transparency and candor. You can ask anything. Most of the time, I’ll answer. Rarely, I won’t. I’m committed to never lying to you.

I am what you see. Sometimes, the company or someone can ask you to keep things private. It doesn’t happen very often but I respect that. Still, if you ask I won’t lie about it and just say I was asked to keep it private.

If I look excited about something we have to work on it’s because I’m genuinely excited. I won’t try to oversell you something you have to work on. Most of the time we work on amazing challenges, sometimes we have to do something that’s not fun and it will be presented as such.

English is my second language

When communicating to humans, the language you chose is extremely important. I try to use language that is kind but clearly communicates what I want to say with no ambiguity.

I feel very comfortable with English right now, but there is occasions when I may not use the most appropriate word to describe a situation. Or maybe I’m trying to use a new word I learnt and I do it poorly. It’s because I don’t know any better. I don’t mean to use this as an excuse but it is the truth, I get better every day.

If you think I’ve used a word or sentence out of context that just doesn’t sound like me, please correct me.

Do you have a minute?

When I started as a manager, I used to immediately drop everything I was doing whenever someone asked me “do you have a minute?” I realized that was not good for everybody because it will take me a lot to finish stuff that was necessary for others.

If you ask that question and I say “I’ll be with you in a moment”, I’m not trying to be disrespectful, I’m just trying to serve other needs better. Please never stop calling/slacking/emailing me when you need me, and if you are blocked and you need me make that clear so I know I have to get back to you asap.

It will also help me if you mention what you want to talk about.