securingsincity / manager-readme

Manager Readme

Hi, I'm James a Director of Software Engineering at CareRev. This document is my intention to get off on the right foot with our relationship with me as your manager. You will hopefully get an idea of how I think and how I work.

I live in Quincy MA with my wife Sara and my son Luke. My background is non traditional. I went to Emerson college to study audio engineering with the plan to record bands and do sound design for films and television. Despite some front end experience, the majority of my software engineering experience happened after college. I've worked at a couple start ups before CareRev but a large part of my experience came from a long stint at Maxwell Health. I joined when it was a small team to build out the MVP then transitioned to leading teams, then management, and when we were acquired by Sun Life Financial a Director role. Outside of work, I have a number of hobbies. I enjoy programming and maintain a number of projects. Most notably, React-ace a popular open source project. I played in a band in high school and college, so I enjoy making music and seeing it live. I run pretty regularly and have run several half marathons.

My role

• I'm a people manager
  • I retain world class talent (That's you!)
    • I'm here to make you feel successful and happy in your role.
    • I want to improve your technical skills. But also your ability to be autonomous, have influence, your knowledge of the business, and your ability to execute.
    • Ultimately, I want to grow your career.
    • Processes that I help define and implement are meant to scale the organization. This means that the team needs to be prepared through learning and experience to participate in those processes.
  • I attract new talent
    • When we are ready to expand our team, my role involves finding, screening, interviewing, and hiring individuals.
    • A large part of attracting talent is making sure we have the right team, projects, and processes in place for them to be successful. I help shape those things.
    • It also means building out our engineering brand. Writing, speaking, and presenting outside of CareRev to make sure people understand what we're about.
• I'm a manager of managers
• I'll contribute to process, architecture, and technical discussions

Interactions

• Note: I am not a computer program and I'm still working on learning about myself. These are just how I will operate most of the time but it's subject to change.

• I prefer Slack or a video call for most communications.

• I will try to be as transparent as possible with you. However, there will be some things I can't discuss as part of my role (for example: How much do my peers make? Why did so and so get fired? are off limits).

• I'll have opinions about the work you are doing. They aren't always right. Feel free to work with me on finding good solutions and also feel empowered to challenge me on my opinions.

• Come to me when things feel off or you feel "Hey this is something I could use James' help on." Do not wait for a 1-1 to address issues. There are very few things on my calendar that I can't reschedule (usually interviews). If you feel like you need to take that time feel free message me on Slack or come up to me in person and we can hop in a room/on a call.

• I have a bias for action. I will encourage others to do the same.

• I appreciate when someone takes an issue that they identified from idea into a solution. Even more bonus points if it improves how we work, making many people's lives easier.

• I tend to be someone who will "roll up my sleeves" and help in areas that are outside of my regular job description and my role. I tend to appreciate people who do the same. I get frustrated when people say things like "not my job" and are unwilling to chip in.

• I usually start from a position of assuming people have good intentions. This can backfire in the case someone is actively trying to be malicious but in my experience this is usually rare. Oftentimes, I'll try to dig into why someone is doing something and get their perspective.

• Because of the above, I usually am pretty trusting of new folks at the start. Trust for me is built up through being transparent and delivering on the actions you have committed to. People lose trust with me when they are regularly misrepresenting the truth (hiding information, outright lying). This should be a rare occurrence.

• I am generally against BIG changes that happen all at once (rewrites, big releases, huge process overhauls). For me small improvements see returns faster, let us build momentum, let us walk away when a better point of stopping, and we can learn along the way. Often big changes need to be "managed", as in someone needs to keep an eye on them and work through other people's feelings about them. If you propose a big sweeping change, I won't veto it but be prepared to have it challenged.

• I value continuous learning. I expect folks to develop plans with me and their manager on how they can grow.

• I might not appear this way at work but I'm pretty shy when I first meet people and can fall into this mode sometimes. If i'm more reserved, I'm just scoping out the situation.

1:1s

• We will have 1-1s weekly to the best of my ability.
• This is a safe space for us to discuss things that are not appropriate in a group setting.
• Please come to these meetings with an agenda. I will sometimes have agenda items as well but this meeting should largely be driven by things you want to discuss.
• I am not usually looking for work status updates in these meetings, however that may come up.
• I will give you feedback on how you're doing in our one-on-ones. This will include feedback I receive from others.
• I encourage you to write down agenda items throughout the week, rather than only bringing up things in the moment. Agendas sent ahead of time are encouraged.

1-1 potential topics:

• How can we make you successful in your role? Are there impediments that are making that difficult?
• How can we get you the skills you need to grow into your next role?
• Opportunities to get to know you and you to know me as humans
• Who do you work with who is doing an awesome job?
• What is an opportunity we're missing out on?
• People problems!
• Software problems!
• What are some things you are learning about?
• What are some things I can do better?
• What are your goals for this year? And for the next 3 months?
• For Managers: How are your direct reports doing?
• For Managers: What are your direct reports goals for this year?