I expect you, dear reader, to give me your best effort each day. I understand some days are just not working out. That's totes fine. I want to work with you to make sure that you have a reasonable workload with reasonable deadlines and you are taking care of yourself. If you aren't able to give it your all for whatever reason, let's talk about it sooner rather than later!
I expect you to show up on time and be present at meetings. I hate useless meetings and promise to keep them to a minimum. There will always be an agenda. They'll probably always be remote meetings. There will be a facilitator and a notetaker. So put on some pj pants and hop on video and be fully present for the short time we have together. More thoughts on meetings here
I expect you to help out your fellow teammates if they need help. We all have trouble here and there and we're all on the same team! If someone is asking for help then let's help teach one another the skills we need to solve the problem.
Managing managers is different from managing individual contributors. I expect my managers to create safe, productive environments for their teams. My general expectations are:
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I believe in a balance of autonomy and consistency. I will do my best to communicate my desired outcome and context for why it's important and allow managers to find out what works best for them and their teams.
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I will do my best to continue to work on your career. Managers don't often get enough feedback on their own careers and it can feel isolating. I will work with you in our 1:1s to further your career, not just have a status update on how your teams are doing.
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I expect managers to have a clear understanding of the progress of their teams' current projects. You should be able to clearly communicate how projects are going, what needs to be done, and any roadblocks that are happening.
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I prefer managers to bring up issues when they are small before they become big issues. I like to collaborate together on solutions or provide opportunities for growth. If something catches us by surprise, this is a blameless culture. Let's work the problem first, provide constructive feedback with an eye to fixing systems after.
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I like to have regular skip level 1:1s with your teams to gather themes and feedback from the organization. This isn't to undermine anything you've done, but to make sure that the overall health of the organization is going well.
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I expect managers to work with one another to provide cross-pollination opportunities for their engineers. Teams may be too small to provide the right opportunties for everyone, so I expect managers to work together to share best practices as well as opportunities for their people in other parts of the org. We are all part of the same organization working towards the same goal. It doesn't do anybody any good to hoard knowledge or people when it makes the entire org suffer.
While most of the people on my teams end up being high performers, I think it's valuable to document what I've found useful.
As a high performer myself, I find that the best way to stifle someone's passion and creativity is to force them do things without a valid reason, not believe them when they raise a concern, and not pay attention to burnout levels. My general guidelines are:
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I expect high performers to motivate themselves! If you aren't motivated, then something's wrong and let's work on it together. Sometimes it's a structural problem, sometimes it's a personal problem. Whatever it is, let's talk it through and work on a solution together.
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I will do my best to guide you to new challenges. Sometimes that involves challenging you to improve your interpersonal skills with other people! These are just as valuable as technical skills. Depending on your level, it may be necessary to focus on interpersonal and leadership skills over technical, which can be uncomfortable.
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I will try very hard not to spring any last minute or unreasonable requests on you. It's pretty rude to constantly have to fight fires and it's bad for people's mental health to do so. If this does happen, I will do my best to discuss the context behind the request with you.
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I'll try to request things rather than tell you to do them. On the rare occasion I require you to do something, I'll do my best to explain why it's important, the timeline it's needed, and who the request is coming from.
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I try acknowledge the good as well as the Needs Improvement(tm)! Sometimes as a high performer, you don't realize just how great you're doing because it's easy to move on to the next thing that needs fixing. I'll be sure to point out when you're also kicking ass.
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I'll probably keep a close eye on your PTO. As a high performer myself, I'm often working on a million things at once until all of a sudden I'm too exhausted to do anything. I'll likely keep a reoccurring task on our 1:1 agendas to check in on the last time you took some time off.
I believe feedback should be given swiftly, clearly, and kindly. If I'm walking around with spinach in my teeth, I would be really upset if my friends didn't tell me about it! The same thing with feedback: I believe you should always tell someone if they they're doing well or there's room for improvement.
I like to give feedback on a regular basis. I will use our 1:1s mainly for this to cover:
- Any specific examples I see of behavior I'd like to see more of
- Any specific examples I see of behavior I'd like to see less of
Feedback will be on both technical and interpersonal parts of the job!
- Public sparkles in Slack
- Slack DM
- Written down in our 1:1 records and added to performance reviews
- Gift card OR donation to your favorite charity OR physical gift, whichever you prefer
- Slack DM OR video call OR in person
- Written down in our 1:1 records and added to performance reviews
I try to be very consistent in my constructive feedback. Key phrases of constructive feedback from me by severity include:
- "Minor feedback:" ... (i.e. truly minor nitpick thing I noticed)
- “I need you to…by...” (i.e. this wasn't great, please don't do it again)
- “You must do…by…” (i.e. you will likely be written up if you do this again)
We will always talk through any feedback and if you have additional context to add, then please feel free to do so. I believe performance reviews should never be a surprise. You and I should be having very regular conversations about things! If we are not, then that is indicative of larger problems and you should probably provide feedback about me to my manager.