I really like how Matt Newkirk puts it. A Manager Readme is for the people who report to the manager. It should: 1) share expectations to reduce their anxiety and 2) build trust as they get to know you.
- Age: 42
- Family: Erica, Rachel, Meredith. We have some fish for "pets" but nothing cuddly.
- Places lived: Rancho Bernardo, CA -> Scottsdale, AZ -> Tucson, AZ -> Phoenix, AZ
- Hobbies: Photography, D&D, running (poorly), exploring
- Games: Currently into Breath of the Wild and Minecraft. Formerly into Mass Effect, Starcraft, various Star Wars games, and older school FPSes.
- Code: Most familiar with JavaScript/Node/TypeScript, Swift, Ruby, Python, and if you go far enough back a lot of C#.
- LinkedIn Profile
Hi! I’m Scott. I live in Phoenix, Arizona with my wife and two kids. I’ve been in software development for about 20 years now and management for the last 7ish. I spent a lot of my career in consulting and have seen just about everything.
I've always loved building things. For the first part of my career that meant working as an engineer on the code. But I also came to love seeing people come together to do the things that they couldn't do as individuals. That lead me down the path of people management, and I've found the same amount of satisfaction from that as an individual contributor. I've come to love the science behind team dynamics and building high-performing teams.
Given that, I'm also an introvert. I like working with people and being on a team, so sometimes it seems like I’m an extrovert, but I need to recharge by being by myself. My own version of hell is going to a “networking event” and told to mingle with strangers.
I'm told that I'm very self-aware. This usually means that I have a pretty good sense of how things are going and if they are going well.
Here's what I think it means to have a great team:
This means that people on the team should not have to fear reprisal if they screw up or don't always excel. You're safe to be your true authentic self on the team, in fact you're encouraged to do this. How does this happen? It takes a lot of work, and there are no shortcuts. First is trust. Trust takes time to build up. Each interaction we have can result in a little bit of trust built up, or a lot eroded away. Vulnerability helps to create this. I'll be as vulnerable with you all as I can be. To start take a look at the "flaws" section later on in this doc.
Feedback plays a big part in this as well. Not only the feedback itself, but the way it's delivered. I try to give feedback often, whether it's about something smaller or for the bigger things. I view it almost as a habit or rythym.
[I should note that "feedback" here does not always mean a negative connotation—you should get feedback when you're doing things well! "Hey first_name, I liked how you did neat_thing, it enables positive_result."]
On the flipside, I love to get feedback from my reports—I find it to be some of the most valuable stuff I can get.
Here’s an anecdote from my past. We were trying to do some rough estimation on a complex data access layer to build out a proposal. I had over-simplified it in my head and threw out a number that was lower than what “Greg” had suggested. Mistake 1: if you're not building it, you shouldn't be estimating it. Then I doubled down and made Mistake 2: I said, “C’mon Greg, it won’t take that long will it?” Ugh. Of course Greg said no to not disagree with his boss. Long story short, it did take that long. One of my senior engineers pulled me aside and said “You kinda steamrolled Greg back there.” He was right. I apologized to Greg and have tried to be more conscious about how I ask questions.
My senior engineer felt comfortable enough to tell me when my performance was off.
The takeaway: People are more motivated to do great things when they have this sense of safety vs motivation through fear.
I value doing the right thing, even if there's no obvious external benefit for doing so. Here's how that plays out: I attempt to be as honest and transparent with my team as I can be. I hope that you can do the same with me, in fact this is my default mode—I choose to trust people and take them at their word. Yes, this has bitten me before (though that's been rare!), but it remains my policy.
I want you to succeed! We'll talk about your growth and where you'd like to go. I'll be on the lookout for opportunities that would help you move in that direction. I may even nudge you to do something you might find uncomfortable if it'll accelerate that progress.
A high performing team ships good stuff and ships it often. I also think that this can happen without burning people out. There are a myriad of tools, processes, and practices out there that purport to be silver bullets for high performing teams. I like some of these things and dislike others. The key is to know how to apply any of them to a team and make sure it is working. To be a little corny, the tools should serve the team, not the other way around. And if something isn't working out, get rid of it and try another.
What I value in tools and process:
- Clarity. Does it provide it or take it away?
- Transparency. Does it allow team members and stakeholders to know what is going on without a whole lot of effort?
- Measurement. Are we getting better? Are we shipping faster with fewer bugs?
- Friction. The addition of any kind of tool or process introduces some kind of friction. That's ok if it's 1) not a lot, and 2) generates more value than the friction it brings.
My philosophy is to be a la carte and tailor any approach. I like how Dave Thomas (who knows a thing or two about "agile") puts it:
What to do: Find out where you are. Take a small step towards your goal. Adjust your understanding based on what you learned.
Repeat.
I have ADHD, though not so much the hyperactive kind. This wasn't officially diagnosed until recently, but in hindsight it's something I wrestled with for most of my life. I'm pretty sure it got worse during the pandemic. I am currently doing the work to try to overcome this but it does usually rear it's head in a few ways:
- It's difficult for me to follow complex spoken narratives, especially if they diverge into tangents. My brain wanders off on its own and I'll realize I missed the last minute of what was said.
- I procrastinate on things, especially if they are administrative.
- If it's not in my calendar or Todoist it might as well not exist. The flip side is that if it is on my calendar, I will pay close attention to it.
I struggle to offer coherent spur-of-the-moment feedback on something. If you ask me to review a document and immediately commentate on it, you might get something worthwhile out of me, but it'll likely only be surface level. If I have time to read and digest I'll give you something good. This is something that I'd like to get better at, though it's not natural for me.
I am human. If we work together for long enough, I am going to let you down at some point, and I am sorry about that. I would really really appreciate it if you told me though. I can make myself better by remaining accountable to you.
I think I have a good intuition. This helps in different ways, but sometimes I over-index on it. This can be overcome by data and first-principles thinking.
Ok, congrats on getting to the end. Here are some other fun facts:
- My first "professional" software job was for a really weird and poorly run startup that tried to get in on one of the first Internet booms. I edited a lot perl files live on the production server to fix things. Nobody thought this was weird at the time.
- I've been serious about photography for about 15 years. I like to take portraits as well as landscapes. It's hard to find the time to do a proper outing for picture taking though.
- I nearly died in a flash flood in the Dominican Republic. Life-tip: don't be downstream and next to a waterfall on a flood plain.
- I prefer dogs over cats, but they both make me sneeze.