This document is a reference to set expectations on how I interact with others and set my priorities and focus. You can use this document as a guide on making it the most effective way to work together. The audience for this document is my peers who directly address "you.”

As the Director of Engineering at a growing startup, I fulfill the most substantial representation of the engineering leadership. I am primarily measured by the success of my peers and the projects I oversee. I see the engineering team as my "product.”

Some of the areas I deeply care and are measured by:

• Ability to retain and attract talent by deeply taking care of who we have and building an Engineering Brand in the relevant market(s).
• Creating a clear context so people could be successful, connecting the dots between what the organization needs and what the individual needs
• Mentor individual contributors and managers to increase our leadership capacity
• Iterating on our process and technology to build a scalable organization and scalable business

I am here to guide you, help you and provide you with the right environment to be the best version of yourself. If you need anything or are unsure, ask!

I make mistakes, and I want to improve, much like you. Hold me accountable. Tell me.

🏗 I'm still writing this section.

Do the right thing at the right time

• measure
• gain confidence
• iterate swift
• build for scale to X

Optimize for sherpa°

• hold each other accountable
• be kind, be constructive, but never hold back

I use mantras to frame my mind in an intentional way.

Do you know or did you ask? An assumption can be treated as a hypothesis and should be validated. Do I know something for sure, or do I need to check assumptions with multiple people or become knowledgeable myself?

If you don’t think enough, read more, if you think too much, start writing.

• Doing without context

  Doing the right thing is a lot of effort, but it becomes significantly easier if the broader context is understood. This will allow you to make your own decisions while fully aligning with the strategic goals and mission we’re setting. Ask yourself why we need this and how does it help to reach our goals?

• Skipping Plan and Check

  The PDCA cycle is a widely used framework and provides an excellent high-level overview of how iterations can be managed. When we’re too ambitious, we skip the planning, jump into the doing and become very reactive without looking back. Often, many of the unknowns could have been easily uncovered early on without getting too far into the development where changes are incrementally more expensive to make.

• Not owning end to end

  A fixed feature is done when it is shipped and can be used. Take the ownership to fully understand how a change will make it into production and scale. Can this service handle parallelization? Does it need to? Will it work for 10, 100, 10.000 requests a second? Where and when will it break, and how can we know that we need to make changes to adapt.

🏗 I'm still writing this section.

Is it shipped?

Are you confident?

Confidence is very subjective but can be gained by

• including automated tests (unit, integration, e2e)
• considerations of edge cases, error handling, estimations on scaling/infrastructure needs
• provided documentation. Do we need to document and communicate changes? Should our support team know about this? Is a playbook needed?

My calendar is open, and the easiest is to book some time in my calendar. Even though my calendar looks packed, don’t assume I’m “too busy,” but instead reach out in slack and ask. If I need focus time or run an errand, I will block time off as “Out of Office.”

Slack is great if something can wait for the next few hours, if it can’t please make it clear how urgent it is for you.

My general routine is to get up early, use the quiet hours to do focus time, spend the day helping others with workshops, interviews, ad-hoc meetings or being part of various rituals. I take breaks to walk my dog (sometimes during sessions when I’m not actively participating). I will spend time in the evenings to get to high-priority tasks I couldn’t or will invest in learning and reading.

You can expect me to be active from 8 am - 6 pm EST during a regular work week.

On most weekends I’m available n the mornings and afternoons for a couple of hours to help if needed until we have an established On-Call schedule.

You deserve a great one on one that provides you with value and helps you grow.

Bi-weekly, 30 minutes every time. This is your guaranteed time with me. We might adjust to a different cadence up to monthly if you have additional support from other team mentors.

• I tend to focus on things that need improvement or have the potential to be a threat because these would still be topics that we have to work on or address (at some point in time). This means that I might bring up considerations or cases where I see a missing gap even though they are not the most urgent or most likely.
• My instinct is to provide a solution to everything and everyone. I’m working on it. If you catch me providing an answer without asking questions first, call me out!
• I’m pretty stubborn by nature, especially when I’m convinced that my perspective or approach is the “right” one. The best way to help me understand better is to push information and data as I base my decisions on reason rather than emotion 🖖.
• When you ask, “do you have some time?” in Slack or email, please add the topic you’d like to discuss. Otherwise, I’ll think, “do you have some time for me to tell you I’m thinking of quitting.” I’ll do the same, so you don’t have to think constantly. I want to talk to you as I’m thinking of firing you.
• I go the extra mile. I often overspend my time budget to fully understand the challenge and provide a solution that addresses the root cause when faced with challenges. This helps me to build up specialized knowledge in many areas. You’ll notice that I sometimes get extremely detailed when providing an explanation. Sometimes I lose others in these conversations. I’m working on it. Call me out to get to the point and skip the details.

This page is for you, let me know if you find it helpful and if you agree with my statements and perspectives. Did you notice something I do that is not covered here, but should?