A README file for those who work with Eric
This is now a historical document - I wrote this to have available to anyone I worked with. I did not actively share this so, honestly, I don't know how many of my reports ever read this. I hope any that did found it useful. As of 2 Feb 2022 I am retired and have taken the title of Technorati of Leisure.
This whole personal README was maybe a phase. Consider if something asynchronous like this would be useful for you to share with your peers and coworkers.
Cheers.
Eric
Congratulations, we get to work together! ;-) Let me tell you somethings about working with me.
Just a way for me to share what I think my be useful for someone starting to work with me.
What are the things I think you should know about me?
I fell in love with software in high school, dropping that future artist career in a heartbeat. I taught myself a lot and then learned a lot in school and during my first job at a crazy start-up. I was fortunate to study UI design and implementation during my masters, and combined my two passions of UI and compiler theory in my thesis.
I grew up an Army Brat and have lived in the Pacific Northwest since 1992. I moved out to work at Intel Supercomputers on their graphical tools for developers and then moved on to Microsoft, where I had several careers within Office, Windows, and HoloLens. I took a sabbatical (highly recommended) and looked for a job with personal meaning. For that, I can't imagine anything better than Axon and the mission that drives the company.
I lived through some horrible stuff and some wonderful stuff. We all have our stories. I'm a husband and a Dad and my family is my top priority.
I've been product leading and managing since the start of this century. I've had great people to learn from and interesting training.
I've been accused of being a nice guy. Over and over again.
I read a lot of books on Stoicism and strive to follow those lessons.
Keep reading if this is the least bit helpful.
LinkedIn: I'm happy to add people I know or should know to my LinkedIn (see Eric Richards LinkedIn ). If you're curious about my work history but don't want to log into LinkedIn to peek, I keep an archived copy here.
Twitter: you'll find my sparse neglected Twitter feed here.
Facebook: I'm protective of my Facebook. Please don't be offended. I like LinkedIn for work relationships and Facebook for folks I know outside of work.
Other Hot Platform: I probably have an account but don't use it enough to share.
You must be awesome or else you wouldn't be where you are now. So that's my default when it comes to trusting you to be smart and motivated to own your work and responsibilities and Get Things Done. Tell me how best to support you because that's my job.
What do I believe?
Quality upfront: I've seen high functioning teams in high gear once the whole team committed to keeping incoming code at a high-quality upfront, meaning that all code going in was tested with unit tests. "Ugh!" you might say, what crazy overhead that seems like. But actually, the high quality code meant there weren't constant regressions chasing developers and that provided an abundance of time to get more features done.
Telemetry, Data-based decisions: if you can measure it, you can measure making it better. Getting real world data on your executing code is essential in understanding the quality of the code and how unexpected situations happen. Otherwise, your deployed code is a mystery and problem solving is hit or miss.
What are my triggers?
- Not taking responsibility.
- Not sharing bad news.
- Over-representing yourself.
One-on-One meetings are important and they are your meeting. We will have a shared document for our one-on-ones that you can add status or agenda items to. I will as well. We will cover what you want to talk about first. Ideally, this is more than just a status meeting but rather something to dig deeper into what has been going on and any upcoming challenges you forsee.
I'll have my items to check-in on as well. I should frequently ask you for anything I can do to help or any feedback you have for me.
If there's a day we're scheduled and you just don't have anything to talk about or you're really squeezed to get some work done and could utilize our one-on-one time for that, reach out to me and suggest we skip.
I love feedback. I love information. Especially it's bad news. That's just a challenge to handle. And as I'll often repeat (sorry): bad news doesn't get better with age.
We have a shared one-on-one document for you to add any status you like, including information to talk about during our one-on-one. You can also Slack me anything or email me interesting progress or things you're working on. I'll assume that you're informing me and not needing action from me unless you specifically need my voice to be part of the conversation. I'll do my best to always acknowledge anything you send my way so that you know I got it and read it.
I do my absolute best to keep my Outlook calendar up to date. If something shows up as tentative then you can probably schedule over it because I haven't committed to it (feel free to check first). If I have items showing I'm out of the office then yep I am out of the office. Sometimes I have to come in late or leave early.
I do my best to not schedule early meetings unless I know everyone on the list are early arrivers.
I do my best to not schedule lunch meetings because some people are like me and use lunch to recharge for the rest of the day.
And yes, you do lose some credibility points with me if you schedule a lunch meeting with my team members without re-assuring us how important it is and swearing it will be a rare ask. In what I've seen in my career, lunch meetings are usually fall-out from poor planning and scrambling to cover ground. I don't want to feed that monster for my team unless ammends are being made due to the team's mistake.
As a Dad and a Husband, I do everything I can to balance my work and life. I enjoy my work because it fulfills me. My home life gives me energy and meaning, too. I expect you to find the right balance for yourself as well. I usually come in early and then leave so I can be home in time for dinner. You might come in later and stay later. I expect that there's a core hour intersection in time when early people and later people are available to work together. Something like 10am to 4pm.
At the end of the day, we work for results. We're also a team. Late-night hacker hours slept off in daylight that impair communication with the team can happen on occassion but do not work in the long-term. Realize you're responsible to your team members to communicate your status and to be present when face-to-face meetings are happening.
I'll give you heads up on vacations and I'll need you to do the same. When you're out for more than three days I need to know who's directly responsible for covering your area. That needs to be clear to the team as well.
I do enjoy talking to you and other folks, it is just that I'm wired to consume energy when I'm with people. I have to go off and be by myself with my own thoughts for a while to recharge. So sometimes you'll see me bugging out early for lunch or for an afternoon walk for coffee.
If you're into personality types, I test for INTJ. Thank you, Dr. Jung. By the way, Bruce Toggnazzini has a great article called "Carl Jung and the Macintosh" which I highly recommend.
One of the most interesting classes I took at Microsoft was Situational Leadership II (There was no I). An important take-away from that class was the concept of judging someone's capability by each task they have, not the whole person. The breakout of looking at a person and the assigned tasks are:
- Enthusiastic Beginning
- Disillusioned Learner
- Competent Practioner
- Expert
It's a two-way conversation. So when you have a new task, I'll do my best to ensure I'm working with you on what I believe your correct level is for that task. It's on you, too, to let me know if you feel like you're disillusioned on something while I'm treating you like you're competent and able to run with it yourself.
One of my former manager and coworkers, Mark Flick, shared the great concept of Harmonious Initiative. I love it. It is ensuring that everyone knows what the current priorities and tasks are that everyone should be focused on. At the end of the day, this level of constantly communicated focus and priority allow everyone to make good decisions about what to do, what order to do them in, and what not to do.
One way to tell this is done well: when the manager or leader is gone for a couple of weeks (or longer!) and everything goes smoothly because everyone is in sync.
The paper "Are We Ready to be Unleashed? A Comparative Analysis between Agile Software Development and War Fighting" by Steve Adolph is a great summary.
I like books. If you have a favorite book, especially one you feel has given you a great new perspective or challenged your thinking, please send its name my way.
- The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday.
- Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday.
- Essentialism by Greg McKeown.
- What Got You Here Won't Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith.
- The Meaning Revolution by Fred Kofman.
- Mindset by Carol Dweck.