This is my Manager README, a document that helps introduce you to my management style, philosophy, and expectations. The intended audience is primarily anyone who reports to me, though anyone is free to read it - or even provide feedback on it! Please treat it as a reference and promise on how I will conduct myself as a manager, and what I expect from you.
I urge you to hold me accountable to my promises and to call out anything that might be missing from this document. Without your guidance, I will not be able to improve.
This document serves as a guide to understanding me as a person, my role at Usertesting, my vision, my commitment to supporting my team, PANDE and Usertesting, and my expectations of the same.
I joined Usertesting in 2015, coming in with over a decade of leading product and engineering efforts for a digital agency, RecCenter which focused heavily on the entertainment industry.
We built easy to use, self-service solutions for complex, multi-region, multi-language asset management, fan clubs, talent scouting & street teams, ecommerce platforms for legendary act's live music archives, marketing campaigns leveraging existing tech in unexpected ways, and had the opportunity to work alongside some of my musical and artistic idols along with early pioneers in the UX space, one of the most influential metal news sites on the internet, a now-favorite irish whiskey, and pop music for kids.
My undergraduate studies focused on visual arts, music, and literature, while I worked to pay my way through college as a designer for the Marietta College marketing team. I graduated with a major in oil painting & printmaking, and a minor in both music theory and performance, and English literature. Of the three, I spend the most time with music, both listening to and creating it.
In 2020-2022 at the peak of the Covid Pandemic my wife and I were both trying to make "Work from home, virtual school from home, do everything from home" happen, I decided to make everything just a little bit more intense and completed an EMBA program. I highly recommend taking classes, and courses, and talking with people in all areas of our business outside of Engineering - Knowledge of how a business operates can be very powerful in helping build relationships and finding opportunities to contribute outside of your core team and organization.
My immediate family consists of my amazing wife Melissa Blavos, two children - Elliot and Olivia, and a dog named Pepper. We live in Raleigh, North Carolina. Go Heels!
In my role as a VP of Engineering, I am responsible for creating an environment that makes success likely and leading our engineering team toward success.
The Right Thing to Do should also be the easiest thing to do
• Compliance as code
• Local & Build Automation
• Health checks
• Style guide enforcement
• Custom Linters
• Pre-commit hooks
• Helpful, auto-fixing deprecation messages
Humans first
Happy, informed, and productive humans build a fantastic product. I optimize for humans. Other leaders will maximize the business, the technology, or any different number of essential facets. Ideological diversity is critical to an effective team. All perspectives are relevant, and we need all these leaders, but my bias is toward building productive humans.
I am heavily biased toward action.
Long meetings where we endlessly debate potential directions are often valuable, but I believe starting is the best way to begin learning and progress. This is not always the correct strategy. This strategy annoys those who like to debate.I default to delegation.
The delegation of increasingly large, complex, and high-risk projects to my team is the correct way to build trust and grow the team. If you feel a thing I've delegated to you is too large, complex, or risky, you should tell me, and I will help. You should know that I would not make this delegation choice if I did not believe you would be successful. I am always willing to help.I believe in the compounding awesomeness of continually fixing small things.
I believe quality assurance is everyone's responsibility, and there are bugs to be fixed everywhere… all the time. This is everyone’s responsibility, and I will give you side-eye if I see you avoiding investing in quality.I start with an assumption of positive intent for all involved.
This has worked out well for me over my career. Yes, even when the sky is falling, and the humans are panicking, I will open the meeting with a joke.I need you to know that sometimes we are on HIGH ALERT, and things will get strange and unpredictable.
There is an exception to many of my practices and principles, which is when we are in a HIGH ALERT situation. HIGH-ALERT conditions usually involve existential threats to our product, team, and/or company. During this time, my usual people, process, and product protocols are secondary to countering this threat. If it is not apparent, I will alert you that I am in this state, along with my best guess, when we are done. If I am constantly in this state, something is fundamentally broken in my strategy. You should tell me this. I might be so busy that I need the reminder.Feedback (along with delegation) is at the core of building trust and respect in a team.
At Usertesting, a formal feedback cycle occurs once a year during the January to March Quarter. As we go through this cycle, we'll also work on our V2Mom's for the year which will encompass product, technology & professional growth goals for you. This is a great opportunity to discuss the strategy for the next year and to make sure that we are aligned on our expectations of each other.
If you have gone through the V2Mom process previously, we'll use this as an opportunity to close out the prior year's goals and assess the progress made.
Please tell me when you see something off or wrong, particularly if it is something I am doing or leading -- Disagreement is feedback; the sooner we learn how to disagree with each other efficiently, the sooner we'll trust and respect each other more. Ideas don't get better with agreement.
I go to a lot of meetings. I try to run with my calendar publicly visible. If you have a question about a meeting on my calendar, ask me. If a meeting is private or confidential, its title and attendees will be hidden. The vast majority of my meetings are neither private nor confidential.
My definition of a meeting includes an agenda and/or intended purpose, the appropriate amount of productive attendees, and a responsible party running the meeting to a schedule. If I attend a meeting, I'd prefer to start on time. If I run a meeting, I will start that meeting on time. If it's not clear why I am in a meeting, I will ask for clarification on my role in this meeting.
If you send me a presentation deck a reasonable amount of time before a meeting, I will read it and have my questions ready. If I still need to read the deck, I will tell you.
If a meeting completes its intended purpose before it's scheduled to end, let's give the time back to everyone. If it's clear the intended goal won't be achieved in the allotted time, let's stop the meeting before time is up and determine how to finish it effectively.
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Despite appearances, I am an introvert, and that means that prolonged exposure to humans is exhausting for me. Weird, huh? Meetings with three of us are perfect, three to eight are ok, and more than eight, you may find that I am strangely quiet. This is an area where I continually and actively seek to improve. Please do not confuse my quiet with a lack of enthusiasm or engagement. I will most likely DM you if I have a question that I am confident would be wasteful of the large group's time.
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When I ask you to do something that feels poorly defined you should ask me for clarification and a specific call on importance. I might still be brainstorming. Your clarifications can save a lot of people a lot of time.
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Ask assertive versus tell assertive. When you need to ask me to do something, ask me. I respond incredibly well to asking assertiveness ("Jerrod, can you help with X?"). You have just added some excitement to my day!
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I can be hyperbolic, but it's almost always because I am excited about the topic.
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Humans stating opinions as facts is a trigger for me. When I hear this, I will often unexpectedly jump into a conversation to clarify that your opinion is just that… your opinion and not a fact.
This document is a living breathing thing and likely incomplete. I update it frequently and would appreciate your feedback.