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Christof Damian
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- managing what? - removing some prompts for reader - updating working time and locations - added Friday Links - formatting |
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| README.md | ||
Manager README?
A few people (not only managers) now share information in a README or how-to style document on the web. The first one I came across was How to Rands. I thought it is a good idea for new team members, but also for people in the company who don't have constant contact with me.
What I do
I am the Technical Director at Devex. I am mostly a manager, also a manager of a manager and a developer.
My job is to make the product development run as smoothly and productive as possible.
This includes slowly growing the team to adapt to a growing company. It also means making everyone in my team successful in his job by providing everything they need.
I am also usually the first contact point when there any questions regarding technology from other teams or outside.
I do make decisions about a lot of things and prefer to make an early decision to waiting for the perfect decision.
What I am about
- I am an introvert, this means I get exhausted if I have a lot of meetings and no time in between to recover. Social events with a lot of people I don't know are especially taxing.
- I am very patient and prefer evolution over revolutions.
- I am the person who says "no" to most people, this goes for my team as well as the rest of the company.
- I tend to think a lot before I talk, this can be awkward in conversations.
- I think meetings with more than four people are usually a waste, unless they are highly structured or ritualised like a retrospective or an all hands meeting. All meetings should result in action items (having another meeting with the same group is not considered an action item).
- I prefer nudging over forcing people into one direction.
- I have strong opinions about how do to things, but I can be convinced with the right arguments.
- I strongly believe in being agile, from the project management side to programming.
- I try to be as transparent as possible.
- I am pragmatic and prefer to have something good enough today, than something perfect in some distance future.
- I take the blame, but share the kudos.
My schedule
I am usually in the office from 9:00 to 18:00. I don't like to stay longer and will cancel meetings set up after 18:00 unless I agree that it is very important and can't be scheduled to another time. I don't read slack or email outside of working times.
Since I moved into the country side I try to work from home two days a week. In most weeks this will be Wednesday and Tuesday or Thursday.
I live in my calendar and it is always really packed, but it is fully public and you can just schedule a meeting with me whenever you like.
If you are on my team we will have regular 1:1s and also retrospectives. If something important comes up I am always available to talk.
Communication
My preferred communication medium for actionable items is email. Jira is on par with email.
Slack also works, but I am treating it as asynchronous and will not respond as soon as possible depending on the urgency. I might also not scroll back in a lot of channels when catching up.
I will also post updates to the internal blog, maybe every two months.
Every Friday I post a list of links I found interesting to our internal mailing list, my blog and a shorter version to Slack.
Finally there are the meetings, either 1:1s, team meetings or impromptu meetings.
1:1s
I currently have my 1:1s every two weeks. With indirect reports it will be more like once a quarter.
The 1:1 is the place where you can bring up any topics that you are not comfortable sharing in retrospectives or other meetings. I am asking some questions to get the conversation started. These have evolved a bit over time.
- How is life?
- What are you worried about at the moment?
- What are you excited about at the moment?
- How can I help you learn and grow?
- Do you have any feedback for me?
If we have been doing 1:1s for a long time we are probably skipping these and have others or just a free chat.
What I expect from you (if you are on my team)
I expect you to try to do the best job you can.
If there are any road blocks or problems I expect you to bring these up with me so we can make sure you don't get stuck.
Come to me early when there is a problem to avoid any frustration. There will never be blame, we will just fix it together.
Books I recommend
- The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change by Camille Fournier
- Web Operations: Keeping the Data on Time by John Allspaw, Jesse Robbins
- Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change (The XP Series) by Kent Beck, Cynthia Andres
- The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries
- Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Malone Scott
- Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen
What I am doing aside from work
Most of my free time I try to spend on my bicycle, this is where I decompress and my way of meditation.
I now live in the country side and have to deal with the house and garden plus a growing zoo of a dog and two cats.
I am interested in urbanism and life sized cities and have strong opinions about this.
I also like to follow the Linux and Open Source world. I am a contributor to the Fedora Linux distribution, but nowadays I have nearly no time to work on it.
Me on the Internet
If you like to keep up to date with my random rants on the internet