If we ever get a chance to work together, this is a summary of how I operate, my motivations, and what I have to offer.
As a manager
I want you to grow and flourish in your career. I want you to enjoy what you work on, to have opportunities to try new things, and have experiences that will not only help you at PayScale but in your career beyond.
I believe a low-stress, safe workplace leads to better results (such as higher quality, increased productivity, bigger impacts). I want you to focus on helping build out the products, asking questions, and taking risks.
I am here to assist you in your career but it’s up to you to drive it.
Do you want to work on something specific? Want to drive a feature or lead a small team? Some other experience? Let me know, and I’ll do what I can to help find something appropriate or discuss how to get there.
I foster a supportive, collaborative environment. It’s ok to ask questions.
I aim to empower others to take ownership and drive work to completion.
I’m trying to be a better manager. I want to keep getting better at what I do. I need feedback too. Knowing how to help you helps me too.
A safe place
Please be open with me about how you’re feeling or your concerns. If I don’t know about something that may be bothering you, I can’t act on helping address it.
It’s ok to be critical of me, how the team is run, about PayScale, or anything else. And then let’s talk about it. If you’re not comfortable telling me, please tell my manager.
I think things over a lot. I usually react by listening first, wanting to understand more, empathizing. If you want my help, we’ll talk about approaches to take.
I believe in learning and moving forward together. If something bad happens, it’s ok to say something, and even better if you have an idea of how to solve it. I’d rather know up front instead of being surprised later on. We’ve all had bad things happen, let’s learn from it and move on.
Communication
For quick notes: email, Slack, and talking in person are fine. No preference between them.
For disagreements or hot issues, I prefer to talk in person. Email and Slack are my least favorite options due to the lag in the conversation, potential for tone to be misread, missed body language cues, and having words heavily parsed.