I’m a hands-on, results-driven manager. My role is to act as an enabler — creating the conditions for you to do your best work by shielding the team from unnecessary distractions, plowing through blockers, and ensuring we have the clarity and space to deliver.

I care deeply about transparency and proactiveness — these are the values that shape how we work together. Transparency builds trust within the team, while proactiveness ensures we surface risks, share updates, and address problems before they grow.

I focus on higher-level strategy and alignment, but I keep myself informed of key implementation details and discussions. This allows me to support you better, ask thoughtful questions, and help ensure we’re on the right path. I’ll ask questions, but I won’t dictate solutions.

• Slack: For quick communication.

• Ad-hoc meetings: For in-depth discussions.

• Coworking sessions: I’m open to them, except during focus hours.

• Time-sensitive updates: Push them to me directly on Slack.

• General updates: Use planning and stand-up meetings.

• Work tracking: We’ll use Jira as the source of truth.

• These are your meetings. This is your opportunity to discuss and bring up anything you feel like. Therefore, it's your agenda. If you don't come with one, I can improvise but then it becomes more my meeting and that isn't the intent.

• This isn't a status or standup meeting. We don't and shouldn't focus on that stuff. We can talk about anything else though, your career, how you are feeling (happiness, stress level), sports, your weekend plans - what ever you want.

You own your schedule — you have my full trust.

If you’re unavailable for more than an hour during work hours, just mark yourself “out of office” in your calendar. No need to ask permission or explain.

Same goes for focus time: if you want uninterrupted coding time, block it on your calendar. That way, everyone knows when to expect you back.

The reason for this is simple: people depend on you, and clarity makes collaboration smoother for everyone.

• How I give feedback: If it’s something small, I’ll give it directly and immediately. If it’s something more significant, I’ll suggest a quick meeting so we can talk it through in depth. If at any point you’d like structured feedback, just ask — I’m happy to provide a more formal review outside of our usual cadence.

• How I like to receive feedback: The same way — direct and immediate. Don’t wait until a 1:1 or performance review. If something’s not working for you, I’d rather know as soon as possible so I can adapt.

• Career growth: I want to help you grow into the kind of professional you aspire to be. That means aligning projects and challenges with your goals — whether that’s deepening your expertise, broadening your skill set, or preparing for leadership. I’ll advocate for opportunities, but I’ll also expect you to be proactive about sharing your ambitions with me.

• Status is a Push System - I like to treat everyone as the professional they are. In doing so, I expect my teammates to communicate changes in status as soon as humanly possible. Since my job as a manager is to manage, I need to know the current status of everything in as close to real time as I can. Whether you have a suspicion that work won't be completed, the sooner you tell me about it, the more options we may have to correct or compensate for the change in circumstance. Whatever you do, just don't wait for me to ask you about it to let me know a change in status. I should never learn that work didn't get completed during a retro, I should already know by then. You should expect the same from me.

• Mistakes: Mistakes are part of doing meaningful work, and I don’t expect perfection from anyone. What matters is how quickly we recognize them, what we learn from them, and how we adjust moving forward. A mistake is only a problem if it’s hidden or repeated without reflection. If you make one, own it, share it, and let’s work together to ensure we don’t trip over the same thing twice.

• Autonomy vs. alignment: I want you to have full freedom in how you approach your work, as long as we’re aligned on outcomes and priorities. Alignment means we all know where we’re going and why — autonomy means you get to choose the best path to get there. I’ll step in if I see us drifting away from our agreed direction, but I don’t want or need to control how you execute day-to-day. My long-term goal is for the team to run independently, with each feature having a clear leader from within. I’ll always support you, but I expect you to lead your work with confidence.

If something bothers you, take ownership. Open a ticket, describe the problem, and add it to the backlog. I can’t promise we’ll always have immediate time for it, but I’ll do my best to make it happen. Ownership of change belongs to all of us, not just me.

I want our team to operate with true ownership. Every feature should have a leader from within the team — someone who drives it forward, makes decisions, and ensures it gets delivered. My role is to support you along the way, not to lead every initiative myself. The more we share ownership, the stronger and more resilient we become as a team.

• Ask questions. Don’t take anything for granted. Challenge the assumptions, and aim to understand WHY we are doing that epic. I’ll back you up.

• Break down the epic into tasks, with instructions for each. Assume you won’t be the one implementing the task.

• Suggest the best way to divide the work, and take full ownership of that. Sit with the other developers working on your epic, and make sure they understand it.

• A feature doesn’t end when we publish it. How was the feature received? What feedback did we get on it?

• Gather feedback on your work. Ask me and other team members. Be specific, and aim to know where you could improve.

When you commit to an estimation, I expect you to give your best effort to deliver within the agreed timeframe. If the estimation was slightly off, it’s reasonable to push a little harder to meet the commitment. However, if there’s no real deadline behind it, I don’t want you to overwork or burn out just to hit an artificial target.

The important part is to learn from estimation mistakes. Consistently missing estimates creates unnecessary pressure and forces overwork, which is unsustainable. Use each experience to refine your future estimations so that commitments stay realistic, balanced, and reliable.