Manager Expectations

Now that I'm getting a new manager, I took time this weekend to think about what I expect from him. Something I haven't done thoroughly well in the past and I've sometimes had to pay the price of undefined and uncommunicated expectations from some of my previous managers. One example from my past is when one of my previous managers organized a meeting with me at the end of an important project and thanked me for delivering but told me she didn't trust that I was going to deliver. I was the only engineer on web on this project but mobile had 4 engineers and the backend had about 6. I didn't know how to feel about the message back then, and I hadn't learned the skill of digging deeper in such vague conclusions. But had I made it clear for them to give me timely feedback, I think the message after the project would have been different. Our relationship after that didn't get any better until I had to leave the company.

I expect our relationship to be a partnership where my manager sets direction, removes friction, provides leverage and communicates timely while I provide the technical execution, visibility and domain context.

Below I will expand on what each one of these means to me in my current workplace:

Setting Direction

In an environment where I am given or can contribute initiatives to drive, most of the things here would be my responsibilities but that's slightly different from my current arrangement.

• A clear "Why" and strategic context. Map initiatives to business objectives, user impact and company objectives such that I'm not building in a vacuum.

• Prioritization and scope defense. When everything is high priority then nothing is. I expect a manager to enforce explicit trade-offs, protect me/the team from scope creep and handle ad-hoc incoming requests from stakeholders.

• Definition of success. Clear expectations on delivery times, quality bars and what done looks like before we sink weeks into an initiative.

Removing Friction

• Protect from overhead. Filtering out unnecessary organizational noise, meetings and cross-functional bureaucracy to increase dedicated, uninterrupted focus time.

• Culture and Psychological safety. Creating an environment where raising technical debt, system bottlenecks or delivery delays is met with problem solving rather than blame.

• Bureaucratic and cross-team escalation. Step in when I hit organizational walls, whether it's negotiating dependencies with another team, securing a budget for tooling or aligning with product.

Growth and Leverage

• Transparent Performance Standards. Provide clear criteria for what baseline performance is versus what is required to reach the next level.

• Continuous timely feedback. Deliver specific, timely, actionable constructive feedback regularly during 1 on 1s rather than dropping unexpected critiques during review cycles.

• Sponsorship and Visibility. Advocate for my contributions in promotion calibrations and steer impactful, high visibility projects towards me especially if they match my career goals.

Communication and Trust

• Consistent 1 on 1 cadence. Dedicated time for our 1 on 1s and focus them on personal development, feedback and alignment rather than basic ticket status updates and chitchat.

• Autonomy over Micromanagement. Define the problem, expectations and constraints clearly while trusting me to own the architectural and technical solution.

In summary, I hold myself accountable for providing technical execution, visibility and domain context by making sure that:

• There are no surprises. Proactively raise blockers, time slips or architectural risks as soon as they become apparent.

• Own and follow-through. Drive problems to resolution rather than simply pointing out that an issue exists.

• Communicate clearly. Frame technical constraints and trade-offs in terms of business impact, cost or risk.

• Two-way feedback. Give upward feedback openly so that my manager knows what is working and what isn't.

I'd love to hear any interesting additions to this in the comments.