Last updated May 2025

I first came across "Manager READMEs" and "Personal User Manuals" in my previous role at Tarabut. I think they are a great way to "soft introduce" managers to new teams and individuals, giving an opportunity for teams to build familiarity with their new manager from a comfortable distance.

My Background

Prior to my career as a manager, I operated for more than ten years as a Backend Engineer, most significantly working with the Python stack. I worked in a range of different industries, including broadcasting, fashion, transport and fintech. I’ve spent most of my career in tech startups – I really enjoy the energy, urgency, and constant evolution that come with working in lean, fast-moving teams. I find that these are environments which benefit from a heavy lean towards continuous learning, adaptability, and building great relationships with colleagues along the way.

I live in Bristol in the west of England, though I am originally from sunny Tooting in south-west London.

My approach

How I Work

My working hours are usually 9am-5:30pm, though I periodically work outside of these hours when needed to push key work items over the line. Outside of meetings, you can expect me to be responsive in my normal hours. I am willing to be contacted out-of-hours in emergencies - please use this responsibly! I'll not generally message you outside of working hours unless we have prior agreement, or there's an urgent matter that needs addressing. In other instances I make liberal use of scheduled messages in order to respect your recharging time out-of-hours.

I aim to respond to Slack messages which need a response within an hour, and emails within a day.

Living in Bristol, on days when I am travelling, I may be less responsive during my commute and may need to opt out of meetings taking place in the first hour of the day.

Feedback

I'm a big believer in continuous feedback as a driver for continuous improvement. Sometimes feedback can feel scary and can elicit a defensive response. But fundamentally, feedback is what helps us improve, and ideally brings us to a positive outcome for everyone. I aim to create conditions where giving and receiving feedback feels safe, easy, and rewarding.

Fundamentally, feedback is also two way. So if you ever have any feedback for me, I want to hear it! And I will make space for you to bring it to me to address.

1:1s (One-to-ones)

I consider 1:1s to be one of the most important meetings in my calendar - they are my opportunity to be close to individuals, and really "touch grass" in terms of how we are doing, where people's concerns are, and what problems could be on the horizon.

I'll hold 1:1s with my direct reports, as well as stakeholders to the teams I support. With report 1:1s, I aim for the agenda to be driven by the reportee. This is your space to bring me your concerns, ideas, and thoughts: ask me anything! I also aim for 1:1s to have space for two-way feedback, whenever it might be necessary. At times I will directly ask you for feedback on how I am doing, but even if I don't ask, know that feedback on my management and support is always welcome.

I'm aware that different reports will be comfortable with different frequencies of 1:1s, and this is something we'll agree on in our first conversations. In really busy periods, I may need to cut back on 1:1s. When this happens, you can expect me to communicate this clearly, and I'll seek to restore 'normal service' as soon as I can.

Process and Software Development

I'm an advocate of people over process, and encourage the teams I support to continually revise our working process in order to best serve our moving fast, and shipping quickly, reliably, and safely.

In the past, I've had success working in Scrum-like and Kanban-like formations. But I believe that teams are as unique as the people that compose them, and I don't believe in any "one size fits all" development process. So when I'm supporting your team, you can expect for me to advocate taking time to periodically revise and refine our working processes together. In instances when I perceive the team to be experiencing problems, missing deliveries, or otherwise struggling, you can expect me to be more hands-on in debugging and making process improvement suggestions. Even in these cases, I will be soliciting your feedback throughout and I always want to hear your perspective, especially if you disagree!

When things go wrong

While we always aim for things to go right, we should be well-prepared to handle the impact when things don't go to plan.

In the event that you have bad news to bring me - please bring it sooner rather than later. This gives us both the opportunity to take the right corrective actions faster. I can also promise that I'll be understanding even when you feel you have made mistakes. I'm a big believer in psychological safety as an enabler to a constructive engineering culture, and being at ease talking about our own mistakes is a significant part of that.

Work/life balance

I am convinced that in order to get the most from ourselves during our working lives, it's important that we all take adequate time to recharge in between. As a manager, I'm always listening for signals of "burnout" in my teams, and encouraging team members to make good use of their annual leave allowance to mitigate. Of course, one of the best ways of encouraging sustainable working behaviours is by modelling them myself – so you can expect me to take at least two longer breaks (at least a week long) per year, and during that time I'll be planning to minimise my contact. Apart from a desire to "recharge my batteries", this also creates great conditions to build resilience within my teams. I don't want any team members – myself included – to be singularly indispensable for critical operations.

Outside of work

Outside of working life I aim to spend a good amount of time with my hobbies away from a screen!

Reading – and reading fiction, specifically – is a big part of my "unwinding" process at the end of the work day. I find it a great way to set myself up for good-quality rest, which in turn supports my day-to-day work. I've recently been working my way through Noah Hawley's novels – he's best known as writer & showrunner of the Fargo TV series. I'm also a big fan of superhero fiction and have been reading comics & graphic novels as long as I can remember. Jonathan Hickman and Grant Morrison are two of my recent favourite superhero writers.

Hiking is a great complement to a tech career. Enjoying the world outdoors is a great counterpoint to many hours spent understanding and working through problems presented on a screen. I recently had a great time hiking the West Highland Way in Scotland with my girlfriend.

DIY - A few years ago now I bought a house in Bristol that needed a lot of work, and have been embarking on the long process of fixing it up ever since. This was a whole new set of skills for me, and hugely out of my comfort zone. I have learned a lot along the way!

Thank you for reading – please do reach out to me if you have any comments on this introduction!