Andrew Khoury - Leader, Manager, Technical Principal

Hey there. I’m Andrew Khoury, you can call me drew.

I wrote this so you understand me

You can use this as a source of truth in case you see something in the wild that surprises you.

This document is a set of promises I intend to keep. If I don’t, I expect you to call me out.

I’m here to deliver exceptional engineering solutions, remove roadblocks, and shield the team

At its core, I do three things for the team:

• Deliver exceptional engineering solutions by writing code, pairing with great engineers, uplifting the skills of my team, and helping the team solve complex problems through my experience or facilitating technical workshops to solve problems together
• Remove roadblocks stopping us getting things done
• Shield the team from interruptions and distractions

I have the responsibility for:

• People. This means your health (mental and physical) and wellbeing at work, your relationship with work (including the dark side of this – keeping burnout at bay), and creating opportunities for you to grow
• Engineering. I am the single point of accountability for the technical solutions we deliver. I will take responsibility when things go bad. I will ensure we work hard to make sure the likelihood of those bad things happening again is reduced.
• Delivery. Ensuring we have a good pipeline of work to get on with. Ensuring that work is well defined and well sized.

I am here to improve the team, not carry it. If I’m doing my job well, when I step away from the team for long periods of time, things will continue to function well, and adapt and improve.

If we've worked together for at least 3 months - you should have seen significant personal growth in yourself. As much as I love technology - nothing compares to seeing the people I work with become better versions of themselves.

I value trust, teamwork, and continuous improvement

Trust

I'm a firm believer that we should trust each other by default. I'll try my best not to micro-manage you or tell you how to do your job. In return I expect you to own your part of our delivery and reach out to me when you need help. I also expect you to trust me - and come to me directly with any issues as soon as they arise.

Teamwork

How we deliver is important to me. My goals include the growth and happiness of our team and leaving our clients in a better place than they were in on day 1 with us. This includes upskilling, dual-delivery and transformation, not just technical solutions. I expect that each of us are committed to the common team goal - no brilliant jerks.

Continuous Improvement

I do great work, and I expect great work from the people around me. I expect the team to be on a mission to continuously improve - and expect that you will be on a mission to improve yourself too.

I expect your best - not perfection or super-hero efforts

You're in charge of your work day. I expect you to be good at what you do, professional, and a value-add to our team.

You won't see a detailed list of what to wear, when to come to work, or reminders to submit your timesheet each week - I trust you to know what to do, and ask questions when you need clarity.

I'm a firm believer in outcome based work - and I'll defend you from anyone and everyone trying to micro-manage your time or scrutinizing your daily work output. In return I expect that you have a clear understanding of our team goals and to always be able to clearly demonstrate how you're contributing to those goals.

Family first, work second. There will always be more work to do, and we should never operate with a key person dependency. If you have something important to do for your family or personal life, you should do it.

You know how to manage your time. You know what is best for you, and I trust you to make the right call for the team and yourself. I view people going on leave as a chaos monkey that tests the anti-fragility of the team. I'll do my best to support your leave request while managing the client and consultancies expectations.

Tracking Work and What Done Looks Like

Here is my recipe for success within a project. If you're working on something, it:

• Should be tracked by an issue tracker (Jira, GitHub Issues, etc.)
• Should have acceptance criteria that you and the requestor agreed upon
• Should have comments tracking progress (so people know where things stand)

If you're blocked on something, go talk to the team or person that's blocking you, and keep me and the requestor up-to-date on where that's at.

If something critical will not be ready by an agreed-upon time, let me know first so I can set expectations with early.

Feedback will be direct, prompt, and humane

If there is a problem, you will hear about it directly, promptly, and humanely from me. I try my best not to hold on to feedback. Delays in feedback create anxiety. My priority is to feed it back to you as quickly as possible.

When you have negative feedback for me, I expect it directly, promptly, and privately. Making mistakes is part of being human, and I am no exception to this.

If you have a criticism, I expect it to be passed to me (either directly or indirectly), not gossiped about. My obligation as a leader is to create a psychologically safe environment where criticism of me does not result in punishment of you.

When you have positive feedback, please deliver it publicly. I like my work to speak for itself, and I appreciate when you say nice things about my work in public.

My office hours are 9.00 to 17.00

If you see me working outside of these hours it's because I'm choosing to. If I have personal commitments outside of these hours they come first.

Contacting Me - You can contact me 24/7 - don't be afraid of disturbing me - my phone is always on me - and always on silent / set not to vibrate. I'll always respond as soon as I can. My slack notifications are set to do not disturb from 22:00-8:00.

Slack is your friend - Slack is on my mobile and let's me oragnise conversations into channels, threads and pms. It also let's me respond in my own without being interrupted.

Phone calls - Will give you 100% of my attention. They're good for time-sensitive conversations, getting my attention, or talking through something personal/complex. If I haven't saved your number I'll screen your call. If I don't answer you call slack/text so I know who it's you.

Setting Time: You can always approach me if you need something - you only need to book a meeting with me if you want to guarantee my time in advance.

Meetings: If you're expecting me to attend a meeting it should have a clear agenda. If it doesn't, expect that I might not attend.

Email: This is where information goes to die.

1:1s are the most important conversations I have

1:1s are critical to ensure we're communicating well and both receiving feedback. This is where you have the opportunity to ask me anything. I will help you build context about what’s happening more broadly across the organisation.

Sometimes there will be things we need to talk about, sometimes there won’t be, we'll still schedule the time and meet on a regular basis.

I will hold you accountable for actions that come out of our 1:1s, and I expect you to do the same for me.

Scheduling wise, we can do 1:1s once a week, or once a fortnight (every 2 weeks).

I have some quirks. I’m working on them.

I'm passionate - this can lead to some intense conversations.

I like to talk (and sometimes I talk fast) - I can overpower others in meetings.

I'm idealistic and love to teach - you may have to drag me away from that whiteboard.

I'm process driven and detail oriented - if you have confluence notifications turned on, you're inbox will probably explode from notifications from my page edits.

I don't have an off-button - you'll hear me talking about work after work - and see my working weekends. I'm not expecting you to do the same, I just love what I do so much I don't see the line between work and personal life.