Manager README: Matt Schouten

Aside: When I joined WP Engine in 2022, I was asked to write a Manager README. I recently found an older draft of it.¹ This version is edited to remove company information and a bit of personal info. It’s worth noting that at a different company, or a different role at WP Engine, the content and emphasis would be different. This is different enough from what I normally write that I thought it’d be interesting to post. All footnotes were added for the blog.

Hi! If you’re reading this, I assume we work together, and that you’re most likely a part of my team here at WP Engine². That’s great! I’m glad I get to work with you!

Just like a README is a place to get started understanding a software package, this README is a place to get started understanding me. I hope this will accelerate building a solid working relationship.³

Unlike a typical README, this one is for a complex sentient creature⁴ that is available to ask questions of. If you think there’s an error in this doc, ask. There might be an error, or you might have stumbled across one of those contradictions that makes humans so delightfully human.

A Bit About Me

I live in Cedar Rapids, Iowa with my wife (Amber) and three kids.⁵

I’ve written a lot of code, deleted a lot of code, designed systems, written reams of technical documents, led teams as a peer, led teams as a “LeadTM”, managed projects, managed teams… Right now the engineer/manager pendulum is on a manager swing. All of which is to say, my title says “manager” but feel free to talk technical if you want.

According to StrengthsFinder, I’m good at Input, Learner, Strategic, Empathy, and Responsibility. If you like DISC, I’m high-C, high-D. If you like MBTI, I’m INFP. If you like classic D&D alignments, I’m Neutral Good. If you like Working Genius,⁶ my “geniuses” are Invention and Enablement and my “frustrations” are Galvanizing and Tenacity.

Principles and Biases

This is where a list of values would normally go.⁷ But I’m going to give you a list of principles and biases you’ll see out of me. That’s probably more valuable⁸ and actionable than trying to pick a subset of a list of values.

Context Matters – I will often ask you for more information. I’m trying to gather context. Organizational context, human context, systems context, situational context–it can all matter.

Purpose Matters – You will get annoyed by me asking questions about the purpose of things. It might sound like “why are we building this?” or “what are we trying to accomplish here?” I want to make sure that we are doing something that, well, matters. Knowing what we’re really trying to accomplish opens us up to explore new and better solutions.

Outcomes Matter – This ties strongly to purpose. I believe that the outcome of an activity is more important than any artifacts produced. This applies beyond just product development–it also matters relationally. If we deliver on time, on budget, but damage relationships in the process, we probably didn’t really succeed. On the other hand, if we only did a small fragment of the originally-planned work, but achieved an outcome that makes everyone happy, we probably won big.

Truthfulness and Transparency Matter – I believe that truth and transparency are needed to make good decisions. That means I expect those things from you–and you can expect those things from me. If you ask me a question I’m not allowed to answer, I’ll generally tell you that. It’s important to have a clear-eyed understanding of “what is” in our world, not just “what I think is”.

Conflict Matters – We improve ourselves and our ideas through conflict. It’s valuable to disagree out loud. If you disagree with an idea I have, please tell me. You probably have insight into something that I don’t, and I can learn something from you.⁹

Kindness Matters – After writing about truthfulness, transparency, and conflict, it seems worth mentioning that those things should be done with kindness in mind. Humans are important and worth being kind to. If you see me doing something unkind (knowingly or not), please call me on it.

Patterns and Systems Matter – I automatically look for patterns. I automatically analyze things (software, organizations, toolsets, etc.) as systems. I’ll take notes, draw pictures, and try to understand how pushing a button over here makes things happen over there. There are a lot of rules-of-thumb, laws, etc., that I will probably refer to, implicitly or explicitly (e.g., Conway’s Law).

Simplicity (and Complexity) Matters – I love me a ridiculously elaborate Rube Goldberg machine / plan / plot. Ocean’s 11 is great. But when it comes to building sustainable tools, products, and organizations, I love simplicity. Not oversimplifying. As it turns out, there is a lot of inherent complexity in any domain. It’s worth doing the work to address that complexity so it’s manageable. There are a lot of ways to do that, but letting complexity pile up now is a recipe for pain later!

“I Don’t” Matter – I am far from the most important person in the world. Heck, I’m not even the most important person in my world. I’m pretty hard to offend (unless you’re going after someone important to me, like a member of my team). I tend to be pretty hard on myself. But at the same time, I will do my best to support my team and organization. (This combination of being hard on myself and supportive of others is both good and bad.)

That’s not even a complete list of my principles and biases, but it’s a good starting point.

Schedules

Aside: Details about my schedule on school days and non-school days redacted. Very useful at the time for my team to have for reference. But you’re not my team, and besides, most of the details weren’t even accurate anymore. I left a few lightly-edited things that might be useful ideas for someone to steal.

You’ll see items on my calendar for school days that say “OOO – School Dropoff” and “OOO – School Pickup”.
Even though I normally end my day sometime around X PM, I’m typically available for later meetings if it’s necessary and requested in advance.

If I Slack you outside of your work hours, I do not expect you to respond. Your family / friends / pets / hobbies / community / leisure are important. When you’re not at work, don’t be at work.

Communicating With Me

Gauge your communication medium to the need you/we have to communicate. I appreciate the nuance that comes with a video call. If that’s not available, a voice call is great. If you need to communicate in detail about something complex, writing a document or email might be better. If it’s a quick thing and we have shared context, Slack works pretty well.

I will make the time to communicate with you. Let me know when you need time, and I’ll make time.

While we’re communicating, please be aware that I have “strong opinions, weakly held” and am open to changing my mind. I will probably ask you questions and probe what you’re saying. This helps me understand context and validate my assumptions. It might make me change my mind about something, it might help me understand something better, or it might help you in some way too.

1:1s

1:1s are important. They help us build a better working relationship, stay in sync on what you’re working on, and make sure you have time on my calendar every week.

A 1:1 is a weekly 30-minute meeting. I structure it as 10 minutes for you and your agenda, 10 minutes for me and my agenda, and 10 minutes for “the future” (career growth, goals, etc.). In practice, this often ends up being 15/15 or close to it.

During your portion of the 1:1, we can talk about whatever you like! It could be your work, your family, your pets, $COOL_NEW_TECHNOLOGY, your hobbies–whatever is on your mind. I’ll keep my portion mostly focused on work-related things, but (to make this completely clear) your portion is your time and we can talk about whatever you like!¹⁰

Meetings

Meetings happen. I suspect I’ll need to go to a lot of meetings. You might too.¹¹

I view the start and end of a meeting as deadlines, so I will make every effort to be in a meeting and ready to go by the start time. If I’m running the meeting, I’ll end the meeting on time (we can always schedule a follow-up). If we achieve the goal of the meeting before the end time, we can end it early.

The way I define a business meeting includes an intended purpose and an agenda. If the purpose isn’t clear, I’ll ask about it. If I’m not going to add value by being in the meeting, I’ll ask why I’ve been asked to be there.

Being in meetings can be valuable, but being in meetings is not inherently a good thing.

Additional Tidbits

I like being outdoors, reading (eclectically, but I like me some science fiction), food, hearing stories, and telling stories.

If I start talking about my kids and you don’t want to hear it, it’s okay to say so.

I’m very competitive. I compete most fiercely against myself or arbitrary goals. This has led to injuring myself in the past. Those injuries have not taught me to stop before I hurt myself.

Some (definitely not a comprehensive list even in these categories!) of my influences:

as a manager: David Marquet, Manager Tools, Michael “Rands” Lopp, and Kate Matsudaira.
in the “product” world: Kathy Sierra, John Cutler, Melissa Perri, Marty Cagan, 37Signals/Basecamp, and some of the more product-focused parts of the agile world.
in software development: Steve McConnell, Kent Beck, Martin Fowler, Joel Spolsky, Jeff Atwood, and Nicole Forsgren/Jez Humble/Gene Kim (Accelerate, The Unicorn Project, the Phoenix Project).

I have a tendency to write. Usually a lot.

I am a recovering perfectionist. If I make a mistake, I will work hard to be transparent about it and use it as an opportunity to learn. I expect you to be transparent about mistakes, and use them as ways to learn as well.

Speaking of learning, I view learning as important to my career, your career, and WP Engine.

I will occasionally say something deliberately wrong as a teaching tool or experiment. More frequently, if I say something wrong, it’s because I’m poorly informed or have come to a wrong conclusion. Whatever the cause, if you disagree with me, please say so.

I have yet to find a good distributed-team replacement for a whiteboard. Being able to draw an arrow pointing to a box, have someone else stand up and gesture to the box, and someone else grab the marker and draw another box…magic can happen there.

One of my favorite quotes, because it resonates with me a lot, is “Like all truly solitary people, he loved company.” (Voyage to the Red Planet, Terry Bisson)

Not that there ever really is a “final” version of a README for a human. I would update my README occasionally. Every time I brought on a new hire, I made sure to review it. [↩]
Since I’m no longer at WP Engine, it’s no longer safe to make that assumption. [↩]
This purpose statement is actually really important. The whole point of a manager README isn’t to give instructions to my direct reports. It’s so they have an idea of how I prefer to work (though I’ll flex for the people around me), how I think (LeFou: A dangerous pastime! Gaston: I know!), and the constraints I’m dealing with. Everything in my README was designed to give the reader information that they could use to help build the relationship. (Well, except for a little bit in the Principles and Biases section that was also aimed at shaping specific improvements to the team’s mindset.) [↩]
Allegedly, anyway. [↩]
In the version at work, I listed my kids’ names and ages, along with when the ages were accurate (e.g., “ages accurate as of June 2023”). Turns out they don’t stay the same age! [↩]
I do! It’s a simple model, but has a lot of predictive power for the workplace. Maybe not entirely scientific, but some models are useful. [↩]
I recall the sample manager READMEs I was pointed to at WP Engine all had a list of the author’s values. [↩]
Get it? Ha! Values…valuable? Hey, where are you all going? [↩]
The last few years have reinforced this belief for me, both inside and outside of work. It’s really damaging to huddle up with your in-group and gripe about a person or group and their behaviors, but never go address it. I’m not just talking relationally damaging. I’m coming to believe that it’s damaging to you as a human. (Standard disclaimer: I believe this, but I’m just as prone to in-group-griping as anyone else.) [↩]
This is almost exactly the Manager Tools approach to 1:1s. Weekly, scheduled, structured. I’m a bit surprised I didn’t put it in the doc originally. I think I didn’t want to clutter it up? I am pretty sure I briefed the source to my team at least once, and occasionally linked to the Manager Tools one-on-one podcast. [↩]
I will note that this entire section ended up being very counter to the established working culture in my corner of the company, and in practice I considerably relaxed several things in here to reduce social friction. Even “considerably relaxed”, I often got comments about how good my agendas were, or how well my meetings did at ending (close to) on time…even as I felt like I was running sloppy meetings. Not sure if there’s a lesson in here at all, and if there is, I’m not sure if it’s “yes, adapt to reduce social friction” or “no, do things to your highest standards”. Anyone have thoughts? [↩]