Jean du Plessis

Bio on team page

Management style

Work-wise I’m mostly a hands-off manager. I believe in hiring smart people, setting clear expectations, and then holding people accountable. That said, I am always happy to get involved in the work when you need me.

I place a lot of emphasis on career development and personal growth with my direct reports. I believe if you are engaged and growing, not only will you be happy, but the team will benefit from it.

I use the CliftonStrengths assessment to better understand your unique strengths so that I can help create the opportunities for you to utilize them.

1-1s

I do weekly 1-1s with my direct reports.

Skip-level meetings

I do skip-level meetings with all my indirect reports once a month.

Getting to know you

If I am your new manager, I will ask you to schedule a series of three 60 minute 1-1s (1 per week, in addition to our regular 1-1) to learn more about you.

Here are the topics for the sessions:

  1. Tell me about your life starting from grade school—include whatever you deem important to you.
  2. What do you want to do at the pinnacle of your career?
  3. I will reflect back things I heard and tell you about how I think I can help you achieve your goals and be successful at Sourcegraph.

(Hat tip to Nick Snyder who inspired me to follow his example)

Feedback

For me

If you have any feedback, questions, concerns, or anything else that you want me to know about, please don’t hesitate to contact me directly by sending me a message via email or Slack, or by scheduling a time for us to video chat.

If you wish to remain anonymous, you may use the following form: https://forms.gle/Z7t5aF7WvWLwmRCSA

For you

If you are my report you can expect me to give you both positive and constructive improvement feedback regularly. I aim to praise my reports in public (Slack channels, team sync/retrospective meetings), but constructive improvement feedback will always be in private.