This guide might be helpful in working with me.
Areas of responsibility
I'm the exec responsible for the Marketing, Sales & CS, and People & Ops small teams at PostHog. I also do some IC work on each of these teams - the amount varies month to month depending on where I can have the most impact.
- All 3 teams
- 12 month planning with the Exec team
- Quarterly goal setting with the respective team lead
- Generally holding the team to account, ie. classic exec grilling-on-numbers stuff
- Providing wider business context where it's missing/unclear
- Working with team leads on individual team performance - how is everyone doing, who is struggling, do we need to hire
- I am the manager for Simon, Andy, Fraser, Lottie, and Joe
- Sales & CS
- Doing the slightly more out there/weird stuff that no one else is doing yet (e.g. pretending to be an SDR today)
- Provide feedback and new ideas for our strategy and playbook to scale to $50m ARR, including how we think about RevOps
- Work with Fraser to set targets and individual AE quotas based on our financial model
- People & Ops
- Monthly 1-1s with all managers; run monthly management coaching roundtable
- Run pay review process (James and Tim make the decisions)
- Run grievance/complaints process when needed
- Run any fundraising processes when needed
- Marketing
- Oversee the budget
- Do billboards (for the first time - hand it over if it works)
- Generate weird ideas, 90% of which don't land
- Write some content, for fun
Quirks
- I make a lot of jokes at my own expense. I encourage you to as well.
- You don't have to 'earn' my trust - I like to assume high trust with people I work with from the start and go from there.
- I definitely err on the side of speed at the expense of polish. This means I sometimes don't work as collaboratively as I should, as I'd rather do the thing first and get people's feedback.
- I'm hyper responsive across any channel (email/Slack/text) during working hours - don't worry about interrupting me if you have a question! Always happy to take a quick call too if you prefer.
- My calendar is always 100% up to date with my availability. Right now my work day is a bit broken up as I have 2 very young kids, so don't necessarily work in one big block. I am fully offline from 7pm UK time. I try not to respond to work emails or Slack at evenings or weekends. If something really urgent comes up during the week or at the weekend, you'll need to text/WhatsApp/Signal me.
- I'm constantly paranoid that we're going to run out of money, especially when things are going well.
What I value
- Bucketloads of optimism. Optimistic =/= unrealistic.
- I think being really, really kind is hugely undervalued. Direct feedback is part of this.
- Not taking yourself too seriously and keeping a sense of perspective.
- Speed - I can get frustrated if people don't move as quickly as I like to, especially when it comes to making reversible decisions.
- People who understand privilege and how it affects power dynamics.
- Taking on something that is outside your comfort zone if no one else is available.
How I can help you
- If you have a weird idea, I am happy to be your hype man and help you gain momentum.
- I can point you in the right direction of pretty much anything non-product if you're lost - I've been here a long time.
- I can be a listening ear any time you need, for work or non-work stuff. I am extremely patient and non-judgemental.
- I can provide you with general career advice, especially if you are a generalist and feel like you should be a specialist.
- I can help you with general life admin advice, especially in the UK.
How you can help me
- If you need me to do an actual task for you (rather than just answer a question) and it doesn't belong in GitHub, please shoot me an email instead of Slack, otherwise I will probably lose it because I use Slack on my phone a lot.
- Sometimes I get excited and do things solo without bringing the right people along for the ride. If I am excluding you, it is not intentional - let me know!
- Tell me what we could be doing better from a company-building perspective. Or stuff we should avoid. I love working at PostHog, so sometimes miss this stuff.
- Give feedback on our marketing content, especially if you are a product engineer! Be harsh - it will make us better.
- Let me know when I need to slow down and do something to a higher standard.