December 3, 2021
Of the statements below, which 1-3 statements do you feel most accurately describe my work at Slack from what you've experienced in our interactions as a co-worker?
In my limited time on the team, 1 yr - 2 months on PAT leave (also fully remote), I have not had much interaction, or collaboration on projects with too many team members, including Frances. However, given these parameters, I can honestly say, she still is able to stand out and effectively demonstrate the qualities/statements above that I've pulled out to best describe her impact.
One thing I can say for sure is, Frances is a natural leader, or at least seems to be. I have not gotten to see much of her technical capabilities, but one thing I know for sure, she is great at being a cultural steward, facilitating conversations to work through issues, and seeking out mentorship opportunities.
Acts as a culture steward on the team, making process improvements if needed and motivating and leveling up other engineers through mentorship, feedback, code reviews, etc.
I don't think I've ever been on a team before, where a non-Senior leveled member, organized and facilitated an entire offsite for the team. Not only did Frances, to the best of my knowledge, drive the entire thing, she was able to make the time spent feel fun, engaging, and present topics that were beneficial for the team to discuss. I loved the way she had the discussions broken down into separate templates, to make the flow of the conversation easy to be had, record, and discuss after the fact. I can honestly say, that was one of the better off-sites I've attended.
Inspires and facilitates meaningful discussion around complex issues
After the offsite, Frances continues to drive the discussions, keeping us all honest and accountable for making sure we actually decide as a team, how we want to move forward, and makes sure there are action items and owners for each key takeaway. She even took it upon herself to change how we do documentation and makes sure we use the right system to manage this as a team going forward. Another highlight is her collaboration with Anna on formulating and documenting a process for how we handle day-to-day issues on our team, so that it doesn't fall on a few people. This effort allows the team to learn and grow together, as we serve internal and external stakeholders and helps us all take ownership of our codebase, services, and web properties.
Readily seeks opportunities to mentor, and does so for new and developing teammates
I think Frances did a great job with our most recent intern, Catherine. She was very hands on and prescriptive as to what was expected of her as an intern and how to best showcase what she learned and worked on over the summer.
In what ways can I improve your experience at Slack as a co-worker?
During my time here, I have not had a chance to collaborate with Frances on a project. Even though I have a lot of years of experience, I'm sure there is a lot I can learn from her. I'd like to see her showcase her technical ability more. I know when I first joined the team, she mentioned we should move to Typescript and a year later, it looks like its becoming mandatory for us to learn and use it for our development. During the time of suggestion, I think it would have been nice to see Frances do a brown bag session or something like it, discussing the importance of and need for us to move to Typescript, especially for the more Junior members on our team. She obviously had the right mindset, but I would have liked to see her mesh her leadership skills I mentioned above, with a technical issue to solve for, lead a discussion/POC and promote the adoption to our team. Once she starts doing things like this, I have no doubt she'll be recognized more officially as a strong lead on her future career journey.