Personal README

This document is meant to give colleagues a quick rundown on my work preferences, as well as some context about my life.

My work hours:

I prefer to start the day early (i.e., between 8-9 AM CET/UTC+1) as that is when I'm most productive. Besides, I quite like going to the gym in the evening, so that just goes well with it.

What’s the best way to communicate with me?

Personally, I think that every communication that can be asynchronous (e.g., chat, email) SHOULD be asynchronous, such as: status updates. I skew towards meetings for urgent matters and the rare situations that can benefit from it (e.g., retrospectives, brainstorming sessions, 1on1s, tech talks, project presentations).

I'd love to help you with ____

I have countless years of Python and JS that I'd gladly share with you, especially in a full-stack context, but honestly anything tech goes. I'm passionate about my craft and can certainly go on forever rambling about it.

The human factor is also very dear to me. Personally, I like to ponder how to make it easy for people to do the right thing and hard to do the wrong one. That is fair game when it comes to both my peer engineers and consumers. So if you'd like to discuss how to get people onboard, persuade others or the like, I'm here.

Besides, you can count me to review all your latest writing pieces (e.g., RFCs, design documents, blog posts, academic papers). I love fiddling with text, trying to make it clearer and concise. If you intend to mount a good case for a proposal, I can definitely help to ensure you are likely to achieve rough consensus.

What do I expect from an engineering manager?

When it comes to the day-to-day operations, one that is pervasive as in ubiquitous computing. Nobody holds an e-reader and think that's yet another computer. An e-reader does it job so well that it just seems to be its own thing. I believe good managers are also like that – ubiquitous.

That said, I also need a manager who proactively unblocks the team, champions for me in promo discussions, creates opportunities, guides me by sharing the tools/means through which I can reach my goals, etc.

What is the kind of challenge I look forward to?

It would be a platitude to say that we all want challenging work. To me, that means not only direct technical work, but also the gradients that go along with it, such as growing others and writing design proposals.

What makes me grumpy?

Many meetings, poorly written tickets, being micromanaged and frequent interruptions.

How do I like to receive feedback?

Be it written or vis-à-vis, any feedback is better than no feedback. So don't shy away from giving me some, even when it doesn't conform to what I consider is best. That said, I'll be able to better incorporate feedback that describes:

• A specific/tangible situation you've seen
• My behavior in said situation
• The perceived impact of my behavior in you/the team/the org

Hopefully, the feedback will also be timely – ideally right after the fact. Altogether, that stands for the SBIT feedback model. There are other good feedback models, such as the PEER model. Just choose one that entails the great traits above.

Anything else?

If you'd like to know anything else, please shout. I'd gladly extend this document.