I am a Software Engineer, located in San Francisco, currently working on the CLI team for GitHub
What are some honest, unfiltered things about you?
- I've followed a circuitious route into tech. I started as a 🧑🔬 research scientist in photovoltaics (solar panel physics), 🧑🏫 taught abroad and domestically, 👾 designed and shipped video games, and eventually landed in 💻 tech where I've been both an Engineer and a Manager. All of these careers have contributed significantly to my success in tech so far.
- I am an Eagle Scout 🦅 This seeded my love of the outdoors, including 🏕️, 🥾, 🎣, 🏹, and more
- I am a triathlete 🏊 🚴 🏃 with a broken metabolism. I have a genetic disorder called MCADD (Medium Chain Acyl-CoA Dehydrogenase Deficiency) that means I don't metabolize fat correctly and instead create toxins. It makes fueling during races, especially long distances, difficult
- I love storytelling and D&D, and have a group that I play with weekly 🏰 🎲 🐉
- I love dancing and dance music 🪩 I'm usually the best dancer at the wedding 😝
- I will call you on your 💩 after asking enough questions to determine that it is, in fact, 💩
- I'm married to the wickedly smart, incredibly talented, and astonishingly beautiful @orhanna14. We have a giant, dire-floof-of-a-dog named Günter
What drives you nuts?
- Folks offloading decisions they own (not the same as delegating - delegating is great!)
- Gaslighting, tribalism, and gatekeeping
- An "I" vs "we" mentaility
- Stating your opinions/assumptions as facts
- Valuing correctness over improving/learning
- Writing tests after writing code
What are your quirks?
- I'm extremely social and chatty. I have learned to count in my head in group settings to make room for others to talk. What feels like forever for me is really not that long at all 😅
- My emoji game is strong... It has to be, because I'm quite sarcastic and love to keep communication light. Emojis really help me communicate the tone of written text and are especially helpful for my dry humor/wit
- Perfect is the enemy of good, so I'll prioritize pragmatism over perfectionism
- My background in Physics 🧪 makes me very data-savvy and I heavily rely on data for decision making. However, I'm just as happy to make an uninformed bet if we've labelled it as such, have a hypothesis, and can't validate the outcomes
What are some things that people might misunderstand about you that you should clarify?
- When problem solving together, I can get intense. Some people have gotten uncomfortable with this, interpretting it as 😡 or 😖, but it really just means I'm very passionate about the problem
- I have strong opinions, loosely held. That means I'll challenge you if we disagree, but I'm really just eager for you to change my mind - which I do. A LOT! There's a lot of smart people around and learning from them is 🔥
- I believe that people problems are business problems 👥, so if work seems to halt in order to help myself or a colleague through something personal, it's still work-related to me
- I am a firm believer in the 80/20 rule: you can get 80% of the way there (learning a new tool, understanding a problem, etc.) with 20% of the effort. I'm often content to stop there (unless 100% is necessary), which some folks interpret as a "lack of attention to detail" at times
- I'm very comfortable taking charge/facilitating and will often slide into that role if I think a group needs it. Sometimes I overstep, here, and I welcome any feedback about this
- When receiving feedback, I'll often ask a ton of clarifying questions. I am not challenging the validity of your feedback, but trying to narrow down the specific actions, feelings, behaviors, etc. that prompted the feedback so I have something specific to work on. I love getting feedback!! Please send it my way early and often 🫶
What qualities do you particularly value in your colleagues?
- One who is as willing to learn as they are to teach
- Overcommunication and banter
- Empathy
- A willingness to challenge thoughts, opinions, and assumptions - be it mine, their own, or others - in a way that empowers folks and facilitates conversation
- Knowing when to bring problems to a discussion or to bring solutions. In engineering, folks often over-index on the latter
What do you wish colleagues didn’t do?
- Focus on details when we're talking big picture
- Introduce a proposed change to a decision without providing context/motivation for making that change
- Disrespect their work-life balance
- Make assumptions about what people already know
- Propose solutions without understanding the problem
How can people earn an extra gold star with you?
- Change my mind
- Teach me something new
- Grow in some way, whether that's learning something new, doing something you've never done before, or adopting a new behavior/pattern you've been working on
- Be intentional
- Tell a witty joke or pun
- Share something personal with me
- Give me feedback
How do you coach people to do their best work and develop their talents?
- If we identify an area of growth, I really dig down into the root of any behavior before trying to help change it (within your comfort level, of course). For example, a previous colleague of mine struggled with not knowing when to stop going down a rabbit hole and come back up the investigation tree to start down another branch. Only by understanding why they felt they needed to do this were we able to overcome it. I've found this to be even more helpful for minorities groups in tech to both build my understanding of how to best support them and label the challenges our culture has put before them
- I'll make no assumptions about what you already know and work to discover the basis of where to start, usually by asking you where you think you are and starting a few steps before that. This isn't because I don't believe in your capabilities/knowledge; it's because of unknown-unknowns and, when I don't do this, it can perpetuate imposter syndrome and discourage you to speak up if you're lost. Starting with "yes, I understand this bit" builds confidence and momentum that is conducive to learning
- I'll ask a lot of questions to try to lead you to solutions/understanding on your own, but I won't patronize you if I have ideas - I'll share them once you've set the stage for yourself to understand where my solution/idea is coming from
- You can't learn if you're afraid to fail, and if you're afraid to fail you're likely lacking psychologically safety. I will do everything I can to establish that psychological safety throughout the entirety of any growth or learning, often by shouldering insecurities and responsibilities myself
What’s the best way to communicate with you?
Slack works great, though I have notifications turned off after working hours (unless I have direct reports). That means that if you really need to get a hold of me you should page me
What’s the best way to convince you to do something?
Make me understand the problem we're solving, why solving that problem is important, and provide a hypothesis about how the thing I'm doing will solve that problem
How do you like to give feedback?
- As timely as possible
- With a micro-yes, such as "hey, I have some thoughts about x, are you in a good place for feedback?"
- Slack if it's small, like "hey, I felt x by phrasing y in message z," but a call for most things
- If on a call, I'll start with questions to understand context. Sometimes this means I made a bad assumption and I've often said, "actually, there's no feedback here. Thanks for clarifying!"
How do you like to get feedback?
Similarly to the above, but the added caveat is that I need some space to grok the feedback, meaning I'll ask a ton of questions to understand the situation. This is my way of narrowing down any feedback into something actionable for myself. As I said above, sometimes this makes folks feel as though I'm challenging the validity of their feedback. I'm not! If you feel this way please let me know and I'll do my best to reestablish how much I appreciate you giving me the feedback
React
Typescript
Django
Laravel
Facebook
Microsoft
Google
Alibaba
D3
Tencent