seanpollock Goto Github PK

Outside of work, I am a person who is passionate about food, travel, and relaxing with friends. I am expecting my first child in Nov 2020, and that's mostly what I'm thinking about nowadays! I have a wonderful and energetic dog named Rio who demands much of my evening attention. I spend my free time with cooking, video games (currently Valorant), rec sports leagues (flag football, soccer, softball) and reading.

My goals for 2020 are:

• Read more books! 📚
• Settle in and furnish my first home 🏡
• Get better at cooking with a wok 🥘

I graduated from the University of Toronto with a specialist in Computer Science and a major in Cognitive Science. I put most of my my focus into Natural Language Programming / Computational Linguistics.

Professionally, I started my career at an aerospace company where I used NLP and Machine Learning (in enterprise Java!) to automatically detect chronic issues in airplanes. My second job was at a data analysis firm in the water space, where I built the tech stack (python, kubernetes) from the ground up including web crawlers, ML pipelines and web apps.

I took a change in 2017 and came to work for a consumer focused company with no machine learning bent, Wealthsimple! I spent my first year as 1/2 of the USA Engineering team, which was merged into the International Platform team. I was then promoted to be the dev manager of the International Product. Since then I have founded andd/or led a zumber of teams such as Wealthsimple for Advisors, US Back-office, WS Pay, CX-eng, Book of Record, and STAR.

Outside of tech jobs I spent some years working as a Research Assistant, Teaching Assistant and a Taekwondo 🥋 instructor!

To Wealthsimple/ My Manager

As a dev manager, I am assessed on the combined output of the team, as well as the morale of the team. My primary responsibility is setting the development schedule and following through on those commitments. I'm also responsible for setting and improving our processes, communicating the right info at the right time to leadership and external stake holders, and leveling up the team. I bear ultimate responsibility for the quality of work we output.

To you

As your manager I am here to provide context, unblock you, give feedback, and help you grow your career.

I can give you context on why decisions were made, or what the team or organizations broader goals are. I can leverage my knowledge, relationships, and the rest of the team to unblock you so you can be as productive as possible. I can give you technical guidance and make sure you are working on the right things.

My favourite part of this job is that I get to help you grow your career. Through our regular 1-1s we will establish your goals, a dev plan to reach them, and work together to find opportunities for growth and leveraging your strengths.

I love to help people develop their strengths and find new ones. I think people naturally grow if you can give them ownership, and facilitate honesty through safe communication. I like to break down silos, and take interest in the work of diverse people and teams.

My special skill is systemetizing best practices. I'm a naturally lazy person who has trouble building new habits. To overcome that I became good at building lightweight processes that nudge or encourage people into doing things that are good for them without being burdensome. Extract, automate, habitualize.

I am a big believer in disagree and commit. I will debate loudly, and disagree freely with anyone or any idea. Once you have all the facts out, you must come to a decision and not rehash the arguments. Once the team or a leader comes to a decision, you follow through without reservations.

• Front-load your thinking - in otherwords. spend a lot of time scoping.
• Avoid interruptions - Developers do their best work when they are left alone for long chunks of time. No unecessary meetings, chunk together the necessary ones. Give your team air-cover when they need focus
• Keep it simple - Fancy syntax and shiny new languages are to be avoided unless absolutely necessary (ie. performance constraints). The most beautiful code is code that a person with no context can jump into and confidently make changes day one.
• Test the shit out of things - Automated unit tests are a requirement. You should strive for 95% code coverage. All PRs that affect client facing behaviour should have e2e tests.
• Monitoring - If something blows up and you don't know why, or didn't see it coming. You have bad monitoring. An app should have good logging, APM, and alerts that catch problems early. Features should be A/B tested and have tracked funnels.
• Operational Excellence - Don't create operational overhead/ effort for things that don't differentiate you from the competition. Ops is best used to provide clients an experience above and beyond.

I find it hard to focus with background noise, so I will usually have my headphones on if I am at my desk. But please interrupt me whenever, there is no headphone rule for me. Tap me, wave at me, Slack me whenever- the notifications don't bother me. I will get back to you as soon as I can.

I have RBF 😡, but I'm almost never angry 😊. My favourite part of this job is talking to you!

You are really good at what you do

If you are working here, you are an extremely talented person. I'm not here to tell you what to do- you can do your job better than me. I trust you and won't override your decisions without a good reason.

You will let me know as soon as you need help

Don't wait until last minute, don't feel shy. Helping you is my job. The earlier I know about issues, the more likely I can resolve it.

You feel safe communicating with me

For me disagreement and debate is respect. Feedback will be frequent and candid, never personal or punishing.

1. Come prepared to meetings

Every engineer complains about meetings. Most engineers also run meetings with no agendas, or don't put thought towards the agenda before attending the meeting. I'm serious about meeting hygeine. If you come prepared, I promise we will have productive and short meetings.

2. Especially, come prepared to 1-1s

1-1s are for you. I really appreciate it if you reflect on yourself regularly, or spend a few minutes thinking of a topic you would like to discuss with me.

3. Do amazing work

4. Communicate early and often

We will have weekly 1-1s where we get to know eachother, provide feedback in both directions, work on your career development, and talk about whatever is important to you. Two rules, we will not discuss project status or technical details in these meetings. I will not hold on to feedback and wait for schedule times to dump it on you, I will share it as soon as I have it.

I will listen, be open and honest with you. Transparency is a key value for me and I will live that value as best I can.

I will encourage a healthy work life balance. I want you to reach your personal goals, and not get burned out.

I will encourage you to take ownership and grow as a person and a professional.