Hi!

This doc serves as a guide to working with me, and hopefully a brief introduction (I'm better in person, I swear).

I got the idea for this from this HackerNoon Article. It will probably grow in length as I think of things. I'll try to keep it brief, and more important things are towards the top.

I've put a good amount of time into this, so I hope it's helpful to figuring me out. Something wrong or missing? Pull requests accepted. :)

My Role

As an engineering leader, I see my role as a combination of...

• Guiding a crew to build awesome things
• Acting as a gatekeeper to prevent unnecessary distractions
• A force of empowerment - to allow folks to build those awesome things, to help people learn, grow, and enjoy life

I've been around the block a few times. I value using my experience to help others not make the same mistakes I have.

As a public- or customer-facing senior team member, I see my role as a combination of...

• Communicating the values and reasoning behind what we build; How we see the world as it is, should be, or where we want it to go
• Learning about a user's needs, wishes, and pain points
• Acting as a subject matter expert

I don't know everything, I want to learn from everyone.

I tend to be a fan of communicating in bullet points.

I have an operational background; I will frequently care more that something gets done than to hear excuses (see: Pet Peeves). That said, if something is more complex than I think it is, do educate me. Yes, there's a lot of grey here, but I understand that not everything's black and white, and will try to keep that in mind when you're politely informing me I'm a moron. :)

Communiation

Good communication is so important, especially with distributed teams, but even if we're packed into the same clown car. For me to be successful (read: "For me to best help you"), I need to be informed. If you think I need to be aware of something, please don't hesitate to text/email/im/call/whatever. It doesn't have to be formal, and you'll find I tend to not overreact. Frequent updates are preferred over me having to reach out for updates on something all the time, especially if a customer is waiting.

If you're working on something and it will be ready soon or you'll have an update soon, just let me know that. I've found that many engineers tend to do the opposite (radio silence until something is perfect) and this just aggravates people.

I swear. Words are just words to me, and I'll use certain "bad" words to add color sometimes. I can be significantly more offensive without using any "naughty" words.

I read situations and people well, so if I sense it may bother someone or may be inappropriate, I'll tone it down. This is important, because the underlying sentiment is I'm almost never looking to offend or hurt someone. If I say something that offends, I apologize in advance. If you have the courage to tell me (I know this can be hard) I'll go to significant lengths to apologize, try to explain myself, and ensure it doesn't happen again.

I'm a security guy at heart. I take concepts of trust, secrecy and privacy very seriously. This means I might not always be able to tell the real reason I'm doing something or looking for help. When possible I'll "read you in." Please trust that when this happens I'm actively balancing giving enough information to execute on something, while trying to minimize exposure to something sensitive.

I tend to be a straight shooter. It will benefit our relationship if you take what I say at face value.

Best Way to Contact Me

I find text-based communication best for most things. Text/IM gets a quicker response and works well for shorter or more interactive conversations, email better for something more crafted.

If a conversation is needed over a topic, I'll usually suggest switching to voice or videochat, and will bring in others as I see benefit.

Generally I'll try to figure out people's perferred method of communication and use that.

If I need a quick response, I'll go straight to calling you on the phone.

Working Hours

I tend to be a morning person, but I can switch to being a night person, or just not sleeping much person as things demand.

A few days a week, I'm in the gym or out on a bike between 6-7am. Usually I'm not checking my phone then, unless I'm expecting something.

Generally I'm in "the office" (whether that's remote, on the road, or in...the office) from 8am-6pm. That's when I'm most responsive, but I usually check on things occasionally outside those hours.

I generally will take customer/sales meetings outside of these hours as necessary for the business.

Nights and Weekends

When things are going Well, I like to use weekends to recharge. That said, I usually still have work on my mind, and it's not uncommon for me to spend a few hours over the weekend on work-related topics. Usually that's experiments, research, or other topics that are not on deadline. Unless I need something for deadline or a customer.

I may shoot you a message or email over the weekend, either a question or sharing something I think you'll be interested in. Unless I specifically ask for a quick response, Monday morning is fine.

I'll only call outside of business hours if something is really pressing. If you get an after-hours call from me, or I ask you to work on a weekend, this can be intreperted one of two ways:

• "OMG my boss is asking me work on a weekend. Let's see how quickly I can do enough of this so I can go back to the BBQ"
• "John needs help on something. He wouldn't have asked for my help unless it was really needed. Let's see what I can do..."

I truely hope you intrepert my call the 2nd way.

Customers

In a modern enterprise, "customers" can be internal groups that we work with, or actual paying(hopefully) customers from the outside world. This section relates to both of those.

A good portion of my working hours are spent customer-facing. I do that so you don't have to. If you've voiced interest, I may bring you along for a ride. I may also bring you along for a ride if I think I'll need extra firepower on a call. I will never ever ever bring you along to take the fall for something.

If I have a customer meeting coming up, I may ask for your help. If this happens, consider it high priority.

I really, really don't like looking bad in front of customers, and I will go to considerable lengths to prevent that from happening, if I sense/know that it's possible/probable. Making sure things are tested and documented helps me considerably here. So does honesty; if something is not working as expected, please let me know so I don't learn about it in front of a customer.

My Management Style

I tend to be pretty laissiez-faire: As long as things are working right, I'll leave them alone. I like to learn about situations or problems before making suggestions, so if you find me questioning things, that's probalby what I'm up to. I enjoy working with smart people whom I can trust. In translation, this means I might hand a seemingly open-ended task to you, leaving the details for you to figure out. If something doesn't make sense or you need more clarity, do feel to ask until you are satisfied.

I tend to strive for a balance between days of back-to-back meetings, and making sure that everybody has enough info to get their stuff done. In some situations 1:1 meetings are useful/valuable/required, though I prefer for these to happen organically and grab me as needed. If I'm having a busy week, blocking out space on my calendar might give you a better shot for my ear.

Incremental Change

As a "startup person" and as a recovering consultant, I tend to organize projects into phases - usually 3:

• Phase one "quickly" produces an initial product; I'm usually looking to show quick turnaround and value. The general goal is something that lets us test out a theory, get some hands-on experience, or to communicate a functionality we're thinking about. The goal is something more refined than "beta," but it's not what I'm thinking of for a fully realized idea.
• Phase two grows the product, continuing our ideas and incorporating feedback
• Phase three continues refinement and adding polish. The goal being a finalized product that "stands alone" without us having to hand-hold customers or support teams.

Presenting a project to me in this manner isn't necessary, but will show an understanding of how I think about things and will allow us to skip over having to carve the project into multiple phases.

Weaknesses

I'm very visual, and thus easily distractable. I'm aware of it, and usually will attempt to keep my focus. If it seems like you've lost me, call me on it in a friendly way.

I'm horrible with names. I do work a lot on improving here, but lots of space to improve.

I try to keep an open mind about the world, but someties I lose that objective. If you think you encounter such a case, again politely suggest I take a step back and re-assess.

Non-work Interests

Too many:

• Outdoors - skiing, cycling
• Woodworking
• Home automation
• Microcontrollers, IoT, robotics
• Formula 1
• Food and cooking

Community

I have a strong belief in being a part of and fostering the open source and information security communities. You'll find me active in:

• Various open source projects
• Meetups - you should go to them too
• Industry bodies such as CSA, NIST
• Public speaking

Pet Peeves

I don't want to finish on a negative note, but I don't want to put this section front-and-center, either. I do want to give some visability to the following points which will not always, but often get under my skin:

• Timeliness: I'll always try to be on-time for meetings and events. When I'm on-site at customers or other important events, I'll usually plan to be near the location 15-30 minutes early. If you're coming with me to such an event, I'll probably suggest meeting at a coffee shop nearby.
• Excuses: Sometimes there's good reasons things don't happen as expected, whether that's a bug, a missed flight, or being late to a meeting. Sometimes a formal writeup (RFO) for an event is needed, sometimes there's a good story to tell over lunch, sometimes someone slept through their alarm or are just having a bad day. We all make excuses from time to time, but I don't recommend making a habit of it.