Working style

I work best as a Product Engineer in cross-functional teams, working asynchronously with regular touchpoints through reviews (design, code, or project planning).

If I run into a complex problem I will often send a draft diff with something like “I considered three options, I prefer option 2 because of X and Y, what do you think?”. I find that comparing solutions to each other yields deeper discussions and I use my teammates to find the right path.

I tend to flex for what the team needs. I’ve been a fullstack engineer, backend engineer, frontend engineer, engineering manager. If the team needs a leader I will step in, if the direction is clear and we just need to build I will follow, if our product roadmap needs to be updated I will take care of it. I also tailor my communication style to my audience, a VP doesn’t need to hear implementation details during quarterly planning.

Preferred communication

I lean towards transparency. Here’s my order of preference:

1. Issues - or whichever ticketing system our team is using
2. Public slack channels
3. Private slack channels
4. DMs - for urgent or sensitive subjects

I like to go for sync (a call or a meeting) in the following scenarios

1. Social chats - let’s drink a coffee and you can tell me about your dog (if you don’t have a dog, get a dog and then we can chat)
2. Career discussions - benefit from a back and forth and then being documented
3. Incident response
4. Project kickoffs
5. When we have gone back and forth 3+ times async and are not closer to a resolution

Strengths

• Caring and tenacity - this is my super power as I care about delivering something great and I am willing to do the hard (or boring) work required to get there
• Iteration - understand which general direction we should go and make steps in that direction without needing to know the full picture. Comfortable pivoting as we learn more
• Ownership - strong ownership of my tasks
• Trust - I trust you to have strong ownership of your tasks
• Pragmatic - lots of experience across different teams has given me a sense of what is and isn’t worth spending a ton of effort on

Weaknesses

• Say yes to too many things - this can lead to me being overwhelmed with tasks and can lead to subpar results as I rush to get everything done
• I assume people are good actors - We all have the same goal of success. A bad actor can take advantage of my high trust and willingness to disagree and commit