📝 My User Manual

Hey there,

Welcome to my user manual! I’ve written it to help coworkers get to know how I work, and my quirks. This document is a work-in-progress (obviously).

First version written on 2023/12/04.

My role at #{your_organisation}

My official titles usually are “back-end developer”, “software engineer” or “fullstack developer”.

I’m here to translate business needs into code. This follows two main paths:

• Building new features.
• Consolidating the codebase: building test coverage, refactoring, YAGNI-ing your codebase. I - sometimes - call myself “the Mrs Doubtfire of Code”.

What I value

• Calm environments: Clear processes over chaos, product clarity over investor-pleasing roadmaps, deep focus over long hours, written documents over Slack conversations.
• A focus on creating useful features for users.
• Warm, kind, supportive colleagues in a high-trust environment.

My style

• Playing the long-game: I’ll often advocate for that extra refactoring or for taking the time to find the appropriate abstraction over rushing a half-assed feature to the finish line.
• Reducing complexity: This ties with the long-game. My goal, as a programmer, is to build applications that are robust, self-explanatory and with as little complexity as possible. Shameless-green code > cleverish-egotistical code.
• Explicit > Implicit: Implicit breeds injustice (something I strongly dislike). I will always try to be as explicit as possible.
• Autonomy: I favour autonomy and I like to create environments that empower people to be so: clear processes, clear channels of communications, etc.
• Laughing: I laugh often and super loud, please adjust the output settings of your headset. 😅

What I need to improve, work-wise

• Keeping engaged with people as I turn into a human bear for the whole winter.
• Don’t overengineer it: a common default in my line of work.

Best way to communicate with me

I prefer asynchronous communication. Here’s a breakdown:

• For general communications: Slack messages.
• For urgent communications: Slack or videocalls.
• For technical communications (feature spec, postmortems): Notion/Linear/etc issues, Github pull requests.
• For administrative communications: emails.

I check my emails once a week, so if you send me something urgent there, please ping me on Slack.

Please, never call/text me on my phone. The only exception being:

• We’re meeting up for a team retreat and we need to find each other in a crowdy place.

Most notifications are either turned off or muted on my machine. When I read your message, I’ll mark it with a “memo” emoji (📝) so you know I’m not ghosting you. If you need more from me, I’ll get back to you whenever I’m done with my current task. Focus is my main priority.

Working hours

• I’m a 9 to 5-ish person.
• I don’t work Wednesday mornings.

How I give feedback

• Explicitly.
• Always striving to be fair and kind.
• On your pull requests: I try to stick to conventional comments.

How I like to receive feedback

• Explicitly.
• Always striving to be fair and kind.
• On my pull requests: I’d strongly encourage you to stick to conventional comments. This will help with points #1 and #2.
• I like getting 1:1 with my managers on a monthly basis.

Last, I know radical honesty is a thing in tech. I think it’s a fancy term coined by toxic men who don’t want to be bothered learning empathy. Explict feedback, yes. Being a jerk, no.

What I have zero patience for

• Toxic behaviors: misoginy, racism, contradictory demands, harassment, ghosting, etc.
• Micro-management.

What people misunderstand about me

I’m not a corporate person AT ALL. I believe in a job well done, in being nice to other people, etc.

What I don’t believe in are “grand mission” statements, motivational posters and the usual tech brouhaha.

I have strong boundaries around work. This will pass as being Not Engaged Enough™ but let me assure you:

Chi va piano, va sano e va lontano.

Topics I’m always happy to talk about

You won’t shut me up about hiking, climbing, cooking, raising kiddos, pour-over coffee nerdism.

I can also be quite a bore when it comes to art history - specifically stained-glass, medieval churches and Roman mosaics.

Other things you might want to know:

• Fruit on pizza? How dare you? Of course, fruit on pizza! You snob!
• My coffee order: I start every day with a V60 pour-over filled with Ethiopian beans, lightly roasted. Gee, now I want a coffee, wait for me.
• I don’t drink any alcohol. Kombucha I love, though.
• My favorite GIF: