Balance

The following are my work-life balance preferences. They are subject to change and may be out of date. Although these are primarily work-specific, they are generally applicable to my personal life.

Some companies provide these — they might even call them Balance — but I opt to create my own for completeness and to own the data.

⚖️ TL;DR Message me anytime, anywhere, anyhow. Don’t use send laters with me, I’ll check and message back appropriately. Please avoid meetings. My reply times can vary, especially in crunch time. I have a unique work style — such as sending emails/messages at all times of the day — but I can accommodate anyone. I appreciate directness and candor, I value honesty over diplomacy.

Communication

My preferred communication channels are as follows.

1. 💬 Chat
2. 📩 Email
3. 📅 Meeting

💬 Chat

• It’s okay to message me during a meeting, PTO, or outside working hour
• It’s okay to not use send later services, I prefer lower ping times and I manage messages accordingly
  • I will use send later for anything non-work relevant, but I will opt to not use send later services to reduce ping times
• Unless critical, I don’t expect a reply for a week
  • I usually expect to reply within a week
  • If I am in focus mode, my reply time can wain into two weeks-one month
  • I will leave messages marked as unread if there is an action item
• I prefer messages that don’t just say “hello”.

📩 Email

• I don’t check email outside working hours
  • I do send emails outside working hours
• I prefer a TL;DR

📅 Calendar

Core working hours as follows (PST).

• a 5 minute break between meetings
• a 12-hour notice before scheduling a meeting
• please include permission to modify the event
• prefer walking meetings
• encouraged to use #hashtags for metadata:
  • #moveable for meetings that can easily be moved (i.e., 1:1s)

Working

• I prefer plain, direct communication. I sometimes have a tendency to speak too plainly about things, which may be course but it’s just my nature. I don’t always pick up on context cues and subtlety. Don’t hesitate to use plain language around me, I think it’ll ensure everyone is on the same page.

  • I value honesty over diplomacy. Don’t worry about how to talk to me, focus on what to talk about.

• I have a short attention span. This doesn’t mean I can’t code for prolonged periods of time. I have learned to harness it and it makes me a great engineer. It does mean some considerations in topics such as:

  • communicating, such as going off on tangents and sometimes trouble sticking to original points
  • writing, where you will see me write half-complete sentences and paragraphs when creating a doc, but it will slowly grow into a full body
  • coding, where if I know I have a bit of time on a project I may dive deeper into a stack to break up mundane coding

• I prefer high-fidelity world models. Unfortunately this usually means I probe on technical topics.

• I have irregular work hours from time to time. If the timing of my chats or emails isn’t working for please let me know!

Interviewing

• I expect to complete initial interview ratings within 24 hours, full feedback within 48 hours.

• I use TC as an acronym for The Candidate, to not include names and any bias.

• The bullet points I use for grading a candidate:

  • + positive trait
  • - negative trait
  • -+ mixture of negative and positive
  • * generate comment/note
  • Example would be:

+ Correctly identified the correct data structure 
	and algorithm
+ Was able to weight pros and cons of algorithm X.

- Got the runtime incorrect,
	+ but was to get the memory complexity correct
	
-+ Got 75% of the unit tests cases correct, 
	which is average for this problem

* We had internet issues for 5 minutes in the
	beginning, granted candidate 5 extra minutes
	for problem (with their permisson)

Miscellaneous

• I expect to complete code reviews finished 24 hours.