mickeypash/work-philosophy.txt

## work-philosophy.txt
Work philosophy

- Make time for yourself, friends and family - you will need to rest, it’s very important, it will help you reflect and prioritise. Your friends and family will energise you, they need to, they will be with you long after you’ve moved on from your job. Parents won’t be around forever!
- Direct your energy - people like to say “focus”. I prefer the visuals of a tennis player serving a ball at 100miles an hour. They need it to land in a particular spot. They also need to conserve their energy on the court for those bigger, game defining moments
- Ask for forgiveness not for permission
- Do things that no one else likes to do - many people after a bit of time at a job will start becoming complacent, they will loose the energy to innovate. Fix things that others are too scare or lazy to do. There is no job that’s beneath you, if there’s a security audit and someone needs to fill in a risk assessment, you do it, manually at first, document your steps automate when you can. Innovate anywhere
- Practice radical candler - come from a place of empathy and don’t be scared to raise issues
- Write things down - it’s hard in the moment, you might be gone in 18 months but some future developer will thank you
- Extreme ownership - if anyone asked you for help and you commit to it, see it through, follow up, delegate do it as if this problem is your own, you will build rapport and learn things along the way
- Solution space - just framing it such that a problem has a vast array of solutions in multiple dimensions (process, people, tech, temporal) can be useful to systematically reach a better outcome at a higher level of abstraction
- Paradigm shift - similar to the previous one. My favourite example is spending 6 months on building a real-time email system for “automation email” when simply using “transactional email” would do. Ask questions often, don’t be scared to challenge the status quo, don’t be afraid to ask the dumb question
- Go deep - if you go deep into a subject you’ll gleam a lot about it, yourself and adjacent ones
	Work philosophy

	- Make time for yourself, friends and family - you will need to rest, it’s very important, it will help you reflect and prioritise. Your friends and family will energise you, they need to, they will be with you long after you’ve moved on from your job. Parents won’t be around forever!
	- Direct your energy - people like to say “focus”. I prefer the visuals of a tennis player serving a ball at 100miles an hour. They need it to land in a particular spot. They also need to conserve their energy on the court for those bigger, game defining moments
	- Ask for forgiveness not for permission
	- Do things that no one else likes to do - many people after a bit of time at a job will start becoming complacent, they will loose the energy to innovate. Fix things that others are too scare or lazy to do. There is no job that’s beneath you, if there’s a security audit and someone needs to fill in a risk assessment, you do it, manually at first, document your steps automate when you can. Innovate anywhere
	- Practice radical candler - come from a place of empathy and don’t be scared to raise issues
	- Write things down - it’s hard in the moment, you might be gone in 18 months but some future developer will thank you
	- Extreme ownership - if anyone asked you for help and you commit to it, see it through, follow up, delegate do it as if this problem is your own, you will build rapport and learn things along the way
	- Solution space - just framing it such that a problem has a vast array of solutions in multiple dimensions (process, people, tech, temporal) can be useful to systematically reach a better outcome at a higher level of abstraction
	- Paradigm shift - similar to the previous one. My favourite example is spending 6 months on building a real-time email system for “automation email” when simply using “transactional email” would do. Ask questions often, don’t be scared to challenge the status quo, don’t be afraid to ask the dumb question
	- Go deep - if you go deep into a subject you’ll gleam a lot about it, yourself and adjacent ones