I'm the head of technology at FutureLab Digital based in New Zealand, where we invent the future with friends.
We iterate on role responsibilities as we adapt to new opportunities at least weekly. But I am the Directly Responsible Individual for the following:
- Engineering career pathways and progression.
- Engineering teams role in project delivery.
- Establishing and maintaining best practices, workflows and opensource contributions.
- Iterating and improving on our own agile practices.
- Mixing a few cocktails at company meetups.
- (with @pojke) zooming out frequently and looking at long term goals.
Hi! This is my own interpretation of how I like to work, feedback welcome! Especially if my own view of how I think I like to work doesn't match your experience of how it seems I like to work!
I usually work Monday to Friday and rarely on the weekends. I typically start around 8:30-9:00 and work until 17:00-18:00 and spend evening with my family. Some days I will look after my daughter during the day, and flexibly make up any hours missed over the next 2 days.
If you find me outside these hours, it should be rare. Feel free to ask me to GTFO offline - but it's likely we are working on something exciting.
I value work and home time equally, so I am not typically responding to notifications between 19:00-07:00.
I work from my home office, in Coatesville, Auckland, New Zealand (typically UTC+12/13 in summer).
My daily work is typically a mix of planned and unplanned calls, work towards ongoing projects and goals as well as emergent todos and issues. I typically jump around a lot as pretty much every aspect of the company can involve me or escalate to me in one way or another.
My main focus as Head of Technology is the health and success of our engineering team and everyone who works here. My main challenge is balancing the focused time I need to be able to work on longer-term goals and changes with the daily reactive work of supporting people to work through issues or challenges as they come up.
I do regularly 1:1 catch-ups across our company.
All work related things are in my project board in Asana. They are disparate and all over the place, but they are there - honest :)
I'm a forever student of improving my communication and style. Help me improve by giving me feedback (discussed below):
- I prefer slack over email, github.
- I prefer text and async communcation over no-notice phone calls.
- Meetings should be productive. Feel free to leave one if you feel they are not.
I will try hard not to cancel meetings, calls, or plans at short notice. If you are impacted by my rescheduling or cancelling something or because I am late then please let me know as it helps me to realise the impact.
On the flip-side, it is completely fine for you to cancel 1:1s or meetings with me, I always have plenty of things I am able to switch to and so you do not need to worry about short notice cancellations inconveniencing me.
I really value feedback, even if it's poorly formed or you're unsure. I want to understand what is going on at Human Made to the best of my ability at all times and really value different points of view. My aim always is to try to understand the truth of every situation.
It's usually much easier for me to make an internal change to myself than an external one (process or other people) and so critical feedback on something I could be doing differently or better is really, really useful.
I'm happy to receive feedback either publicly in place, or privately in a DM, or on a voice call.
Although I often speak confidently about my opinions or plans, I also change my mind quite often and really value discussing things and trying to see them from others point of view. The more I can understand the whole, the more likely I am to be able to make a good decision.
I'm not a great time-keeper and am often a bit late to things, it's useful for me to hear when this is an issue as a reminder to try not to do that.
I can get overwhelmed by the day-to-day and struggle to progress larger todos or projects. Again I value people reminding me when they're waiting on something from me.
I have worked remotely and async for almost 9 years, so returning to hybrid or even syncronous workflows requires a little more patience on my end, which I admit I do forget at times. I appreciate people sharing their experience and expectations when they aren't being met by me.
I have accounts on most social networks. I will not send invites to team members on personal social networks (like Facebook, Instagram, etc) since I don't want to impose myself. But I do love to connect and I will happily accept your friend request if you want to send me one.
I will typically request to connect on LinkedIn and will assume I can follow public Twitter accounts, if you'd prefer that I don't follow you on Twitter you tell me and I won't mind, I won't request to follow you on Twitter if your account is private.
I love this company and everyone that works here, I love meeting new people. I love seeing people work together to solve challenging situations, and love to see people thriving and happy.
I really look forward to reflecting on our journey together and smiling at the challenges and growth we will have. I am optimistic about a better tomorrow and my personal part to play in it.
I also love family and friends, music, festivals, gaming and being present.
I also love my daughter and wife ❤️.