🧠Work Philosophy
Guiding Quotes
- ...no choice but to be pioneers; no time to be beginners.
- — Margaret Hamilton
- In order to make real change, we need to connect people to the why.
- — Sarah Drasner
- A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them.
- — Steve Jobs
- Listen to your customers, not your competitors
- — Joel Spolsky
- You don't manage people, you manage things. You lead people.
- — Grace Hopper
- If you look after truth and goodness, beauty looks after herself.
- — Eric Gill
- Innovation is saying no to a thousand things.
- — Steve Jobs
- Useless is not worthless.
- — Charlie Gerard
Values
Tough & Competent
Tough means we are accountable to our customers. We take responsibility for our software and our service, and always internalize any issue that arises.
Competent means we are always learning, always improving. We will not let small victories put us on our heels, but instead will use those victories as a launch pad to tackle harder problems.
Service before Self
At a medical software company, I used to tell our support staff: "We are here to serve our customers. Software is our job, not theirs. Let's approach every interaction with the same selfless servant leadership that we would want to receive."
Hire adults and treat people like adults...that is just table stakes. If a job or company isn't a good fit for an employee, or if an employee isn't a good fit for the company, the best course of action is to part ways. Trying to force a fit through additional processes and procedures isn't the solution. Recognizing and accepting the lack of fit is the most honest and effective approach.
Convention over Configuration
Avoid unnecessary configuration wherever possible. Instead of creating ten great features that require complex integration, aim to build a seamless, intuitive product—like an iPhone, where everything just works. Each configuration option adds complexity, making the product harder to use, develop, and support, and ultimately less user-friendly.
Making features configurable is often a lazy approach. Instead, provide sensible defaults where configuration is necessary. Great UX isn't about giving users everything they want; it's about giving them what they need.
If you had asked people what they wanted for transportation in 1900, they would have said a faster horse. Henry Ford avoided configuration whenever possible.
Minimum Viable Change (MVC)
Always aim to make the quickest possible change to improve the user's experience. If you validate that the change adds more value than the current state, implement it immediately—there's no need to wait for a more robust solution.
Submit small merge requests, review them promptly, and merge them frequently. Adhere to the GitLab Flow . Test hypotheses and celebrate when your assumptions are proven wrong. Maintain a bias for action, be ambitious, fail fast, and don't wait for consensus. This approach is essential for fostering innovation.