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Brice Shatzer - Readme |
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While a part of a team working on some of the best sites in the world, our amazing and talented project manager Caiti Vincel suggested that we each put together a "README" document. Basically, a user manual about how we as individuals prefer to work and communicate, and just generally what makes us tick.
This blog post goes into the topic of a writing a document like this more in depth, and here are some other great examples of this sort of thing.
Below you will find my version. This document is intended to be an ever-evolving work that will grow and change as I (hopefully) grow and change as a person throughout my career.
I grew up in small-town Iowa and after spending 12 years with the same 56 kids, I decided to head out of state for my degree, attending Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin. There I played soccer, wrote for the school paper, and was active in Greek life as member of TKE, before finally receiving a BA in Communication/Digital Media.
Currently, I live in Chicago with my two adorable puppies. I enjoy reading, trying to stay active (table tennis, flag football, & soccer), and playing unreasonable amounts of video games & cards.
I usually engage with work from around 10am until 6pm.
I find that I'm more productive when I'm physically in the office. This, coupled with fact that I generally try to live within walking distance of the places I work, means that I try to make it a point to come in and very rarely take advantage of work-from-home policies. That being said, since I generally start my day later relative to my peers, I tend to take earlier morning meetings from home.
Outside of usual work hours, I'm usually reachable on Slack via DM most of the time but don't make it a point to check email or channels without a compelling reason.
Historically, there have been a few instances where I have lacked a degree of emotional intelligence. This has manifested in inadvertently saying or acting in a way that was far more abrasive or biting than I had intended. Thankful this hasn't really been an issue in recent years, but if I ever do or say anything that makes you feel uncomfortable or is negatively impacting you, please tell me. Preferably like this.
One-to-Many:
While I'm not particularly uncomfortable giving oral presentations, I feel I'm far more effective at disseminating information via written forms of communication like documentation or a CCed email.
One-to-One & Many-to-Many
I know I can occasionally become a bit ramble-ly, so I generally prefer written communication, either slack or email, over in-person conversations. I don't find face-to-face conversations uncomfortable or stressful in anyway, I just feel that I'm much more clear and concise when I'm forced to convey things through writing.
The downside to preferring slack/email is that I tend to become somewhat myopic when I'm working on something. This means that I can occasionally go quite some time between consciously checking email or slack. With that in mind, if there is a discussion in a channel pertaining to something you want my input on/feel I should be aware of please, please DM or @me
Receiving:
I understand and appreciate the desire of those delivering critical feedback to want to mitigate any distress that sometimes can occur with those conversations, but I almost universally find myself wishing they would be more frank and direct in those moments.
Throughout my professional life, I've never received a piece of negative feedback that I found upsetting or even extremely surprising. The sooner and the clearer you convey to me the issue, the faster and easier it will be for me to correct it.
Also, I'm not greatest at receiving positive feedback. I'm naturally self-deprecating. It's just another one of those things I'm continually trying to get better at.
Giving:
I generally haven't provide feedback about/to others unless explicitly prompted to, but as I've grown in my career and worked in a more supervisory capacity, I find myself delighting in seeking out opportunities to praise those around me. Luckily, I've had the opportunity to work with some incredibly talented people, so those opportunities occur rather frequently.
My oldest professional motivation and one of my greatest fears is becoming a code monkey that simply acts as an unthinking tool that takes in specs and spits out code.
As I've progressed in my career I've found that mentoring and working with others has been some of the most rewarding things that I've done and I've come to appreciate the more administrative and organizational side of software development. That being said, it's probably not very surprising that I want my career to head in the general direction of managing engineers and engineering teams.
I deeply value learning and if all learning is remembering, it's probably not surprising that I absolutely adore documentation and think that it is criminally under utilized.
Despite it's questionable veracity, I identify strongly with the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (INTJ) & the associated Keirsey role and feel that archetype accurately conveys how I think and operate. Some quotes that I feel resonate particularly strongly with how I perceive myself:
"They are able to live by glaring contradictions that nonetheless make perfect sense – at least from a purely rational perspective. For example, they are simultaneously the most starry-eyed idealists and the bitterest of cynics, a seemingly impossible conflict."
"Strong-willed and very self-assured, they may make this decision quickly, as they tend to make all decisions. But though they are decisive, they are open to new evidence and new ideas, flexible in their planning to accommodate changing situations. They tend to excel at judging the usefulness of ideas and will apply whatever seems most efficient to them in accomplishing their clearly envisioned goals. What matters is getting it done—but also learning the principles of how to get it done efficiently and well; that is, at a professional level of quality. However, they may not give much thought to the social cost of getting there"
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| Ravenclaw | Miranda | Donatello |
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| Western - Gemini | Hindu - Vṛṣabha | Chinese - Earth Dragon |
