Coffee-addicted, professional consultant, with a background in solving other people's problems with them, not for them, and teaching people how to adopt new technology, IaC, and DevOps from concepts to process. My life is a constant round of "could you, should you, and would you?" It's like "kiss, marry, or avoid" but for technology-related products. Believer in the https://wiki.c2.com/?ScottyFactor and advocate of https://dbad-license.org/ Open Source Solutions. Never be afraid to ask for help, but try to learn to ask well https://stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-ask ( AI sidekicks (agents and MCP) are the future... )
"If I show up at your door, chances are you did something to bring me there.", "My psych profile fit a certain... 'moral flexibility' would be the only way to describe it."
| Conditions I like to work in; | The times/hours I like to work; | The ways I like to receive feedback; | Things I need; |
|---|---|---|---|
| I am odd, I either like being at the front of a room with a whiteboard illustrating solutions and architecting plans, flows and concepts or in isolated environments, if my headset is on, probably best to Slack me. |
- I'm an early bird, but I respect our global challenges. - You'll find me on Slack from 8 am, and still paying attention during most workday evenings. - Friday is sacred; don't push your luck. |
The best ways to communicate with me; - Slack for quick things. - email for complex questions that need evidence and answers. - For your own safety, don't send me a screen grab when you can copy-paste an error message. |
Honestly, directly, and with good communication. People generally suck at all three so that's a fun stance. |
| Things I struggle with; | Things I love; | Other things to know about me; | |
| I like to be involved, I like to see overcommunication about what is developing and ideas, I don't mind not being involved directly, but I hate things that creep out of the woodwork due to bad communication. | - Opinions with no basis, lack of evidence, and not understanding wider plans and processes. - Bad communicators, or a lack of communication. |
Coffee, smiles, and natural fun interchanges while brainstorming. | - I'm Dyspraxic, and the later in the week it gets, the more people I've had to interact with, the closer I get to burnout and introversion. - I call it people points, and they get used up. |
influenced by https://cassierobinson.medium.com/a-user-manual-for-me-d3a851fbc694
The whole internet is a highway of shared data, and original content or thought is hard to come by, thanks to https://towardsdatascience.com/build-a-stunning-readme-for-your-github-profile-9b80434fe5d7 and https:/medium.com.
Here are a few things to read to understand my views of the world.
- https://www.jrothman.com/mpd/management/2014/08/people-are-not-resources/ Why yes, this is a long-held belief.
- https://medium.com/notbinary/people-are-not-resources-13ac7a380f95 Just in case you thought it wasn't still a problem.
- https://ipstenu.org/2011/the-scotty-principle/ Software and engineering people generally suck at scoping time and level of effort; if we all applied the Scotty principle, we'd be better and still not give ourselves enough.
- DevOps is the combination of Responsibilities, Capabilities and Communication in your organisation. Both in a passive product or tools, the capability to both communicate and provide capabilities, and a person's active role in providing capabilities and communicating their responsibilities to provide the subset of those capabilities they are responsible for. https://www.astroarch.com/tvp_strategy/devops-engineer-25120/.
- https://dev.to/dvddpl/make-mistakes-and-ask-questions-its-ok-gah but also https://stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-ask
- Automating things is hard, it's not just about how, it's about should you, when should you, and should you let the automation run https://blog.danslimmon.com/2019/07/15/do-nothing-scripting-the-key-to-gradual-automation/ This helps with that conversation.