This document is mostly meant as an introduction but instead of a picture of me, I thought it will be more useful to go a bit deeper on who I am and how I work. There are still few words on my personal life if you are interested.
I am a big believer in craftsmanship in everything humans do. Even though most people wouldn't intuitively say that e.g. "art" and "craftsmanship" go hand in hand I believe they pair very well. Coming from artistic family as well as my own experience (playing trombone in various Big Bands) I have seen that most of the success (I would dare to say 95%) is knowing what you do and doing it as well as you possibly can. It is the same in engineering. Building on solid foundations will always take you further and having some talent on top takes you to another level.
Having strong people around me is a great experience. It gives you a learning boost and it always served me well whether it was music, building software or raising a family.
Transparency and authenticity are key for me for multiple reasons. Applied to myself it is a building block for creating trust. I try to be open about my motivations, fears, skills, failures, what is top of my head workwise, etc. If people know they have a choice to do something (or ignore). I prefer if the people around me are the same (because if I don't know there is nothing, I can do about it) but understand this is at least to some extent a personality thing.
Being a trustworthy and reliable partner. Sticking to commitments, communicating early when things go wrong, being responsive. I enjoy happy customers big time (it has been mostly other developers who were my customers in my past jobs).
Lousy work.
A work with purpose. The purpose does not have to be "save the world". Adding value to customers, making somebody happier or more productive (be it team member or customer) is great.
A well-executed tight plan gives me high levels of satisfaction. It might be a bigger project as well as precisely executed day (productive meetings, work got done, managed to execute a solid triathlon training session, ...).
The realization I can be and do better. Either in work or life. Step by step. I am not afraid of continuous progress over long-term.
- I like to plan my day a day ahead. Last minute meetings are fine, but it is better to explicitly reach out as I already might be just executing my "mental model of the day".
- I am a zero-inbox person. I consider e-mail to be the tool for important announcements and non-urgent tasks (I tend to reply within 24h, though). This model is changing as people move more towards tools like Slack so I consider it a rule of thumb rather than a rule.
- Instant Messaging (IRC, Slack, ...) is a "low latency" channel for me. IM directed to me usually gets my attention in short time.
- I try to observe what works best for others and try to "plug-in" into their flows.
- I do IM/e-mail people during weird (aka outside of working) hours but I do not expect an (immediate) reply. I am very explicit if I need something urgently and it almost never happens. If I need something urgently, I feel like I failed to plan things properly.
- You can see me getting grumpy towards the end of my day (8-9pm) depending on how long a day I already had. I feel most productive in the mornings.
- I am an introvert. It takes effort for me to socialize and connect.
- In rare moments I may be direct in a way that does not help the discussion (sarcasm will be usually present too). This typically comes from some long-term, deep frustration and happens within my "inner circle" (i.e. people who I consider to be very close and who I know well enough). I can look and sound arrogant (as my now-wife thought about me in the past) but it is not arrogancy (as my wife would confirm). I usually realize these moments but telling me directly if it happens makes no harm.
- Monty Python's Michael Palin says in Czechia, everything is up for laughter. While I am not Czech (I am Slovak) it resonates.
- I am punctual person (in the context of time).
- Joel on Software was certainly shaping my early career in software. Even though he does not write (much) any-more and some of the articles are dated, he did influence me a lot. He was also a starting point to other bloggers (Eric Sink, Paul Graham)
- Rands in Repose. Managing Humans is one of the books I like to go back to.
- Learning to Listen: The Jazz Journey of Gary Burton is a great showcase of craftsmanship and talent combined.
- Mike Reilly: Finding My Voice has quite a lot of stories on how far dedication and focus can take you. Came to this because triathlon is one of my more recent passions but the stories go beyond triathlon.
- The usual -- Hacker News, bunch of twitter accounts.