Hello, I’m Juan 👋 Link to heading

You’re here because you’re my colleague and want to know how we can best work together.

This site is inspired by Manual of Me, and aims to be a guide for colleagues in how to best work with me.

My Working Hours Link to heading

Working in a Remote role, I like and enjoy the flexibility of not always being immediately available for response. That said you will very likely find me online between the following hours.

Timezone: Europe/London

Monday 09:00 - 17:00

Tuesday 09:00 - 17:00

Wednesday 09:00 - 17:00

Thursday 09:00 - 17:00

Friday 09:00 - 17:00

Structure of my day Link to heading

I like have lunch at a fix time each day, so I can coordinate with my wife and daughter, if she is not on nursery on the day, so I’ll usually have 1300-1400.

I’m neurospicy Link to heading

I’m very public with the fact I have ADHD. I’m working to better understand + work with it, but that does mean there’s a few areas for you to be aware of.

  • Executive dysfunction: think procrastination, but your body being physically unable to “do the thing” and even for things I very much want to do

  • Sidequests:

    • Sometimes trying to “do the thing” leads to “I need to refactor this code to make the change I need to make easy” and then “if I’m doing that, I may as well fix that flaky test I keep seeing from time to to time” and then “I’m am already looking a flaky test in CI I may as well tidy up the CI pipeline so that it will show errors from failing test in a nicer way instead of having to scroll to find the one like you care about”, and it can snowball from there

  • Tangents: I’ll sometimes lose a train of thought mid-sentence, or be part way through the first half of an answer, and not remember what the next direction I was planning on going, or I’ll start discussing something (related) that’s just popped into my head - please be patient!

  • Hyper(focus): I’ll sometimes get very focussed on a given problem, wanting to “get to a stopping point”, ignoring what my body tells me

  • Explicit over implicit: I prefer having additional context for the “why” as well as having expectations clear and documented

  • Eye contact: you won’t see me meeting your eye contact (even on video call), in particular when I’m thinking. I find eye contact quite hard.

  • Meeting notes please: not just so I know what we’re talking about ahead-of-time, but as I find it very useful to asynchronously add items to the agenda as I think about them - even while in the meeting! I’ll also add contextual information while talking i.e. to Slack, emails

  • Processing time please: it can take me some time to process my feelings, in particular when giving or receiving feedback, or working out an emotional response - please bare with!

    • This will also show up after team meetings or technical discussing where I won’t finish process all of it until some time later and only then will I come up with an answer or idea that I would like to share with the team. Having a place where I can post dose later after I done the processing so they don’t get lost or forgotten and I know they will be seen and discus by the rest of the team is quiet useful to me

  • Sensory issues: I do get sensory overload at times, especially with some high pitch noises and some high pitch voices

  • On the spot answers: I’m naturally a fast talker and this can easily 2x if answering a question on the spot on a call. - if something I says in not clear do let me know.

In all these cases, I actively work to manage them, but sometimes you may need to give me a nudge if you’re noticing one of the behaviours.

I work best when … Link to heading

  • I can get my headphones on, mute notifications and get down to the task at hand

  • I can build for the “right solution”, with the right level of test coverage and a good architecture. However, I do realise the value in pragmatism, and am happy to cut corners where necessary, as part of a healthy technical debt conversation

  • I can break down work into the why this is important to the business, as well as the what that is needed to be delivered

  • I have a supportive team

  • I am empowered to work towards optimising process improvements (technical and sociotechnical)

  • I’m able to build atop of Open Source, regularly contribute back upstream (during working hours) and even better, completely work in the Open

  • I work in a team with accountability, but no hint of blame

My preferred channels of communication are … Link to heading

In priority order:

Slack / instant messaging Link to heading

  • Give me context for what you would like - see nohello.net for a bit more info - if you fancy just a general catchup, say so!

  • If messages are urgent/time sensitive, it’d be good to know!

  • Async is ideal for me, although I generally focus on “inbox zero”, at least for Slack

  • If we are discussing synchronously already, and it could benefit from a high-bandwidth (“in person”) discussion, let’s jump on a video call

Video/Voice Chat Link to heading

  • Written communication is awkward and prone to error and misinterpretation - if we’re finding we’re tripping over our words, let’s move to a video/audio call to discuss things

  • If we’re already chatting synchronously, and are both able to, let’s chat “in person”, as it may be quicker

Email Link to heading

  • Need a paper trail?

  • Need to be able to add folks - who aren’t necessarily available on i.e. Slack - throughout the conversation?

  • Longer form discussion?

I add value to a team by… Link to heading

  • Focussing on individual and wider self-improvement, based on learnings from others inside the company, as well as looking at improvements across the Software Engineering across the industry

  • Focussing on improvements to team ways of working, to deliver better as a team, whether they are “how do we better refine our work?” through to “how can we make this code review comment enforced automagically?”

  • Prioritising unblocking others with code review or working through problems, with the focus on overall, rather than individual, delivery

  • A heavy focus on improving the collaborative, inclusive and blameless culture

  • Being a cheerleader for the awesome stuff we’re doing, being willing to raise individuals, and the team as a whole, up to stakeholders as doing excellent work

  • Being driven to support production services, ensuring that downtime is minimised, and that we perform blame-free learning reviews after the fact to learn what went wrong, and how we can prevent it in the future

  • Being empathetic to my team’s differing experiences, working to help unblock others, provide valuable code review feedback, and work towards improving team processes

Feedback is best given … Link to heading

  • Written, so I can refer back to it, as well as share it with my manager and use it for performance reviews

  • If nuance of the point is required, or if we’re discussing something sensitive, such as an interpersonal concern, let’s discuss it in-person, and then (most likely) share the feedback in a written form so I have a record

  • With my manager CC’d, if possible, so they can hear about what good things I’m doing, or where I can improve

  • Honestly. I know I have areas to improve, and I’d like to be aware of them so I can improve

  • In small quantities, regularly - I’d love to get microfeedback i.e. every few weeks. It’s never really worked across the teams I’ve been part of, but it’d be great to get regular feedback to see trends, check I’m improving, as well as shouting about good things I’m doing!

What motivates me to come into work each day is … Link to heading

  • Being invested in the mission for what we as a team, and/or we as a company, are trying to deliver

  • Having interesting problems to solve

  • Being able to deliver value to internal/external customers

  • Being able to help grow myself and others, to improve ourselves technically and otherwise

Some other things you should know about me are … Link to heading

  • I’m a very big fan of automation and improvement, opting to deep dive into tools like git, understanding the framework we’re using works, and removing as many keystrokes as possible

  • I absolutely prefer using Slack threads - please don’t make me have top-level conversations 😅

  • I will use “we” as the primary pronoun when talking about work things, which I use to generally refer to the team, instead of centering myself

  • I’d prefer you tag me in Slack, even if it’s out-of-hours of I’m out-of-office - I’d prefer to have a notification than to need to go searching for references to me!

  • I try very hard to avoid gendered words like “guys” and actively work to remove other insensitive language from my vocabulary, and will nudge folks I work with accordingly, and recommend you let me know if I’m doing / saying things that should be stopped

  • I think through writing, and often err on the side of “oh god why did you write so much” to “that’s lovely and concise”, but have found that my thorough approach can be a net positive, albeit I am actively working on drawing the right balance