Working with me

Hi! Welcome! If you're reading this, it's probably because we just started working together. This may mean we're on a project team together, or that you hired me for a project and you're my client, or that I hired you for a project, adnd I am your client.

This is an attempt to establish a professional relationship and get us started on the right foot. I stole the idea from Mike Crittenden, who runs a small website development and hosting company, just like me, and who also encouraged me to provide this type of document.

Communicating

If you want to talk to me, I can be reached on by phone on the number +47 90 55 36 59. Use the most appropriate team room if at all possible (and beware of private conversations), but if it needs to be private, then a 1-1 message is fine. I'm usually pretty good about not missing messages, but feel free to keep hollering at me if I don't respond within a couple hours.

If it's something that will take longer than a minute or two to chat about, then let's jump onto a video call. I have appear.in/critter reserved so we can always use that.

Schedule

I work 9am-5pm ET with an hour lunch break every day, and that leaves a few hours a week to do at night in the quiet to hit my regular 40 hours. I almost never start before 9am or end after 5pm. If I do, then that is typically because something is horribly on fire.

Please tell me your typical working hours, and if I ever reach out to you outside of your working hours, DO NOT respond until you start working again.

I sometimes have a bad habit of sending people messages in off hours just because I get an exciting idea and I want to get it out, but I don't expect you to respond until your regular working hours start back up.

Feedback

I am almost impossible to offend. If you have feedback for me, positive or negative, please just say it honestly. I promise to do my absolute best to ponder on it and respond thoughtfully and curiously rather than defensively.

Likewise, if I have feedback for you, positive or negative, I promise to just say it to you directly. Please know that you can debate with me about it, and I encourage that, but note that there is a difference between debate and defensiveness.

If you prefer to receive feedback in a certain way then please let me know.

Personality

I'm not weird, I'm limited edition. I'm a bit of a goofball and I try to keep things light. I'm usually in a good mood. If my goofing around is annoying to you then that's cool - let me know and I'll ease up. It happens.

If I ever seem mad or upset about something, then I can almost guarantee that it's just coming across like that because I'm excited or passionate about it.

I tend to value action over discussion. I believe that lots of discussion and debate could be put to rest if we just went ahead and tried the thing we were discussing, because the trying usually makes the correct path obvious.

I think opinions are important and should be defended. Please do not just go with the flow when working with me. If you think your opinions are dumb (they're not), then rest assured that a dumb opinion is better than no opinion.

What I'm good at

What I need help with

My questions for you