Here are some things I think are helpful to know when working with me. Maybe a sort of “User Manual,” if you will. I will update it occasionally as I have interactions and realizations that lead me to revisit.
The Basics
I grew up in a blue-collar family in blue-collar New Jersey and went to college in upstate New York, where I studied Information Theory and digital signal processing. I also met my wife there. I left a PhD program and moved to Seattle in 1997 to catch the dot-com boom. Seattle is home, but the East Coast is also home.
My family life is full of soccer, robotics competitions, national parks, Minecraft, and Star Wars — half of those interests come from my wife, and the other half are clearly my influence.
I’ve worked in software for over 25 years at startups and middle-sized companies. I’ve never worked at any FAANG (or Microsoft or any other biggies). Still, I’ve worked with enough people from those companies — and in enough company cultures cloned from them — to understand their culture and dynamics. This set of experiences has me often pattern matching to problems I’ve seen before. This is frequently helpful, but I may tend to “overfit” and need to be set straight.
I appreciate people that set me straight.
My Style
I like to think of myself as open and transparent. People often appreciate that. Occasionally, this can surprise some (e.g., “Wow… Greg just dropped an oddly strong opinion there.”). I try not to do this without being thoughtful.
You will likely find that I use an energetic, open-conversational style. That’s both “just who I am” and a conscious attempt to make others comfortable enough to provide transparency from their side (tell me what you really think).
I’ve been told I tend to be relaxed and calm under pressure, and little phases me. I think this is true. (Related: I once had my startup literally catch fire and burn down the night before the first public launch of our product.)
I took one of these personality tests (focused on leadership style) at in June 2018. Here are some of what it said about me…
Personal Style
Greg enthusiastically and co-operatively joins in activities and can juggle several activities at once. Life is an exciting drama waiting to unfold for him.… He is prepared to attempt almost anything, but his work needs to be active rather than theoretical. Greg is extremely perceptive about the attitudes of others, aiming to understand rather than judge events. He is motivated more by the big picture and goals than by regulations and procedures, and is content with established structures only if he can abandon them when they don’t serve the intended purpose. Quick to see the possibilities of new ideas and projects, Greg is outstanding at initiating these and persuading people to support him.
Interacting with Others
A creative thinker, Greg is generally warm, enthusiastic and confident of his own abilities. He makes stimulating company with his witty and interesting conversational style. Very much a positive team player, he enjoys the support of most people, although he may become too optimistic about what others will produce and is let down occasionally as a consequence. He can take issue with both colleagues and superiors but is unlikely to bear a grudge for long. Greg can display quick humour and optimism. He can be charming and stimulating company and will often enthuse with others to become involved in his projects through his infectious personality. Energetic, gregarious and sociable, his intuition heightens his insight, vision, curiosity and desire for new ideas.
Decision-Making
Greg is inquisitive, versatile, adaptable and resourceful in solving challenging, theoretical problems. Greg’s many accomplishments are achieved mainly through determination and perseverance in reaching or exceeding his high standards. He sees so many possibilities that he sometimes has difficulty selecting the best activity or interest to pursue, or in keeping to the agreed track. As an extraverted, future oriented person, he may fear failure but knows how to turn it on its head into something positive, if the event occurs. He is stimulated by difficulties and is most ingenious in solving them.
Although…
I found it very interesting and relevant that the results were quite varied when asking others how they perceived me. This is to say that you might experience me differently in different contexts.
How I manage my work-life
I follow the personal core hours of 9 am PT – 5 pm PT, and use a few hours before and after for focus and personal planning time. I rarely return online later in the evening — that’s family time. However, an urgent Slack or text message will always get my attention and encourage no hesitation for urgent matters. You will probably see me online here and there over the weekend. If my kids are out doing something and I don’t want to cut the grass or clean up the garage, I’ll choose to read some technical or product or SEV review or something instead.
Gmail is my preferred mode of communication. I use it as a central hub and manage tasks, work streams, and any other “todos” in Gmail. I often send myself emails to facilitate this. I “star” threads that represent things I’m committing to (or things I’ve been committed to) doing.
If you Slack me, I’ll very likely see it, but I often “lose” things in Slack. I find it great for quick virtual hallway-style conversations. But my memory is not always super sharp, so if you ask me about something you sent me in Slack, I’ll likely recall that it was sent, but it may not have been retained. If you Slack me something that I think belongs in my memory bank, I may just copy and paste it into an email to myself. (weird, huh?).
I also find myself feeling compelled to structure unstructured things. Things that seem too ad-hoc or random will cause me concern. For example, you may find that I want to have a regular, well-structured set of meetings during the week. I do this to accelerate and scale impact… and to better protect the rest of my time for free-thinking and open work time. This desire to structure differs from the desire for conceptual perfection (which I don’t always find compelling). Organizations with many people building complex things are always very messy. You may experience my tendency to want to handle that not by enforcing things into strict conceptual boundaries but by being tolerant of just the right amount of flexibility, exception handling, and slop.
Lastly, this tweet stuck with me ever since I saw it.
I believe this, and live in the “everything is important.” camp. That means I can often find I’ve overextended myself, but I will not be shy about telling you when that’s the case.
Your expectations of me as someone in my org
I am here to make you successful. That means providing you with any support you need tactically or longitudinally. You should expect me to deeply understand your strengths and areas you want to develop – or wish to understand them better if I feel that I don’t. I should know where you want to take your career in the next year, the next three years, and beyond.
If I make a commitment to you – to provide specific or general help or support, get a decision made, put a process in place, etc. – it will come with a scope and timeline. If I can’t meet it, I will tell you why to the extent I can. I will be very transparent, but there will be situations where I may not be (e.g., it involves the personal details of another individual, or there might be a legal requirement).
If you report directly to me, you should expect me to provide feedback on your performance, team, growth, interactions, etc. I do best when you direct me toward the type of feedback you are looking for (e.g., “Technical direction setting of the team,” “Balancing execution and quality,” “Interactions in meetings”) and give me time to gather data points – possibly from others as well. If you don’t report directly to me, it’s still my job to ensure you get the feedback you need.
Time Management
Regularly occurring meetings are fine and necessary, but they often squeeze out ad hoc collaboration because everyone’s calendar is packed. Here’s a recent engagement survey comment that resonates…
When I do need a synchronous meeting, especially if tech leads or EMs from more than one team are allowed, it frequently can take 2 weeks or so to find an available time slot. So I think leads are still overscheduled with synchronous meetings.
I’m trying to change that by creating more unscheduled time on my calendar. That means fewer dedicated 1:1s and ruthlessly prioritizing my time.
Office Hours
To create space dedicated to ad hoc synchronous conversations, I have office hours. Anyone can, and is encouraged, to grab my time
Further reading
I’ve also written something outlining Greg’s Expectations for Managers. While directed to managers, you might find it useful to understand more about my leadership style.
GregConklin.com 