Hi! 👋 I'm Collin. Here are some things about me that may be helpful to know when working with me

• Senior Software Engineer 🧢
• Portland, OR 📍
• Neurodivergent 🧠

• assistive tech 🦿
• reading (especially while in hammocks) 📚
• mental health 🧠
• infrastructure & urbanism 🚉
  • I'm fascinated by how the built environment both shapes and reflects cultural values
• LEGO 🧱
• AI & workflow automation ✨
• organizational psychology 🔍
• creating a more sustainable, just, and equitable world 💚

• empathy
• curiosity
• transparency
• continuous improvement / growth mindset
  • willingness to re-think old patterns
• self-compassion
• effectiveness

• I am a strong believer in the power of async communication in a distributed team.
• As many (esp those of us with ADHD) know, the negative cognitive impact of context switching / interruptions is high.
• To be effective at work, I attempt to batch all my notifications / create protected space for focused work without distraction

• Do not worry about interrupting / disturbing me Have something to say? Ping me / @mention me in slack / confluence / github / send me an email whenever you like day or night - my lobby is always open :)
• I don't typically reply immediately I generally reply promptly, but prioritize intentional time blocking over time to first response. I won't reply when I am not at work.
• I believe strongly in the power of written communication and generally prefer this mode of interaction Written communication requires intentionality and thought, and concise and direct writing indicates a respect for the intended recipient(s) time. When shared in a public forum, it promotes transparency and open dialog, and enables truly async collaboration.
  • Putting this into practice
    • Have a question? Ask in a public slack channel (eg - #help-graphql) and @mention me if you believe I might have the answer
    • Too much to write down? Consider sharing a screen recording & transcript with a tool such as loom.
• Timing
  • My slack "active" indicator is deeply misleading.
  • Wanna know if I'm around? Check my calendar :)

Synchronous conversations are extremely valuable. We are all humans, and social beings. Synchronous mediums (video/voice chats/real-time slack conversations) are incredibly valuable as means for us to connect socially, while working remotely. And this is a hugely important aspect of work IMO - building a healthy & thriving workplace where everyone is able to contribute their best work only happens when we acknowledge and celebrate each other as full human beings with thoughts, feelings, interests, aspirations, struggles, wins etc.

Does this happen automatically to some extent? Yes. Can we benefit further from cultivating it intentionally? Hell yeah. Does it look the same at every scale (team / dept / org)? Of course not.

We are not cogs in a machine or bricks in a wall. But we also co-create the environment which we inhabit :)

• Make space in the workday for social connection
  • Ruthlessly optimize all other functions of meetings:
    • Have as few as possible
    • Have a designated owner / facilitator for every meeting
    • Distribute an agenda at least 24hrs before the meeting, in a form where folks can add comments / questions ahead of time
    • Respect participant's time by sticking to the agenda and ending the meeting at it's scheduled time
    • Capture outcomes & share publicly with 24h after the meeting has ended
    • Don't waste any individual's time / compromise their ability to contribute by doing this manually ^ (having someone take notes). It's 2025 - let the computers do this for us (fathom.video, otter.ai, etc) 🤖
  • Build in time for general chatter & social connection - have informal 1 on 1 chats
  • engage in interest-based slack channels - work on discovery time projects with people from other teams
  • protect time at the team level by building it into the regularly occurring rituals. Examples:
    • implement a meeting-free day of the week
    • create a gap between the end of a sprint / start of the next for discovery projects etc
• Leverage work calendars effectively
  • Keep availability on work calendars up to date
  • Make availability clear by setting working hours & blocking unavailable time (I use cron to automatically block events from my personal calendar on my work calendar)
  • Use the calendar as a tool to communicate intention by blocking out focus time

I love to read. Here's the short(ish) list 👇

• Range - David Epstein
• The Checklist Manifesto - Atul Gawande
• Think Again - Adam Grant
• The Magic of Undifferentiated Heavy Lifting - Jake Singer (source)
• Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule - Paul Graham (source, summary)
• Sustainability over speed: adopting asynchronous communication - Anne-Laure Le Cunff (source)
• The GitLab Handbook
• Note:
  • The full handbook
  • is massive (thousands of pages)
  • contains many thoughtful insights
  • is densely hyperlinked
  • I haven't read all of it; probably wouldn't recommend trying 🤓
  • Below are some sections which have had a particularly significant impact on my thinking:
    • Asynchronous work
    • GitLab's values
    • especially Collaboration, Efficiency, and Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging

• Range - David Epstein
• The Checklist Manifesto - Atul Gawande
• Think Again - Adam Grant
• Lost Connections (& Stolen Focus) - Johan Hari
• Emotional Agility - Susan David
• The Brain That Changes Itself - Norman Doidge
• Incognito - David Eagleman
• Monk & Robot books - Becky Chambers
• Come As You Are - Emily Nagoski

I deeply value feedback; it is a gift which speaks to several of my core values.

If anything I write, say, or do inspires constructive criticism / ideas / thoughts, I would be delighted to chat. Please make an inline comment on this (or any other) confluence page and tag me, ping me on slack / send an email, grab some time on my calendar for a voice or video call, send feedback to me or my manager in CultureAmp... call me out in a public slack channel 💁 Whatever you like 🙏