HOW TO WORK WITH ME.
An operating manual: how I communicate, decide, and take feedback — and how to change my mind. Five minutes here saves us a month of guessing at each other. If you want the rig instead of the manual, read how I work ←
COMMUNICATION
Async or sync — both work. What matters is a clear topic and nobody left guessing what the other wants.
- Channels: email for external + formal, Slack for work threads, issues/PRs for anything about code.
- Urgent? Don't type an essay — grab me for a 5-minute huddle. I'd rather talk it out than trade paragraphs.
- Lead with the ask: topic, context, what you need from me. Don't ask to ask.
- Decisions live in public channels or docs. A decision made in a DM didn't happen.
MEETINGS
Default no. If it can be a doc, it's a doc.
- Worth it: kickoffs, hard tradeoffs, retros, anything with genuine disagreement in it.
- Not before noon — mornings are deep-work blocks and they're not negotiable.
- Agenda or it doesn't happen. 25 minutes is the default, not the floor.
- Camera on when we're deciding something. Off is fine for status.
DECISIONS
Strong opinions, loosely held. Show me data or a demo and I flip fast.
- Reversible → Slack thread, decide, go. Irreversible or expensive → short doc with one owner.
- Disagree and commit. Once it's decided we ship it; relitigate only with new information.
- Escalate early and loud. Bad news ages terribly — surprises are worse than problems.
- No decision is also a decision, usually the worst one on the menu.
FEEDBACK
Direct, blameless, no sandwiches.
- I critique the work, never the person. Expect it fast, specific, and in the moment.
- Give it back the same way — blunt is a feature here. If I'm wrong, say so plainly.
- Praise in public, correction in private.
- Postmortems are about systems, not culprits. If a human error broke prod, the process let it.
CODE REVIEW
I review for correctness, blast radius, and whether we can delete it later.
- Nits are prefixed nit: — take them or leave them. Blockers are rare and always explained.
- Small PRs get reviewed same day. A 1000-line diff waits, and that's on the diff.
- I won't block on style a formatter should own. Ship > polish.
- Review my code the hard way. Rubber stamps help nobody.
AVAILABILITY
Prague base, SF overlap — afternoons and evenings CET are the sync window.
- Mornings: notifications off, deep work. Slow replies before noon are policy, not mood.
- Async almost always reachable. Sync by appointment.
- Weekends are off unless production is on fire — and it better actually be on fire.
- If I'm heads-down on a deadline I'll say so up front, not go dark.
RED FLAGS
Things that make me disengage fast. Save us both the time.
- Meetings that should have been a message. Status theater — looking busy over being useful.
- Blame games and information hoarding.
- “We've always done it this way.” Process without a reason attached.
- Tools for the sake of tools. No new system without a problem it solves.
GREEN FLAGS
Zero-to-one energy: small team, unclear map, real users waiting.
- People who ship first and argue with data after.
- Direct communicators — low ego, high ownership.
- Problems where AI changes the shape of the product, not just the copy.
- Signal > noise. Less polish, more shipped.
HOW TO READ ME
The quirks, decoded — so you don't misread the defaults.
- Terse messages aren't anger — it's me mid-flow. The answer comes now, the tone tax comes later.
- If I go quiet, I'm building, not ignoring you. Ping again if it's blocking — that's not rude here.
- I think out loud. Half of what I say is hypothesis, not decision — ask which one you just got.
- I'm direct in a second language. Read intent, not phrasing.
AI IN THE LOOP
AI is in my loop everywhere. I don't care if a model wrote it — I care if you can defend it.
- Expect agent-drafted work from me: code, docs, copy. Everything that ships under my name gets my review first.
- Same deal back: use whatever you want, but own the output. “The AI did it” isn't a defense in review.
- If a task is automatable, I'll automate it and move up a level. Humans are for judgment, taste, and the ask.
- I'll happily pair on agent workflows — bring me your prompts like you'd bring me your code.
WHAT I'M BAD AT
Known failure modes, published so you can route around them.
- Heads-down mode means I under-communicate progress. Ask for status — you'll get it instantly and without offense.
- I bias hard to shipping. If craft matters more than speed on this one, say so explicitly.
- Process without an owner or a reason makes me impatient, sometimes visibly.
- Context-switching is expensive for me — batch the small asks when you can.