This is my README for my team (and friends) to gain a better understanding of me at work and how we can support each other.

Talk with me anytime!

I consider communication with team members my top priority. You're always welcome to interrupt me and discuss anything you need help with or advice on (via Slack or in person).

If I'm really busy at that moment, I will ask to schedule a time. If you can't find me in the office, leave me a message on Slack Direct Message or Basecamp.

If you need clarification, are blocked by something, or have heard a rumour (btw, I hate office gossip), please let me know ASAP, don't wait till our next meeting or 1:1; we need to act quickly, so I will move things around to help you.

Feel safe debating with me!

Feel safe debating with me; sometimes, I play as the devil's advocate; other times, I think disagreeing and logical discussion yields the best result. People who have worked with me long enough know I enjoy heated intellectual debate;

I hate gossip, sarcasm, and any sign of concern about job levels / not-my-responsibility / rules-say-no kind of things.

How to communicate with me

If you want me to…

• Read something or do not need a quick response: Email me at [email protected] or write a Basecamp Message and mention me.
• Do something: create a Basecamp Todo and assign it to me.
• Read and give a quick response: Slack me during office hours, or telegram me off the hours.
• Have a video call or meeting: schedule at http://cal.com/bencheng

When I communicate with you…

• I might email you or message you off work, I DO NOT EXPECT YOU TO WORK ON THE WEEKEND, so email and Slack can always wait til the workday. If there is something really urgent, I will telegram or call.
• I might create a Basecamp Todo or a Todo list to assign a task to you; the due date is tentative and as an indication of urgency. You can always set a new due date based on your schedule. If there is a hard deadline, I will write it in the to-do content.
• I expect you to update Basecamp regularly for projects, As well as create a ‣ notes for each meeting we have.

Schedule a Meeting with Me

Use https://cal.com/bencheng

(For Work) Schedule a Meeting with Me

You can view my availability by adding my email address ([email protected]) to your Google Calendar as (1).

I prefer each meeting to last no more than 30 minutes. Please indicate whether the meeting will be a video call (via Slack, Google Meet, or Zoom) or a physical meeting in the office, including the agenda in the description, etc.

You can check if I’m in the office or travelling with the full-day event, as indicated in (4).

Meeting Protocol

I prefer meeting with a prepared agenda, and the agenda should contain everything we want to communicate in points form or slides so we don’t waste time on “reporting” (and also serve as a written record for people to reference later/async). For items that need discussions or brainstorming, they should be highlighted in the agenda. The meeting should be Silent Start so everyone can read the “report” part of the agenda and prepare for discussions.

How can we help each other?

It seems I'm most effective at helping with:

• Provide context — across functional teams, fellows, company direction, previous experience of how we solve some problems
• Provide another perspective / put things into a framework — my nature is to understand problems and try to systemise them, so maybe it is helpful sometimes
• Firefight / get help

You could really help me with:

• Remind me to cheer you / others up — I'm not good at being cheerful, and unlike most business people I'm not even optimistic on anything, I know I should be given my role in Oursky now, so help me.
• Disagree with me — Yea I really feel excited when people can debate with me or challenge my idea with the goal of coming up with the best solution.
• Tell me if I screw up

Something “weird” about how I work

Here is a list of things that I find myself always explaining to others, or might trigger me, just in case if you're interested...

• I always divide projects into tasks, and each task should be less than 2hrs. I learnt this from software engineering; in a project, we always don't know what we don't know, making things really hard to estimate (both time and resources).

By dividing a project into tasks < 2h each, we can estimate how much time a (personal) project would need — or if you don't know, timebox 1 - 2 hours just for research, reading, and planning. Sometime after 2 hours of research, you realize there is a much easier approach — just like writing software lol. 2 hours is good because I can't time box anything beyond 2 hours — I start losing focus these days if I'm on a computer over 2 hours.

• Invest time in personal productivity — I have had difficulty being disciplined since I was a teenager. For example, I find it hard to use a time tracker, to-do list, expense tracker etc. I learned I'm very sensitive to the cost of doing something (or lazy, lol). If I can't track time with one click and a few keystrokes, I won't use the software, so I spent a lot of time developing my own Alfred plugins, finding the right software etc, to make sure I save time and make myself discipline at work.
• I hate messages that start with “Hi”, “Do you have a minute?”, always prefer to come with 1-liner of why we need to chat.
• When something screws up, I expect people to come up with solutions to make sure it won't happen again. It triggers me when people explain why it happens without solutions to avoid it next time or tell me it is not “you/someone” responsibility. I built up a habit of not caring what happened in the past after all these years already, but I'm still working on how to coach people think about improvement more.