“The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.” - Bertrand Russell
My name is Adam Whitlock (pronouns he/him) and I am an engineering leader. I have three children, all avid readers and almost always running off with their friends on adventures. I love to bike and go on walks, which means I live next to a well-loved trail. I listen to a lot of music and appreciate a good cup of coffee, which means I'll post some info about both of those hobbies below.
I come from a background in Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), Security, and Data Platform teams. I care about ensuring that teams follow good SRE practices, are focused on delivering good results, always curious about problems, and understand that they own the problems that their teams can solve. Additionally, I have led a number of infrastructure and securirty teams, meaning I care a lot about the good fundamental operation and management of systems. Building stable, reliable, and secure platforms are my happy place.
I will have at least one dedicated 30 minute meeting with engineers that report to me once a week; a 1:1. Meetings may need to be moved during the week, but the idea is to have some dedicated time to talk where ideas or concerns can be discussed. The 1:1 can be used as a status update, though I prefer to talk about things that are on top-of-mind, such as solving problems or personal life.
My "office hours" are the times that I'm guaranteed to be at my desk, available for meetings. It doesn't mean that I'll see an email or a Slack message, but it increases the chances that I will. While you can reach out after those hours, please do not expect replies until the following day (barring emergencies).
Monday through Friday
09:30 CST - 17:30 CST
15:30 UTC - 23:30 UTC
00:30 JST - 08:30 JST
I try to be as open with my schedule as possible, leaving flexible time to have impromptu conversations in Slack or Zoom. Without a hallway or break room to hang out in at times, that natural "gap" in the day needs to happen somewhere. You do not need to ask me if you can schedule a meeting directly; simply schedule it and I'll accept if I can attend.
My calendar will have blocks of time booked each week for "focus time". This is the time that I use to focus on accomplishing a work task, such as writing this README.md or learning a skill like whatever programming languages we use. I'm a firm believer in using focus time to accomplish work, even if it's not 100% focused on deep work.
If you are not familiar with using focus time (or deep work), there is a great introduction blog post by Doist that provides an overview: https://blog.doist.com/deep-work/
Not everyone is you and not everyone may be having a good day/month/year/decade.
Feedback requires consent. Make sure people are open to receiving it before giving it, even if it's a meeting like "annual review". See the line about patience.
You may have also heard this as "perfect is the enemy of good", but what it comes down to is "make something happen". Focusing on making the perfect product the first time is a perfectionists trap. Work on scoping the work down to the bare requirements, set a schedule, then work on it until it's done. Once your "it" is done, then worry about the features you wanted.
We all make mistakes. What's important is that we learn from our mistakes. Blameless post-incident processes and leaving comments in code about attempted changes are great ways to learn and ensure we don't make the same mistake twice.
Making smaller changes over time will eventually impact the larger work. This can be small, frequent deploys to a production service. It can also be minor changes to a habit over time, eventually realizing you've remembered to take a daily vitamin for a month. Whatever it is you want to do, make sure you work your way to it.
I need feedback to be better, so if I'm not defining something well or giving direction please let me know. I can sometimes become excited in the fact we're getting something done and forget to lay that groundwork that can make whatever we're doing more successful.
We've all got personal lives, myself included. Do your best to set working hours and stick to them, that way people understand when you are working. I list mine as part of my "office hours". I hold myself accountable to being available in those hours and set clear expectations I won't be reachable for work otherwise. I can work in those outside hours, but that's my decision as much as working an odd hour here or there can be your own.
"The most expensive thing we can do is write bad software. Next to that, it's the actual development."
"The 7 Ps" - Prior Proper Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance. Old military adage, but it holds true.
"Documentation is a form of automation" - Write it down. If you can't explain it, you can't write it.
"Procedure, Process, Automation" - Procedures are a set of instructions for getting one thing done. A process is a series of tasks/activities (or procedures). Automation is when you put those things together.
These are some books I've found interesting or I've suggested to others. I've started a non-comprehensive list here and maybe someday it'll grow. It's a worthwhile experiment.
- "The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains" Nicholas Carr
- "The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right" Atul Gawande
- "Site Reliability Engineering" Beyer, Jones, Petoff and Murphy
- "How Music Works" David Byrne
- "An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management" Will Larson
Honestly, I listen to dreampop, funk, psychedelic, shoegaze. A lot of things. I'm going to own that. If you like vinyl records, I've put my collection into Discogs. You can view it here: https://www.discogs.com/user/alloydwhitlock/collection
Equipment for pour-over
- Kalita "Wave" #185 coffee dripper
- Acaia Pearl Model S scale
- Hario Coffee Server, 600ml
- Fellow Ode Brew coffee grinder
Approved Roasters (United States)
- Ruby Coffee Roasters
- Verve Coffee Roasters
- Chromatic Coffee Company
- Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters
- Tandem Coffee Roasters
- Cat & Cloud Coffee
- Brandywine Coffee Roasters
- Wonderstate Coffee Roasters
- Black and White Coffee Roasters
- Isley Coffee Roasters
- *Onyx Coffee Lab
- Handlebar Coffee Roasters
- Johnson Brothers Coffee (JBC)
- Bird Rock
- *Counter Culture
- Heart Roasters
- Temple Coffee Roasters
- Pair Cupworks
- Dune Coffee Roasters
- Hey Coffee Company
- Camber Coffee
- Corvus Roasters
- Sweet Bloom
- Red Rooster Coffee
- *Equator Coffee
- Spectrum Coffees
- Metric coffee
*Roasters with an asterisk are considered by Adam Whitlock to be too popular for their own good, which can impact consistency