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  • Kitchener, ON, Canada
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elyalvarado/README.md

me (Ely Alvarado)

This is my personal README. There are a lot of readmes out there, and if you read them all, you might end up thinking that all engineering leaders are the same, that we all share the same values, and consider the same things important.

Well, I'm not going to lie, that might even be partially true. But at the same time we're all unique human beings with their own peculiarities, and things we like and we don't. And while I'll try to keep this README short, I'll also strive to make it personal, so that after reading it you have an specific idea of some quirks of working with me.

What I like doing

  • Helping to create teams that value and practice continuous learning, and continuous improvement.
  • Collaborating with people on solving hard problems (and the previous bullet is one of such problems).

What I don't like to do

  • Chores and repetitive tasks completely drain my energy.

My Strengths

There are many online questionnaires that can help you understand your strengths. In my case I took the University of Toronto Strengths Based Resiliency SSQ-72

  • Appreciation of Beauty & Excellence
  • Fairness, Equity & Justice
  • Forgiveness & Mercy
  • Hope, Optimism & Future-mindedness
  • Love of Learning

Here are my detailed results, which include an explanation of each one of the strengths.

What I value

Have you seen one of those list of personal values?, like James Clear's Core Value List, or Brenee Brown's List of Values. Well if you have, you'll know that upon reading such a list there are going to be words that resonate with you, as well as some that don't. If you had to choose only 5 from such a list, which ones would you choose? Well these are mine:

  • Parenting
  • Integrity
  • Learning
  • Accountability
  • Resourcefulness

While there are many other values that I care about, these are the ones that I'll probably choose given any conflict between other values.

What I value on a team

It's ok to know my personal values, but how does that translate to what I value on a team, or at work? Well

  • Short feedback loops and continous learning: There is no better way to learn, and to do it all the time than to have short feedback loops. Feedback provides all that you need to correct course, or to stay put and validate what you just learned. The fastest you get that feedback, the fastest you learn something.
  • Trust: This is the base of the piramid for building effective teams. I doubt there is goingn to be a manager README out there that doesn't mention this one. But how do you get there? I believe that acting with integrity and holding yourself and others accountable is one of the best ways to build trust.
  • Shipping: No matter the difficulties, you need to ship (resourcefulness). If you act with integrity, use those short feedback loops to continuously learn, hold yourself and other accountable on the results, then you'll not only ship, but you'll ship the right thing.

How do I like to communicate

Manifesto for Having Effective Conversations with Me

I know what works better for me, but I can also adapt to the way others prefer to communicate, and I'm continously striving to learn how to communicate better and through as many channels as possible. Through my work I've come to value:

  • Sync over async communication
  • Talking over written communication
  • In person over zoom or phone
  • And chat over email

That is, while I value conversations done with the channels in the right, I value the channels on the left more

Did you catch that reference?

Yes, I know, scaling remote organizations requires Asynchronous communication, and I'm continuosly trying to learn ways in which I can learn to do it better, and in which it can be improved. However, I'm also a firm believer of short feedback loops, and it is undeniable that (when done well) the things on the left have shorter feedback loops than the things on the right.

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