Austin
posts

A guide to working with Austin

Notion

  • by default I'm more opportunistic than strategic. Aka moving fast on a small opportunity right in front of us, rather than backchaining from a grand theory of change.

  • I'm very generative, have many ideas, feel free to follow up on whichever are promising or ignore ones that aren't. (Plausibly, one way to work well with me is to keep a single thing you find important, on track)

  • read really fast; type really fast

  • love writeups, retros, postmortems, written culture

    • send me stuff to read

  • generally processes information pretty fast

    • tell me if I'm going too fast in a meeting etc

  • my appetite for complexity is extremely high. I like figuring out weird deals or new initiatives, all the time. and having my fingers in many pies, and switching between them quickly

    • however, this is probably not optimal in many contexts. also I probably forget that people I work with have a lower appetite/excitement to take on arbitrarily complex or varied work. lmk if you think this is happening

  • have a contrarian streak

  • like async/remote work, find it very productive; with in-person stuff more for social bonding

  • hate big meetings. meetings are most productive as 2-3 ppl

  • I'll probably push for big meetings to be written on Notion primarily

  • chase me if you're blocked on sth

  • I’m probably too nice by default, so ask explicitly for critical feedback if you want it

  • I also don't get enough feedback by default (it's a bit cursed, as a manager), so please offer to give feedback! especially in our 1:1s, but anytime is fine

  • pretty guess culture-y, don't like asking people for things (kind of unfortunate as a manager). So will appreciate if you proactively offer to take things off my plate

  • best communication is no communication (aka guess culture setup of modeling people; "shoulder angels")

  • favorite way to manage is to find really great people and give them a wide swath of responsibility and have them figure it out. i don't want to be checking up on you, or giving you micro guidance

  • "easier to ask forgiveness than permission"

  • currently try to heads down in mornings and meet in afternoons. trying to keep Tues/Fri as heads down days

  • very "build in public", want to be able to say anything, want anyone to be able to know anything (incl usually private things like salaries and meeting notes)

  • hate having to deal with private info

  • very software/automation pilled, from vibe coding platforms to picking great tools like Airtable/Notion/Discord

    • but also, “do things that don’t scale”, so, idk.

  • pretty flexible generalist, from coding to product to management to marketing to design to sales to writing to events.

  • care a lot about mutual upside, positive sum - whether with my own colleagues/employees or our users or partners