The goal of a human user guide is to make working together and collaboration with colleagues easier, faster.

• Hi! I'm Robert. I'm a Senior Software Engineer on the Secret Scanning team at GitHub.

• I live in Bellingham, WA (PST/PDT) with my wife Elvira (pronounced El-vee-ra) and our 2-year-old son Daniel.
• I grew up in Austin, Texas and met my wife at Bible College in Kyiv, Ukraine. We've now been married 10 years and have lived in Washington State for the last 7 years.

• I haven't had any formal education in programming or software development. Looking back, this path worked well for me and I have no regrets. I've always enjoyed learning on-the-job and learning by doing.
• My career path (LinkedIn):
  • 3 years of front-end development and Perl scripting
  • 3 years of WordPress/WooCommerce development at a design/development agency
  • 4 years of full-stack development with C# and React
  • 3 years (and counting!) of full-stack development with Go, Ruby on Rails, and React
• Some highlights of projects I've shipped so far in my 3 years at GitHub:
  • Added a feature for storing detected secrets in encrypted form to unblock several improved user experiences (changelog)
  • Added support for non-provider patterns (such as SSH keys) where previously we only had patterns for secrets connected to a partner (either GitHub or a third party) (changelog)
  • Added support for secret scanning in user-owned repositories, previously only available to organization-owned repositories (changelog)
  • Added a feature for labeling detected secrets found in public locations or in multiple locations (changelog)

• I'm an introvert and sometimes need time alone to process new information before being able to discuss it intelligently.
• I do not multi-task well. Attempting to cook anything in the kitchen more complicated than boiling pasta stresses me out, and I've only recently become comfortable with boiling pasta.
• There are days that I don't feel that I accomplish anything "productive" until after my son goes to bed. I am continuing to work on detaching my sense of self-worth from the state of my todo list.
• I like routine. I like being a "regular". It absolutely made my day when a server at my favorite restaurant arrived at my table with my preferred herbal tea the minute I sat down and asked if I wanted my usual order (of course I did).

• When people don't show up to meetings without communication
• When people add calendar events without sending invitations and/or without agendas
• When people start a conversation with just "hello"
• "Group DMs" in Slack
• Microsoft Teams

• Positive attitude, praising others, taking time to help others, teaching what they've learned

• Negative attitude, excessive sarcasm

• I love asynchronous work. It's a huge part of why I chose to apply to GitHub when I did, I was looking for a company that has excelled at asynchronous remote work since before COVID, and have been pleased to find that reality has lived up to its reputation (at least in my lived experience).
• I block off my calendar for meal times so that I can eat with my son 3 times a day. I'm heavily present and involved in my son's life and not shy about blocking off other family time as needed.
• My primary "focus time" is in the evening after my son's bedtime, 8pm-11pm PST/PDT are core hours.
• My best meeting times are between 9am-11am PST/PDT and 12:30pm-2:30pm PST/PDT. Please send an email invitation along with any calendar event, and/or a Slack message informing me of the event. Whenever possible, the more advance notice I have of the event, the better.

• I like answering questions that demonstrate curiosity and/or personal investment. The best "how do I do X?" questions include details about what you're actually trying to accomplish and what you've tried yourself so far.
• I've been told that I'm an excellent communicator, with a healthy attention to detail, tact, and empathy. I have frequently been asked to proofread written communication, and I'm happy to assist in this way.
• I love code review as a tool for upleveling the team, and am happy to be asked for code review. I work hard at avoiding comments related to style, taste, or preference. I specifically work hard at refraining from commenting on names of things unless I find them actively confusing or misleading.

• In Slack, in a public channel, whenever possible and appropriate.
• Asking questions in public allows for knowledge sharing with others who may benefit from a question they wouldn't have thought to ask. It also allows for others to answer questions more quickly if I'm busy.
• Feel free to @mention me as many times as you like. I keep all my notifications permanently off, my phone will not make noise and you will not disturb me. I review all of my mentions and will respond to each of them.
• I'm not against Zoom calls or meetings, but I feel that they are generally not the best way to start a conversation. If we've started a discussion asynchronously and have discovered specific questions/topics that could benefit from synchronous discussion, by all means let's put something on the calendar (and send invitations!)
• I read all my email and maintain Inbox Zero.
• I read (ok, skim) every Slack channel and maintain Inbox Zero.

• Show me the numbers. Show me the data.
• Show your work. Are you as invested in this idea as you hope that I will be?
• Help me see the bigger picture. I thrive on context.

• I like to .sparkle others in public, praising their efforts as in-the-moment as possible.
• I prefer to give more constructive/critical feedback in a private message, because that's just being considerate. There may be all kinds of context that I'm missing out on.

• I like to receive feedback early and often.
• If I don't receive feedback for an extended time I tend to start to worry.
• I don't mind praise in public, as long as it's within the context of an appropriate-sized group.
• If you have constructive/critical feedback that you think I might need to hear, please tell me now instead of waiting for our next 1:1 or next quarterly/annual review.
• To allow for processing time, consider delivering constructive/critical feedback asynchronously if appropriate.