![[staff profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user_staff.png){kind=small}
![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Dreamwidth Q&A Session
I realized this morning that it has been quite some time, so I figured it would be a good time for another Dreamwidth Q&A session!
Got a question on how the business end of DW works? Curious about the progress on a particular feature? (Although I can probably answer that for you by saying: we're working on paying down our technical debt so that we can move forward on a lot of the planned features; it got to the point where we couldn't progress further without making some aggressive modernization of the existing codebase.) Wondering what an average day in the life of a DW employee is? Got that one question that you've been vaguely wondering about for ages, but never felt like it was "important" enough to make a support request to get the answer on? Want to know if it really is that cool being able to work from home without wearing any pants? (Answer: yes, especially when it's 85 degrees F in my office and the air conditioners won't be delivered and installed for at least another day or two.)
Comment here, and we will answer!
(Just a reminder: you may receive comments or replies from people who know the answer to your question, but aren't officially DW staff. If the person who answers you doesn't have the official "staff" userhead --![[staff profile]](https://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user_staff.png)
-- they are not DW staff. They may be correct -- if they aren't, I will be sure to answer and clear up any misconceptions -- but they are not speaking ex cathedra Dreamwidth, so to speak!)
No question too big, no question too small. There's also previous Q&A sessions and the Business FAQs to browse through!
(Answers may be a bit slow depending on computer woes and additional stuff going on, but we will answer!)
Got a question on how the business end of DW works? Curious about the progress on a particular feature? (Although I can probably answer that for you by saying: we're working on paying down our technical debt so that we can move forward on a lot of the planned features; it got to the point where we couldn't progress further without making some aggressive modernization of the existing codebase.) Wondering what an average day in the life of a DW employee is? Got that one question that you've been vaguely wondering about for ages, but never felt like it was "important" enough to make a support request to get the answer on? Want to know if it really is that cool being able to work from home without wearing any pants? (Answer: yes, especially when it's 85 degrees F in my office and the air conditioners won't be delivered and installed for at least another day or two.)
Comment here, and we will answer!
(Just a reminder: you may receive comments or replies from people who know the answer to your question, but aren't officially DW staff. If the person who answers you doesn't have the official "staff" userhead --
-- they are not DW staff. They may be correct -- if they aren't, I will be sure to answer and clear up any misconceptions -- but they are not speaking ex cathedra Dreamwidth, so to speak!)No question too big, no question too small. There's also previous Q&A sessions and the Business FAQs to browse through!
(Answers may be a bit slow depending on computer woes and additional stuff going on, but we will answer!)
no subject
As many, many people know, I have the worst case of Non-24-Hour Sleep/Wake Disorder (irregular pattern) that my doctors have ever seen in a human being who doesn't lack external light cues. This means that my average "day" is anywhere between about 26 and 40 hours, so all of this is done on a fairly irregular basis, time-wise. (Which makes interfacing with the business, 9-to-5 world difficult, but does make it much easier to be
So, usually I wake up, stumble into the office, wake up my computer, and read my email and my reading list while I'm caffeinating. That usually takes me about an hour (both the reading and the caffeinating), all the while opening tabs for things I need to respond/deal with/solve/categorize/etc. I'll eat breakfast at the keyboard (trying to avoid too much in the way of laptop crumbs, although I did manage to spill queso into the speakers of my brand-new laptop last week.)
From there, I'll do the usual daily routine, which includes:
* checking in on payment processing volume from the day before (if I wasn't awake at the time the nightly email got sent) and checking for any issues
* responding to any payment-related issues or support requests in private, employee-only categories
* replying to any emails that need my attention
* checking in on Bugzilla to triage things, etc (which I'm soooo behind on, ack)
* handling the Suggestions queue (ideally once a week, in practice it winds up being every few weeks)
* making/returning business phone calls if it's within business hours; making note of them for later if it isn't (I try to push my sleep schedule around so I can make business calls roughly 4 out of 5 weekdays if I have to)
* checking in with people who need my help/attention/questions answered/etc (or sometimes just need a listening ear!)
* coding! Ideally I really, really try to spend one day a week coding; in practice, I haven't been able to get anywhere near that. (The business stuff started eating up my time in mid-March for tax prep and really hasn't stopped since. It's calming down a bit now, at least, thank goodness; I hope to be able to get back to it fairly soon.)
And I'm sure I'm forgetting a bunch of the stuff I do regularly, too! It's all so routine by now that I just don't think about it.
I have recently started trying to take more time for not-in-front-of-the-computer, since part of what lead to my epic burnout circa 2006-2007 from LiveJournal was the fact that I was literally always working -- if I was home, I was in front of the computer, and about 80% of the time I was working on something for work. (The other 20% of the time I was writing.) You can see a day in the life from early '07 -- that pace was brutal, and was a good part of what led to me quitting. I still haven't retrained myself -- only working 40-45 hours a week on DW stuff feels like I'm doing nothing, and am an immense and epic slacker -- but I'm getting soooo much better.
no subject
And I had just (like, a week ago or so) read that post from 2007 and was pretty... well, shocked might be the right word by you working almost from waking up to going to bed. I'm glad you are taking "relationship time" - and I hope this doesn't come across as creepy!
How much interaction is there between you two anyway? How much of what she does gets run by you, how much do you plan together, that sort of thing?
no subject
(I still feel like a horrible, no-good slacker, though. Heh.)
Meanwhile, I like to give
When we're planning a new feature, or trying to figure out how things are going to work, etc, we'll sit down and bounce ideas off each other for a few hours. On the whole, though, I like to give her as much leeway as she wants: if she's implementing something, I'll answer questions and give her ideas/direction whenever she asks, and when she first starts in on a major project, we'll plan things out together, but generally my attitude is, unless she asks for help or has a question, I'm going to trust her to plan her day on her own, make her own decisions about what's going to get done when, design features and functions on her own, etc.
I'll ask her to look at things in particular if I think something needs to get done quickly, or occasionally say things like, hey, the review queue is getting a bit long, can you schedule a review/commit day sometime in the next few days? or hey, the list of open bugs is getting a bit long, why not concentrate on just knocking out bugs for a few days? or hey, it's been a while since we've had any major frontend stuff or new features, why not look through the list for something we can implement quickly? But
(A great deal of my boss-like interaction with Fu involves telling her to put the keyboard down and go take time to knit and watch TV! Or to take a blinking day off already!)
That's always been my management style, though -- I am a very, very, very hands off manager. I believe in hiring smart, passionate people (or in empowering smart, passionate volunteers), giving them the tools and authority to get their jobs done, letting them know what they can handle on their own and what I'd like them to run by me, and then getting the fuck out of their way. I'll always be available for questions and concerns, and always be there for brainstorming and the like -- although with the caliber of people who work on DW or volunteer for DW, nine times out of ten (ninety-nine times out of a hundred) mostly all people need is someone to sit there and listen while they talk it out and solve the problems themselves -- but my attitude is, we're all smart people here and we all care about making DW as best as it can be, and spending half an hour a day (or whatever) justifying yourself to me is time you could be using to make awesome things instead.
This doesn't work for everyone -- some people need more direction -- but I try to be upfront with everyone that this is how I roll, and if someone needs more structure, they have to tell me. I can do the structure and the assignments and the check-ins and the deadlines and the reviews and evaluations and yadda, I just don't, generally, unless someone tells me they work better that way. I'm not always perfect about getting that across, but I've been trying to get better!
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
This is what the system architect on my product at work calls the "rubber chicken" phenomenon (or worse, depending on his mood) - you could be talking it out with anything, including a rubber chicken, the key thing is you are talking it out.
Of course, it isn't strictly true, because you would monologue at a rubber chicken (if you talked to it at all) in a way that didn't lead you down the same paths presenting it to a colleague will. But it's close. And I get an internal chuckle every time I do it, because I'm thinking of that chicken. (Which is much better than the way I used to react, by feeling guilty for "wasting" the coworker's time!)
no subject
So you might have a colleague come up to you and say, "I need a dog - are you free right now?" :)
no subject
no subject
no subject
* responding to any payment-related issues or support requests in private, employee-only categories
[...]
* coding! Ideally I really, really try to spend one day a week coding; in practice, I haven't been able to get anywhere near that. (The business stuff started eating up my time in mid-March for tax prep and really hasn't stopped since. It's calming down a bit now, at least, thank goodness; I hope to be able to get back to it fairly soon.)
So you're "Brad's mom" and "Brad" rolled into one? :)
(What *was* her name again?)
no subject
And yeah. I never expected to be doing any coding, honestly; I thought I'd just be doing business stuff. But fortunately, there's enough time for me to do some coding at least half the year or so.
no subject
no subject