Ways I'm available to help.
tl;dr - email me at lethain[at]gmail
Thinking about how I can be a helpful person in the world, as well as the sorts of folks who do and don’t think to ask for help, I wanted to take some time to explicitly write down ways that I’m available to help folks on the internet that I don’t have a preexisting relationship with. (If we do have a preexisting relationship, just email me!)
First, some things I’m not a good resource for:
- Getting your first job in tech. My path into tech was both very traditional (B.S. Computer Science) and very lucky (failed iPhone game, getting hired by Yahoo! after writing about their Yahoo! BOSS SDK). I don’t think recreating my story is likely to work for many folks, so I don’t believe I can give good advice on this topic relative to many other people.
- Getting hired at Big Tech companies. I don’t know anything about this that you couldn’t discover yourself through Google searches.
- Specific implementation questions or bugs in your project. I spend roughly one to four hours a month writing code, mostly in a non-professional context. If I get lucky I might be able to give useful advice on a specific bit of code eventually, but I can give better advice more quickly on other topics, so I choose not to give this kind of advice.
- Proof reading a blog post. I’m glad to give meta-commentary on a blog post or theme, but I reserve my limited proofreading energy for my own work. Further, I’ve never been told that my proofreading is particularly helpful, so I imagine there are other folks out there who do a much better job of it.
- Responding reliably to anything other than concise email. I find it very hard to track which DMs on Twitter, LinkedIn, etc that I’ve seen or not seen, and I don’t want to invest my life in fighting their UX. If you want to contact me, email is by far the best.
- Writing or featuring guest posts. I believe that investing my limited writing time onto my own platforms is my most effective outlet in terms of influencing the broader conversation about technology, engineering management and so on. As a policy, I don’t contribute to other blogs or include content written by other folks here. I especially don’t include sponsored content here.
- Referrals that I believe are unlikely to get serious consideration. This might be the wrong stance, but I don’t like to refer people into situations where I think the process is likely to fail them. I want to conserve my sponsorship capital for efforts that I believe will help.
- Invest in your company. I’m not very knowledgeable enough about small-scale investing, and I believe that donating my available resources is a more effective venue than investing it.
Ways I’m available to help anyone, including you:
- Answer concise questions via email about topics I know about. I try to answer every concise question I get over email. If you write a two to four paragraph email with a clear question, I will try to answer it in a timely fashion. Topics that I can answer about quickly are generally anything I’ve written about it in a blog post or a book. A caveat is that if the question obliges me to perform considerable research to answer it, it’s far less likely I’ll answer. Reach out to me at lethain[at]gmail.
- Double opt-in introductions where I think the other party will want the introduction. I’m glad to provide introductions to folks I know, after checking with them it’s ok, to the extent that I believe it’s an introduction they want and there’s a credible reason why you haven’t reached out to them directly. Conversely, I want to protect folks’ time and won’t begin the double opt-in process if I don’t have moderate confidence they would want the introduction.
Things I am unpredictably available to do, but certainly won’t be offended by you asking:
- I might write a blurb or foreword for your book. Until I wrote a book, I didn’t realize how cumbersome it can be to find folks to blurb or write a foreward for them! I try to do both, although they both require sufficient time to complete.
- I might appear on engineering, technology or management podcast. I’m generally ramping down recording podcasts, but if I’m a relevant guest for yours, then I do them strategically.
These lists aren’t comprehensive, but I hope by being explicit about what I’m available to do then folks will feel more comfortable reaching out, For anything that isn’t covered, writing a concise email to inquire is the best route!