Observation created over 4 years agoTom and I both consulted on the design of the new content search. While doing a PR for some of this work, he looked beyond the syntax. He noticed that the flow of the code was likely going to not be performant for large clients. This is a critical skill to be able to look at code, understand the broader flow and intuit that there could be a problem for larger data sets. Finding this issue put Tom in a crossroads. Pulling the Andon cord on this is a non-trivial act. He reached out to me to make sure that we were in agreement about the issue and to make sure that solutions to this problem were larger in scope than PR comments could address. He then took responsibility to drive clarity with the rest of the team and make sure they were all prepared to come up with a new plan.
Observation created about 5 years agoAs of yesterday morning, Tom had "officially" been on Practice for one full day (depending on how you look at it). But the first thing he shared with us was a Datadog dashboard he created to keep an eye on the performance of some high-traffic Practice pages in the app - that way we could be proactive about dealing with performance issues rather than reactive after things blow up.
I really appreciate his care for the app and our customers, as well as the initiative we he took to put this together!
It looks great too - check it out if you're interested! https://app.datadoghq.com/dashboard/8gf-ng2-kpt/practice-performance-dashboard?from_ts=1580910018394&live=true&to_ts=1581514818394
Thanks Tom!
Observation created over 5 years agoMy main objective this quarter has been to fix bugs that leave learners unable to complete Paths (since learners completing stuff is kind of the reason we exist as a company). Of the 5 big bugs on our radar, we were only able to fix 2 before my newborn son arrived a week and a half early back in December. I fully expected the Learn squad to stay focused on their other important objectives in my absence, but Tom had other ideas. While I was out, he identified and fixed the root cause of another issue (ch36348), and had made major inroads researching the others. On my first day back yesterday when I mentioned Paths in the Learn standup, Tom smiled and said "I've got news for you on that". When we sat down together and Tom explained how he'd gotten to the bottom of several major issues and even fixed one of them (and keep in mind these are bugs that have existed for years which no one has been able to figure out), my outlook on the quarter's goal went from "Well, at least we made a dent..." to "Holy heck, we can do this!" So a big shout-out to Tom for not just working on Paths bugs while I was out, but really working on them, and making progress where no one, myself included, had been able to, to the benefit of the 100,000+ learners affected by them. 👏
Observation created over 5 years agoFeaturing:Tom C.We put learners firstWe have difficult conversationsWe share before we're readyWe ask clarifying questionsWe own our requestsWe are truthfulWe are coachableWe inspire others to do better workWe don't wait to be told what to do, we take initiativeWe put the team before ourselvesWe challenge ourselvesWe critique, we don't complainRubyCommunityInitiativeMentorshipDesign CollaborationBack-end engineerIn last week's Learn Squad weekly huddle, the topic of a bug (dubbed "a hole in the spacetime continuum") came up. This bug came to life as a result of a story I had recently done in the Accessibility epic, but Tom had taken the initiative to fix it shortly after it was noted as an issue in Slack. I greatly appreciated him taking this on, but found myself feeling even more appreciative in Monday's meeting during the conversation around what happened/why the bug occurred. He explained that he guided me down the wrong path when I consulted him on some Ruby syntax while working on the ticket, and explained the fix. Prior to this, I had never seen someone take so much ownership over an issue that occurred from assisting another engineer. In my past work, the responsibility would've fallen all on me, so this experience left me in awe. I am very thankful to work alongside someone like Tom, who a) understands we're all human, and b) takes ownership of his work (whether that's in the codebase, or offering help to others)!
Observation created almost 6 years agoSo Tom was promoted to a new level of software engineer a month or two ago and it was well desearved in my opinion. But that's not what this is about. This is about how Tom hasn't stopped progressing. Most recently Tom has taken the lead on defining the architecture of Draft Mode and done so in a way that has made it seem like he is a seasoned vet who has been here well beyond the years he has been here. He has put together a POC and written up the architecture review doc that will be shared with the architects tomorrow. It could have been easy to let a more tenured engineer take the lead on this, but Tom stepped up to the challenge and I think we are better off because of it!
Thanks Tom!