User Guide
Introduction
If you’re reading this, we impressed each other enough to decide to work together! I’m genuinely excited to turn this potential energy into kinetic energy. That said, we each bring different experiences, preferences, and strengths. Sharing openly builds trust, which drives success—and makes work more fun. This guide outlines my values, quirks, and growth areas. I’d welcome reading your guide too; I’ve found this exercise powerful for building strong relationships.
How I View Success
- Success requires risk, contrarian thinking, endurance, work ethic, preparation, and correctness.
- Take the work seriously, but do it with a sense of fun: informal intensity, professional but not dry.
- Deliver with a feeling of craft and care.
- Avoid performative busywork; focus on outcomes and efficiency.
- I aim to shift fluidly between technical details and strategic vision.
- Create a culture of constructive, critical feedback across all teams and levels.
- Ensure clarity of ownership and decisiveness.
- No surprises; folks are aware, in the loop, understand what is happening.
How I Communicate
- Responsive.
- Aim for brevity; I’m working on reducing repetition.
- Prefer fewer communication channels. I do not like multiple redundant channels, e.g., text and Slack and email.
- Route questions to scalable channels (e.g., team-wide for shared topics); move sensitive discussions to calls or in-person.
- Avoid late-night or weekend communication to protect family time and force prioritization.
- Value in-person connection—walks, whiteboarding, meals.
Things I Do That May Annoy You
- Insist on fully conveying my thoughts without interruption.
- Share articles or posts I think you’ll find interesting, even if I haven’t read them yet.
- Speak transparently about conviction: I’ll say “I don’t know” upfront, and I update beliefs quickly with new data.
- Fixate on schedules: I dislike overruns or lateness, and I rely on my calendar to stay organized.
What Gains and Loses My Trust
Gains trust:
- Help others quietly, without self-promotion.
- Uphold commitments and show up on time.
- Respond promptly.
- Write and think in a clear and organized way.
- Share mistakes and worries transparently.
- Demonstrate agency: identify root causes and solve problems.
Loses trust:
- Require multiple follow-ups.
- Lie or exaggerate.
- Engage in gossip or politics.
- Dismiss or ignore feedback.
- Act performatively.
My Strengths
- Maintain focus and organization.
- Build strong foundations, systems, and processes.
- Teach effectively.
- Moderate and facilitate discussions.
- Connect people and ideas.
- I know a moderate amount about many fields that usefully intersect: biology, medicine, engineering, AI/ML, biopharma, startups, venture capital, business operations, psychology, and investing.
My Growth Areas
- Improve at giving critical feedback and bad news — too often I’m indirect.
- Manage defensiveness around my ideas; I’m working on soliciting critique, setting ego aside, and focusing on better outcomes.
- Strengthen technical depth in AI: self-supervised learning, LLMs, agents.
- Clinical development and commercialization.
- Intellectual property and licensing.
- Develop my ability to grow leaders: I am confident and experienced at mentoring ICs and now want to help reports become managers who can scale an organization further.