man antoine
NAME
antoine - Staff Software Engineer. Refactoring code, evolving monsters.
SYNOPSIS
antoine [--questions] [--pairing] [--async] <idea>
Never-ending curiosity, and a habit of learning best from other people. Cannot stop buying books and fidget toys. Music always running in the background. Passionate about far too many things at once, and in love with discovering new ones. Fascinated by emergence, which is how this whole site ended up as Conway's Game of Life.
DESCRIPTION
I like it when things make sense, so I ask a lot of questions. That is curiosity, not doubt. If I am doodling or fidgeting through a meeting, that is me paying attention, not drifting off. I talk a lot and write even more. I am working on the talking part.
VALUES
- Truth over a comfortable lie, on any topic.
- Transparency. I want the whole picture; hiding it reads as a lack of trust.
- Shipping. Bend the process if it delivers value. Rules are negotiable, outcomes aren't.
- People over metrics. A team's job is for its people to be happy, those on it and those it serves.
- Failing. It's how we learn and how we innovate. Worth celebrating.
INTERACTING
No strong preference: call, Slack, or async all work; tell me yours. In focus time I hide notifications, so async replies lag. I love pairing and mobbing: count me in. Expect questions.
DIAGNOSTICS
- ENOSENSE
- Something exists only by tradition or to satisfy a meaningless KPI. I'll ask how we change or bypass it.
- EPOLITICS
- Competition and political maneuvering over collaboration. I'd rather build in the open.
- EBIKESHED
- Endless debate with no action. Challenge the idea, then let's ship something to test it.
- ESUSPENSE
- "We need to talk tomorrow" with no agenda. My brain fills the void with worst cases and won't let me sleep. Give me the topic up front.
KNOWN BUGS
- Verbosity. I lead with context before the point. Tell me to get to it, actively patching.
- Can't say no. I over-index on quick wins for others and starve long-running work. Working on the scheduler.
- Doesn't relax. If I feel weak at something I overspend on it and forget to rest.
- Empathy overflow. I carry other people's trouble even when I can't fix it. Learning to help without absorbing.
ICE BREAKERS
Shy, or not sure where to start? Any of these will do.
- Played trombone for years, now a small pile of tiny instruments (ukulele, ocarina, and friends).
- Table football, always down for a game.
- Books, and the fact that I wrote one.
- Pokémon and video games.
- Volunteering at a tortoise shelter.
- The outdoors, the ocean most of all.