How to Make Me Enjoy Work & Be More Effective


Let me choose my own tools 🛠️

Coding isn't just my job. It's my passion. I love it. On Sunday evening, I look forward to Monday morning when I can go to work and live my passion: hacking on cutting edge technology.

Since coding is my passion, I'm also passionate about my tools. Let me run my preferred operating system, use my favourite editor and so on. It'll make a world of difference: To me, as I'll be happier and to you, my boss because I'll be more productive and make solutions of higher quality.

Let me learn new things 📖

Once a year, send me off to a conference where I can learn new things, hear the buzz, connect to fellow coders and be inspired. It charges my batteries 💪

Let me try out new things 🤠🚀

Once a week, once a month or some other regular, predictable schedule, give me some dedicated time where I can focus on whatever I believe is to the benefit of our company. It'll ensure both that I can stay on top of new tech and that our company gets valuable fuel for innovation.

Let me write code (not attend meetings) 🔨

It's not that I hate meetings. Every now and then, a good meeting is invigorating, fruitful and even fun. In general, however, meetings are not that. I find them tedious, they take me out of my flow, and don't bring much value to me (I find I get sufficient information of what's going on and what I need to do from talking to colleagues, hang out on Slack, reading the source code log, reviewing PRs, reading the Confluence RSS feed and so on).

If you want me in a meeting, I think it's great if you keep the attendee list short, mail the agenda in advance and be sure to have well thought out list of objectives or questions for the meeting.

Oh, and time box it. 15 minutes for status meetings. 30-60 minutes for kick offs and brainstorming talks 😃⌛

Let me talk 💬

As much as I'm a geeky backend developer who loves to code, patch servers and communicate in text rather than in speech, I do love to stand up in front of a crowd and give a talk. Give me a stage and a subject you want me to present and I'll do it. Happily.


Licensed under CC BY Creative Commons License ~ ✉ torstein.k.johansen @ gmail ~ 🐘 @skybert@emacs.ch ~ 🐦 @torsteinkrause