Contact

You can get in touch with me either by joining my first and last name with a dot or alternately using the hostname of this website sans TLD and then appending @gmail.com to the result.

If you are a recruiter who is reaching out to me about a job opportunity, please read the following before emailing me.

  1. Please include the name of the company you are recruiting for in your initial message. I cannot count the number of times that I have had to ask for follow-ups because for whatever reason recruiters are being coy. Just tell me what company you’re hiring for and what position.

  2. Please include a salary range. If the compensation structure is complicated (bonus, equity, whatever), please explain it. I’m not looking to make less money than I’m currently making, and have no interest in going through a process without at least a ballpark figure on the table. Tell me what you’re willing to pay and I’ll let you know if I’m willing to work for that.

  3. Interest me in your problem. I’m a mission-driven person and I want to be working on problems that are not only technically challenging but whose solution will actually materially improve people’s lives in some way. I don’t want to work on your adtech or your real estate startup or your clever idea to circumvent labor law.

    a. If your email includes the word “disrupt” I’m just going to ignore it entirely; I don’t want to “disrupt” things, I want to build things.

    b. If the problem you’re trying to solve is one that is only experienced by bored rich people with more money than sense, I’m not interested.

    c. If it’s about how to squeeze more money from poor people by being a parasitic intermediary, I’m not interested.

    d. If you’re building internet-of-things bullshit, I’m not interested.

    f. If you’re actually building something that will improve material conditions for people, I’m all ears.

  4. Interest me in your technology. If we’re just building another Django site with AWS blah blah cloud blah, then your point 3 had better be really persuasive because otherwise I just don’t care. Here’s some things I’m interested in: scientific computing, programming languages, functional programming, and NLP. I’m especially interested if you’re working with Lisp, Ocaml, or Rust.

  5. I’m currently a senior engineer and only interested in positions equivalent or higher, with the preference being strongly for “higher.” I might still be open to a lateral move if the above conditions are really favorable, but in general I would prefer to be a lead or more. Please include information about career progression in your pitch.

Yes, these are barriers to contact. I’m putting them up because I get a lot of approaches, most of which are a waste of my time and the recruiter’s. If you have something that matches what I’m looking for, great, let’s talk, but otherwise there’s no point in reaching out.

Having said that, I am not actually on the market at this time.