Thong Kuah's README
Introduction
Hello, my name is Thong Kuah. I am a Staff Backend Engineer with the Tenant Scale group. I currently reside in Wellington, New Zealand.
I joined GitLab in 2018, starting with the Configure group.
Links
My day
As my timezone is UTC +12 or UTC +13, Mondays are relatively quiet. There is some overlap with AMER in my mornings. As some in my team are in EMEA, I have some evening meetings with them.
After droping my children off at school, I start work shortly after 9 AM. The morning will then be either reviewing merge requests, replying to mentions to unblock others. Sometimes I elect to focus on a particular issue instead.
I mostly work from home, so lunch is mostly leftover dinners. After lunch, there’s usually more work to continue though I tend to slow down. I stop work to pick up kids from school at 3 PM.
In the evenings (Mon-Thurs) after the kids have gone to bed, I resume work as this is my most productive time. Friday evenings is a no-work time slot as it is reserved for movie nights with my partner.
I am always open to coffee chats, whether or not we have met before. Simply schedule it within my working hours in Google Calendar.
Work style
I am motivated by feedback, and a sense of accomplishment. I welcome direct, actionable feedback from customers, co-workers, code review comments, and even RSpec telling me the tests are failing.
I work mainly off the GitLab To-Do List, mostly on a First-in-First-out basis. I tend to operate best when I am working on one or two “things” at a time.
When reviewing merge requests (MRs), I tend to look for:
- Why we are making this change - usually an issue link will suffice.
- Any glaring security issues.
- If I can understand the code at first read. If not, then there is some chance others will not understand the code in the future.
- If the MR is not obvious, how can I try this out myself locally ? Sometimes this means running the unit tests and manipulating the tests, sometimes this requires trying out the MR in development.
- All code added, or changed has corresponding tests.
Setup
Here is my office setup:
- Standing desk from a local office supplier
- Samsung WQHD 24 inch external monitor (S24H850)
- Goldtouch adjustable keyboard
- Logitech mouse
- Logitech wired headset
Trivia
- I joined GitLab because of the transparent handbook, and that each job page had the amazing phrase “Avoid the confidence gap; you do not have to match all the listed requirements exactly to apply”.
- Prior to GitLab, I have been a manager of developers. I went back to being an individual contributor because of the engineer/manager pendulum, and also I much prefer shorter feedback loops.
- I have read War and Peace, translated. Vanity Fair, or the Wheel of Time is much better.
- I have JavaScript disabled globally in my browsers.
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