brandon_readme.md

Hello there! If you’re a new member of a team I manage, an engineering peer working with me on a project, or a prospective client interested in understanding how I do work as your consultant this guide should introduce you to who I am and how I work. The first section is the tl;dr, and the following ones are longer form information about my background.

How I Work

Teams I work with in my career as an engineering manager can count on me to be remotely “in office” from 9AM-5PM Pacific time Monday-Friday. My availability is tracked via my Google Calendar which is public for anyone to view and find time to touch base. Any times marked as ‘busy’ or OoO are personal hours and I will be generally unavailable for synchronous communication or work during that time.

I’ve fully bought into remote work culture and have led multiple distributed teams so am well versed in how to work asynchronously using a variety of communication and project management tools. I prefer to lean heavily on asynchronous communication with documented decisions or notes when a face to face meeting does occur as to not leave any stakeholders out that could not attend due to timezones or other life events.

For engineering work I produce technical documentation that describes what I’m going to build and I deliver that and seek understanding and consensus from my peers or clients before pursuing it. I use tools that enforce best practices in my software development workflow and follow industry standards for deploying applications securely. I’m that weirdo that enjoys writing tests.

How I Like To Communicate

Power Rankings:

Chat
In-app e.g. Jira or Miro
Video Call with transcription / notes
Email

I’m most accessible over chat applications such as Google Chat or Discord. I always keep a window open unless I’m in focus time or oncall.

About Me (career)

I’m currently an Engineering Manager at Cloudflare managing the Partners and IAM teams. I also continue to maintain my IT, software, and cloud infrastructure consulting business Brandon Nelson Consulting LLC. I previously held positions as tech lead and senior engineer before transitioning into management at Cloudflare. Before I became a software engineer I had a few different careers. For awhile I thought I was going to open my own restaurant, and after that I expected that I would be a nurse forever!

I’m an EM by title, but I still love to build systems. I joined my first startup after completing school as an “adult learner” (3.99 GPA, CURSE YOU SPANISH 100) and was immediately captivated by the art of programming and the culture of makers that surround it. I found my niche in DevOps initially, designing and deploying systems responsible for building, testing, and deploying code and operating business critical infrastructure. I became steeped in the culture of Operations engineering, but eventually transitioned into roles more focused on application development. I ran with that career path until 2021 when I decided to try my hand at managing software teams. I get asked about that decision frequently, so here are my reasons:

The prior career that I gained the most personal joy from was in-home nursing, helping others is something that brings me deep satisfaction. I believe that a great manager is an empathetic one, and I think that this is one of my greatest strengths.
I wanted to leverage my knowledge of systems architecture, software design, and quality/maintenance ideologies to lead the construction of sustainable systems that teams of engineers are delighted to work with and on.
I’ve had a number of crappy bosses, and I’ve learned a lot from the pain they have inflicted on me and my peers. This industry is plagued by leadership that is generally awful at a variety of skills that I deem critical to the success and health of a team. I want to do better.

I wear a lot of different hats due to my past experience and current passions! My areas of technical interest and expertise at work are:

Software project planning and collaboration
Operational hygiene and its effect on team health
Distributed system architecture and design
Software application architecture and design
Web application security
Code quality and maintenance
Safely refactoring legacy systems
Cloud infrastructure design and deployment

About Me (at home)

I live in the Portland, Oregon area with my partner Ella and love the West coast of the US. I dabble in loads of hobbies, but my favorites are:

Pickleball, certified instructor and avid player
All around gamer and game design: board games, video games, roleplaying games, and more
Listening to music live and at home, too many genres and artists to begin to enumerate here :)
Cooking, baking, and exploring new cuisine, my partner is a professional and I love to play sous chef / apprentice baker
Fitness and health, I drank the Orange Theory koolaid (but mostly I just like mindless bootcamp style workouts)
Outdoor sport including hiking, skiing, and bouldering

On a given day after work you can find me on the pickleball court, in the gym, or out to eat at one of Portland’s great restaurants with Ella. Weekends are for hobby projects and longer form gaming sessions solo or with friends.

Hit me up on Discord if you want to play something! My username is lof1.