dominic hamon

⊕ name preference i very strongly prefer "dominic" to "dom". please do try to refer to me as dominic (or dma) in text and person.

⊕ autism i am autistic. typically, autism is an invisible disability, similar to adhd, anxiety, diabetes, etc. as such, it's possible that when you meet me and work with me you may have no idea. that's perfectly fine, and i, like many autistic people, have developed a set of coping and camouflaging strategies to pass in social situations.

these strategies are tiring, and also sometimes not very effective, and this means like everyone else i have particular strengths and weaknesses. i've found some ways of working that enable me to lean into my strengths more, and if you're reading this hopefully you're interested in learning about those.

⊕ communication i tend to be very direct in in-person communication. this is never personal, but comes from a desire to get to the core of what's being communicated. i also have challenges reading intent, so if i interrupt you or talk without giving you a chance to step in, please let me know. i will not take offence. i don't expect anyone to go out of their way for me, but if you can be explicit about your intentions when communicating with me it will make our conversations much easier.

chat and email are much better communication modes for me as i can take the time to process what's being asked of me, and to prepare a response. i usually respond quickly to chat and email within working hours as i try to maintain inbox zero, but for email specifically, if it's been more than 2 days and you haven't had a response, please feel free to follow up. i don't check email or chat outside of working hours.

you might notice my emails can be verbose, which is an attempt to ensure i am as clear as possible. in some cases, in in-person communication as well, i can be overly verbose if you hit on a topic about which i know stuff or am passionate about. this is a form of info-dumping. i also appreciate overcommunication by default from others as it gives me plenty of information to work with to understand what's being asked of me, or communicated to me.

part of my management philosophy is informed by this reliance on over-communication which is the importance of transparency and honesty. i will give feedback in a timely manner, in general, because if it occurs to me to talk about something there's very little chance of me holding back. similarly, i appreciate receiving feedback in the moment so i can draw a connection between my behaviour or actions and your feedback. i think i take feedback well, especially if it's constructive and actionable.

⊕ focus in meetings, especially in person, i will often look around rather than focus my attention on you. i may also fidget or play with something. these are both coping mechanisms for social interaction (or stimming). please don't interpret this as me not being totally present, but let me know if you feel that i'm not giving you my full focus and i'll try to adjust.

⊕ literalness having time to process incoming messages is important because i tend to take things literally. if you're trying to make a point, it's always better to be explicit with me as i may not pick up on something implicit. similarly, i if you think there's a hidden meaning in some question i'm asking, there almost certainly isn't. i have had people i work with try to interpret why i'm asking questions and if i'm trying to make a point. please try to take any questions i ask at face value.

i really enjoy getting into the details on designs, but i also need to understand how they fit into the bigger picture. if you find me commenting on your design doc, and bringing others in to it, asking questions about how this fits with other things, i'm never trying to make a passive aggressive point, but am trying to understand it all. also, regarding the above about no hidden meanings, and related to this point, i may ask a question like "why aren't we using [some other tech]?". if you see a question like this from me it isn't a passive aggressive attempt to get you to use [some other tech], it is me trying to understand the bigger picture. if i think you should use [some other tech] the comment is more likely to be "you should be using [some other tech]."