I’m Miguel Mascarenhas Filipe, and I like to solve problems so much that one of my mottos is “problems are waiting to be solved”. On Twitter: “Sui generis, creative & adventurer. Loves distributed systems, hard problems, and First Principles Engineering”.

At Dune I’m the Tech Lead and Software Engineer on the API team.

My professional background has a ~6y stint on large scale distributed (and high throughput) systems at AWS/DynamoDB and Microsoft/Skype, and ~12y on startup environments from 20 to 250 people.

About this page

I’ve been thinking about having a simple page where I can put some thoughts or share something, either about technical tastes, preferences or whatnot. I use twitter to microblog.

I kicked off this page with the contents of the “about me” internal page that we used in Dune (where I work). Please note that this page is my personal site, with my personal opinions.

Communication style

I’m what they say: What you see is what you get. I’m straight to the point, very candid and prefer a very down-to-earth open communication, erring on the side of verbosity. :-)

I tend to think out loud during conversations to explain my reasoning further. I’m analytical and skeptical by nature, which at times might feel non-cooperative, but it’s simply my brain working out the problem.

Working style

• I’ve played team sports all my life and am a team-player through and through. It’s such a big part of my work style that I’m always trying to help and teamwork even when not explicitly asked.
• I like to think that I’m a first-principles-thinking person and always prefer to continuously iterate and improve on specific work practices and tech.
• I do welcome unplanned conversations or talks about a problem that recently arose (such as a production issue) or brainstorming creative uses of a system/technology for a problem.
• I tend to follow a weekly flow for my work streams and I believe “planning helps us improvise better” — planning is essential but nothing is set in stone and we should learn and act based on new information as it arises.
• I’m not a morning person; before my two daughters I used to be a night owl :-)
• Every time I find something that should be improved, either in tech or in workflows or procedures, I always try to clarify the problem and propose a solution in a productive way.

Personality style

If you like (or strongly believe) in personality tests, I’m a Myers-Briggs ESTP. According to Wikipedia it maps to: outgoing, realistic, action-oriented, curious, versatile, spontaneous, pragmatic, problem-solver, skillful negotiator. I don’t know if I agree with the “skillful negotiator”, but I do fit the stereotype box quite well.

I believe everything in life is a combination of:

• hard work and dedication
• knowledge and logic reasoning
• creativity (lateral thinking, questioning assumptions, questioning long-held practices/approaches)

Feedback

Please provide feedback as early as possible! In whatever form works best for you. I usually find face-to-face conversations easier because we get additional information from non-verbal expressions and tone of voice.

You don’t need to use the sandwich of compliment-feedback-compliment, but fine if you use it. We’re all humans and we all like to hear positives once in a while.

Since we’re here: one of my self-improvement never-ending tasks is to be smoother and softer in the way I interact with others. I try hard to adjust my interaction styles to the audience. This doesn’t come natural to me and I keep improving and working on it. Please provide any feedback you might have. :-)

Stuff I like

• Sports
• Lists!
• Wilderness and adventure
• I love animals and if I wasn’t an engineer I’d probably be a veterinarian
• Food and drinks, both eating and preparing meals
• I’m a bit of a tree-hugger and follow renewable energies and electric vehicles avidly

Odd fact: I don’t play computer games — never found them that entertaining. On my down-time I over-consume Wikipedia, Reddit, YouTube, Kindle and technical papers.

On YouTube my subscriptions are around:

• Civil engineering and urban planning
• Animals (BBC Wildlife & similar)
• Renewable energy engineering
• Space and rocketry
• Math
• Formula 1

Books and authors I heartily recommend:

• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert Pirsig)
• Cryptonomicon (Neal Stephenson — one of my favourites)
• 1984, Brave New World (Orwell, Huxley)
• Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke
• How to Make Friends and Influence People (Dale Carnegie)
• Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
• Mars Trilogy (Kim Stanley Robinson)
• Energy Transitions (Vaclav Smil)

Other things on this site

• Papers — notes on papers I’ve read (incl. “A view under the hood” of DynamoDB).
• Talks — notes from conferences I’ve attended.