One piece of advice I got from my manager early in my career that really stuck with me is this:
- It’s okay not to respond to emails/messages/requests immediately.
- But if you know a response will take time, acknowledge the message and say so.
It’s simple: the sender gets a clear signal that their message was received and isn’t left wondering whether it got lost, accidentally deleted or ignored.
This doesn’t actually contradict the Napoleon technique... if anything, it softens the “he's ignoring me” factor while still protecting my time and attention.
- What: Sun Grid Engine–style scheduler + Docker on System-on-Module (SoM) boards for reproducible tests/benchmarks and interactive SSH sessions (remote dev).
- Who: Robotics/embedded engineers comparing SoMs and tuning models/pipelines on target platforms.
- Why: Reproducible runs, easy board access, comparable reports.
Pulled this side project off the shelf — something I started after covid, when I was working at one of the consumer robotics companies (used to be the largest back then). Got it mostly working, but never actually released. I tend to dust it off and push it along a bit whenever I’m between jobs. Like now...
Feels good to be back at it.
I did exactly this when I bought my house in 2018. It's @gmail and I'm using the drive for storing photos and notes from my DIY projects or contractor work, whatever documentation have on appliances, etc.
If I ever sell my house, I'll just pass the password for the email account.
- It’s okay not to respond to emails/messages/requests immediately.
- But if you know a response will take time, acknowledge the message and say so.
It’s simple: the sender gets a clear signal that their message was received and isn’t left wondering whether it got lost, accidentally deleted or ignored.
This doesn’t actually contradict the Napoleon technique... if anything, it softens the “he's ignoring me” factor while still protecting my time and attention.