Russ
Rinzler

they/any*

Hello and welcome to my humble web page.

If you’re here, you’re probably interested in my work as a frontend web developer. To give you an idea of myself as a dev:

  1. My work philosophy is greatly informed by my time in San Francisco, particularly as a growth engineer at Slack.
  2. I view projects from a holistic perspective. I love improving existing or legacy systems, especially with regard to the developer or user experience. I also try to see how developer pain points tie into business costs or needs.
  3. Data is great. It’s important to use it to measure the success of an initiative or identify what to build next. I believe that giving developers insight into data can be very encouraging.
  4. In the six thinking hats model, I often wear the green hat. Otherwise, I usually swap off between the white, red, and yellow hats.
  5. I understand that hiring a multinational team brings about its own challenges. It’s one thing to impose company values onto an internationally diverse team, but it’s another to understand that each person potentially brings a wildly different set of expectations to their working lives.
  6. I highly value empathy and nonviolent communication despite “empathy” being a buzzword. Years in the industry have shown me: Computers are easy, people are hard.
  7. Engendering diversity and inclusion is great (and the ethical thing to do), but it usually has to start at the upper levels of a company. It’s also obvious when a company touts D&I for face value. Despite this, there are small things everyone can do to make their work environment just a bit more welcoming.
  8. Transparency: if communication didn’t happen publicly, it didn’t happen. I also find tools for visual communication like Miro incredibly helpful.
  9. Tech leadership is a great skill that can be exercised by any developer at any level. There’s much more to being a great developer than just coding.
  10. Burnout is a huge issue in this industry, especially for those underrepresented in tech.
  11. I don’t believe that all developers need to be pushed towards the next promotion. What I find more important is developing a culture of psychological safety and open feedback.
  12. Everyone makes mistakes, myself included. It’s important to have room for that. When something goes awry, it’s usually the process, not the person.

Samples of previous UI work can be provided upon request.

Contact

The best way to reach me is via LinkedIn. Please note that I probably won’t answer the phone with an unknown number (thanks spam and telemarketing 😵‍💫).

Links

Side Projects