My name is Yorick Peterse and I am a Staff Engineer as part of the Delivery team, and I live in The Netherlands.
I joined GitLab in October 2015 as a "Performance Specialist", with my goal being to improve performance of GitLab as a whole. At the time GitLab only had around 40 employees, whereas today we have roughly ten times the number of employees.
After working as a Performance Specialist for a while, I transitioned into a "Database Specialist" position, which was similar but focused exclusively on database performance. After working on performance for almost three years, I joined the newly formed Delivery team team.
I take great pride in the work I do, have a strong sense of justice, and can be very direct at times; bordering on the edge of being too harsh. While I am actively working on keeping this at reasonable levels, it's important to keep in mind that I never intend to make anybody uncomfortable through my words or actions. If this is the case, by all means let me know.
I tend to express frustration rather vocally, especially when encountering problems we encountered (many times) in the past. It's important to keep in mind that this frustration is never directed at the people to triggered the problem, but instead is directed towards the problem itself and it not being solved yet.
These days I focus on two goals:
Occasionally I may submit some performance improvements, but this is no longer my primary focus.
My work schedule is largely dominated by my inconsistent sleeping schedule, a problem I have struggled with for almost my entire life. This means one day I may start working at 10:00 in the morning, while on another day I start at 12:00.
In general, I am available between 11:00 and 18:00 UTC for meetings. When scheduling one, please make sure to schedule it at least 24 hours in advance. I try to limit the number of meetings to at most two, maybe three meetings a week.
It's also worth mentioning that I tend to have Slack closed for most of the day, only checking it periodically (every hour or so). This means that it may take a little while for me to reply to any direct messages or @ mentions.
I work exclusively from home, as anything but the finest of chairs will hurt my back and neck way too much. I use Linux exclusively for work using a combination of a Linux desktop and laptop (an X1 Carbon 3rd generation). My editor of choice is (Neo)Vim, and has been for almost 10 years. I recently learned how to exit Vim by typing :q10283asldkajsdlk123890!!!!! and hoping for the best.
My keyboard is a HHKB Professional 2, and my mouse is a Logitech MX Vertical. After having tried many different mice (including a variety of trackballs), this is the only mouse that does not give me serious wrist issues. My display is a Dell P2715Q.
I have a standing desk (a Galant 13662, which are no longer sold) and a proper mat to stand on, but I found it to cause different problems compared to sitting instead of solving them. Since sitting is much easier, I have my desk configured as a regular sitting desk.
For keeping track of notes and todos I use a fountain pen and paper. I find this works much better than using a computer.
