URL: https://quantcodedenny.com/posts/design-win-win/

Working deeply in ML Infra (like Meta or Google) can make your skills feel too specialized. You solve critical problems — but the broader market may not see your full capability. The key is to grow visibility and generalize impact organically, through habits you already do daily.

Understanding Interests vs. Positions

*TODO: Expand with real-life examples

• Positions are what people say they want.
• Interests are why they want it.
• Asking “why” questions helps uncover underlying motivations.

Expanding the Pie: Creating Value

• Brainstorm multiple solutions before negotiating.
• Focus on solutions that cost you little but help the other party.
• Example: If your team needs resources and leadership wants fast delivery, explore temporary staffing or automation.

Strategic Concessions

• Trade things that are low cost for you but high value for them.
• Always aim to ask for something in return.
• Example: “I can support your project if you help me with X later.”

Framing Shared Wins

• Explicitly show benefits for all parties.
• Practice drafting talking points or emails that highlight mutual gains.
• Example: “This approach reduces errors for your team and meets our deadlines.”

Practice in Low-Stakes Environments

• Apply the principles to family decisions, small purchases, or team tasks.
• Treat each negotiation as a mini-experiment.
• Reflect: Did both sides feel good? Could more value have been created?

Post-Mortem and Continuous Improvement

• Keep a Win-Win Journal: 1–2 entries per week.
• Analyze:
  • Interests of both sides
  • Value created
  • Satisfaction of both parties
  • Lessons for next time

Tools and Frameworks

• BATNA – Know your alternatives.
• ZOPA – Identify the zone of possible agreement.
• Principled Negotiation – Fisher & Ury’s Getting to Yes framework.

TODO Future Improvements

• Add real-life case studies.
• Include examples from work and family scenarios.
• Add diagrams showing negotiation flow.

Conclusion

Practicing win-win deals is a skill that compounds over time. By focusing on interests, creating value, and reflecting continuously, you can negotiate outcomes that strengthen relationships and achieve shared success.

URL: https://quantcodedenny.com/posts/personal-top-priority/

🌟 Vision

Live a healthy, confident, and wealthy life — balanced across family, personal growth, and financial freedom. Focus on high-leverage actions and eliminate noise.

🎯 Key Objectives (FCM)

1. Family — Build a Healthy and Happy Family

• Stay emotionally connected with kids and spouse
• Maintain routines for health and stress management

Daily / Weekly Goals

• 15–30 min 1:1 focused play with kids (3x/week)
• Evening family meal without devices (2x/week)
• Weekly 30-min sync with spouse to review week and connect
• Exercise 2–3x per week, sleep 7h/night
• Plan 1 weekend activity per month with family
• Avoid overthinking or struggling too long in dead ends

2. Confidence — Strengthen Personal and Professional Growth

• Increase professional market value
• Improve appearance and communication skills
• Build meaningful, positive connections

Daily / Weekly Goals

URL: https://quantcodedenny.com/posts/personal-top-priority/

🌟 Vision

Live a healthy, confident, and wealthy life — balanced across family, personal growth, and financial freedom.

Focus on high-leverage actions and eliminate noise

🎯 Key Objectives (FCM)

1. Family — Build a Healthy and Happy Family

• Stay emotionally connected with kids and spouse
• Maintain physical health and manage stress effectively

Quarterly Focus

• 1 hour’s high quality time with kids twice a week
• Exercise 2x per week, sleep 7h/night
• Monthly date night with spouse

2. Confidence — Strengthen Personal and Professional Growth

• Increase professional market value
• Improve appearance and communication skills
• Build meaningful, positive connections

Quarterly Focus

• Publish or present 1 idea publicly (talk, post, doc)
• Update wardrobe / grooming once per quarter
• Reach out to 1 mentor or peer connection monthly

3. Money — Grow Wealth with Leverage

• Earn through smart, sustainable investing
• Focus energy on high-return opportunities

Quarterly Focus

• Review investment portfolio quarterly
• Evaluate investment decisions and lessons learned — track what worked, what didn’t
• Automate saving and investing routines
• Delegate or outsource low-value chores

⚙️ Guiding Principles

1. Prioritize What Truly Matters

• Be clear on what to do — and what not to do
• Bias toward solving problems, not perfection

2. Evolve Mindset Continuously (E6 → E7 Upgrade)

• Think in systems and first principles — solve root causes, not symptoms
• Apply growth mindset — treat mistakes as learning opportunities and embrace ambiguity
• Create leverage — empower others, clarify processes, and automate repeat work
• Lead through influence — align people and decisions without authority

3. Spend Smartly to Earn More

• Buy time and energy via good services
• Avoid over-optimizing trivial details

🧠 Habits

Good Habits

• Conduct effective design reviews weekly
  • Share meaningful stories and lessons at work
  • Say no to small or low-impact optimizations
• Write a weekly summary to reflect and refocus

Bad Habits

• Struggling too long in dead ends
• Overthinking without action
• Setting too many small, fragmented goals

🔄 Weekly Reflection Checklist

Focus Area	Reflection Question	Done?
Family	Did I spend 1:1 time with my spouse or kid?	[ ]
Confidence	Did I act or share something that built self-belief?	[ ]
Money	Did I review investments and track lessons learned?	[ ]
Energy	Did I maintain good sleep and movement this week?	[ ]
Mindset	Did I apply systems thinking, growth mindset, or empower others this week?	[ ]

🔍 Clarity Rules

• Say no to non-essential goals
• Keep energy > time as the key metric
• Default to reflection > reaction
• Build systems and habits that compound over years, not weeks

URL: https://quantcodedenny.com/posts/leadership-presence/

Introduction

As an IC6 ML Infra Tech Lead, technical expertise alone is not enough. I need to be seen as a leader — someone who drives impact, earns trust, and inspires confidence across teams.

Leadership presence is about how I show up, influence decisions, and make work visible, especially under pressure. This post gives me a daily-ready framework to strengthen my leadership presence, including verbal, non-verbal, and mindset practices.

URL: https://quantcodedenny.com/posts/scope-better/

For a successful tech lead, there are four steps: scope better -> do better -> look better -> connect better.

Scoping work effectively is one of the hardest skills I’ve learned as a tech lead. I frame scoping around four core challenges:

1. Identifying high-leverage problems.
2. Setting boundaries and protecting focus.
3. Aligning stakeholders and expectations.
4. Align early, iterate fast.

Using LLMs To Scope Better

I use LLMs to address each core challenge efficiently:

URL: https://quantcodedenny.com/posts/improve-market-value/

Working deeply in ML Infra (like Meta or Google) can make your skills feel too specialized. You solve critical problems — but the broader market may not see your full capability. The key is to grow visibility and generalize impact organically, through habits you already do daily.

Core Principles

• Think End-to-End → Connect your work to business goals, reliability, and system health.
• Focus on Non-Urgent Impact → Block time weekly to fix recurring pain or document key learnings.
• Translate to Market Value → Frame results in measurable terms (revenue, cost, scale, reliability).
• Learn and Share → Write short notes or posts to spread knowledge and show thought leadership.

Regular Routine

Weekly Habits

• Learn broadly → Attend 1 SEV or design review; observe recurring problems and system tradeoffs.
• Connect cross-functionally → Chat with 1 XFN lead to understand context and dependencies.
• Reflect & share → Write 1–3 bullet summary of key learning; note patterns, scripts, or principles.

Monthly Habits

• Host & lead → Run 1 design or postmortem discussion; practice influence, articulation, and framing decisions.
• Mentor → Coach 1–2 engineers; amplify impact and demonstrate multiplier behavior.

Quarterly Habits

• Ship a measurable improvement → Deliver 1 end-to-end enhancement; design for scale, reliability, and visibility.
• Summarize impact → Convert results into metrics or story for internal/external visibility.

Focus Blocks & Best Practices

• Protect 1–2 hours weekly for important but non-urgent work: blindspot review, systemic improvements, or skill expansion.
• Frame all incidents/projects with business impact: root cause, mitigation, downstream effect, prevented loss or restored capacity.
• Ask system-level questions before implementation: downstream effects, hidden dependencies, assumptions, failure modes.
• Document & share patterns weekly: recurring issues, scripts, or solutions that others can reuse.
• Use external framing: translate internal improvements into transferable, marketable impact.

Watch Out For

• Local optimizations without system or business context.
• Not documenting key decisions.
• Avoiding cross-team or ambiguous problems.
• Over-relying on internal tech; always extract general principles.

URL: https://quantcodedenny.com/posts/connect-better/

Introduction

For a successful tech lead, it usually has four steps: scope better -> do better -> look better -> connect better.

Doing great work is only part of success. My influence grows when others know, trust, and rely on me.

Connecting better at work is most powerful when it becomes a small daily habit — one or two simple actions that naturally build trust, relationships, and impact.

Core Daily Habit

Each day, I focus on one key action:

URL: https://quantcodedenny.com/posts/look-better/

Introduction

For a successful tech lead, it usually has four steps: scope better -> do better -> look better -> connect better.

Working hard alone isn’t enough. Leaders and decision-makers are busy — if they don’t see my impact, it might as well not exist.

Looking better at work is not self-promotion. It’s about making my contributions visible, credible, and trusted. I focus on three things:

• Business Impact – What tangible results did I achieve?
• Complexity & Learning – What challenges did I overcome, and what did I learn?
• Credibility – Did the right people notice my work, and did I involve or acknowledge others?

This post gives me a daily-ready framework to apply these principles with minimal thinking.

URL: https://quantcodedenny.com/posts/eq-playbook/

As a tech lead, I want to ease mental stress and handle conflicts effectively. This is my daily runbook for calm, clear, and high-leverage leadership.

Core Principles (Memorable)

• Pause Before Reacting: Avoid knee-jerk responses.
• Listen First: Understand before responding.
• Focus on Outcomes: Prioritize shared goals, not ego.
• Protect Boundaries: Say no or redirect low-leverage work.

Daily Action Routine

• Morning (Start of Day): Review top 3 priorities; decide what to say “no” to.
• Pre-Meeting: Pause, breathe, note intended outcome.
• During Conflict: Listen fully; restate understanding before replying.
• Work Blocks (≈90 mins): Take 5 min stretch/walk break.
• Midday: Hydrate, check posture, reset focus.
• End of Day: Log one win and one boundary I defended.

Difficult Situations & Quick Actions

• Disagreement on Priorities: Frame trade-offs; explain business impact.
• Boundary-Pushing Requests: Acknowledge importance; suggest better owner; offer light support.
• Cross-Team / Peer Conflict: Listen, validate points, defuse tension, propose joint follow-up.
• Escalations from Leadership: Communicate facts clearly; outline immediate + long-term fix.

Show Calm Through Signals

• Speak calmly; tone sets team baseline.
• Pause before responding; silence = confidence.
• Start with the point; avoid long background.
• Use ownership language: “I’ll handle this.”
• Ask curious, open questions: “Can you walk me through your thinking?”
• Reframe issues positively: “We can fix this early.”

Energy & Focus Killers (Clustered)

• Health Basics: Poor sleep, nutrition, hydration, or movement → fatigue & brain fog.
• Scattered Focus: Multitasking & context switching → low efficiency.
• Stress Ignored: Bottling emotions → chronic depletion.
• Weak Boundaries: Overcommitting → diluted impact, burnout.
• Environment: Clutter, noise, bad lighting → lower alertness.

Best Practices (Actionable)

• Sleep & Move: 7–9 hrs sleep; walk/stretch/exercise.
• Eat & Hydrate: Balanced meals; avoid sugar spikes; drink water.
• Prioritize & Batch: MITs / Eisenhower; avoid overcommitment.
• Take Microbreaks: 5–10 mins every 60–90 mins; reflect or journal.
• Optimize Environment: Light, tidy, comfortable.
• Communicate Effectively: Neutral, “we” language, summarize agreements, use Pause → Clarify → Respond → Follow-Up.

Common Pitfalls

• Reacting instantly under stress.
• Treating conflict as win/lose.
• Assuming shared context.
• Taking low-leverage work just to be helpful.