See also: [[My CV]]. Some nice things that colleagues and clients have said about me. ## Clients of TYPE III AUDIO I started [TYPE III AUDIO](https://type3.audio) in October 2022. We provide human and AI narration services for clients in the AI safety and effective altruism communities. This was a team effort, but as founder and CEO I was ultimately responsible for delighting our clients. > TYPE III AUDIO’s efficiency and professionalism make them wonderful partners. By partnering with them, we’ve been able to test audio narration on the EA Forum quickly and develop a strategy to boost engagement further. > —**Sharang Phadke, Effective Altruism Forum** > TYPE III AUDIO has produced high-quality narrations of our articles that have increased their reach for comparatively little effort. Working with them has been incredibly smooth  for us, and they keep coming up with attractive additions to their services we’re interested in too! > —**Arden Koehler, 80,000 Hours** > TYPE III AUDIO created a full, 3+ hour, high-quality narration of a report I wrote about power-seeking AI, and they’ve been helping improve the quality of the narrations of other things I’ve written as well. In all of this, they’ve been enthusiastic, detail-oriented, communicative, serious about the quality of their product, and keen to be as helpful as possible. I’ve been very satisfied with the narrations, and it’s been great working with them more broadly. > —**Joseph Carlsmith, Open Philanthropy** Some more [here](https://blog.type3.audio/year-1-review/#appendix-5-client-testimonials). ## Colleagues at 80,000 Hours I mostly worked at [80,000 Hours](https://80000hours.org/) from 2014-15, and again from 2017-2021. As of 2023, I continue in an advisory role. We have an \#appreciation Slack channel where we sometimes say nice things to each other. I've collected a few below (shared with permission). **Howie Lempel:** ![[Pasted image 20220721153432.png]] **Brenton Mayer:** ![[Pasted image 20220721153344.png]] **Arden Koehler (replies from Brenton Mayer and Ben Todd):** ![[Pasted image 20220721153708.png]] **Niel Bowerman:** ![[Pasted image 20220721153603.png]] **Jenna Peters:** ![[Pasted image 20220721153757.png]] ![[Pasted image 20220721153834.png]] **Kushal Kansagra:** > I joined 80,000 Hours in summer 2022, and had regular calls with Peter as part of my onboarding. > > Peter advised and mentored me on topics like: hiring & managing a developer as a non-technical PM; learning & self-development; picking up organisational knowledge. I really appreciated his drive toward big picture thinking and brainstorming. Almost every call gave me useful new perspectives on whatever issue was top of mind (product, design, self-dev, hiring, you name it), as well as being a fun and interesting chat. <!-- ### Appreciation for random small contributions I made I suggested a #half-baked-ideas Slack channel for quickly sharing random ideas to the team, with no expectation that anyone does anything in response. The aim was to increase the number of "spark" moments where someone shares a low confidence idea then another team member riffs or runs with it, or encourages the OP to develop it. And also to reduce situations where many people are thinking similar things without enough confidence to make a concrete proposal. In the first two years we posted ~2.6K top level messages and replies (an average of 3.6 per day). This makes it one of our most active channels, and perhaps among the most valuable. **Ben Todd:** ![[Pasted image 20220721154113.png]] See also: [[Teams! Create a space for sharing half-baked ideas]]. **Michelle Hutchinson on speed:** In March 2020 I dropped everything to manage the 80,000 Hours response to COVID. ![[Pasted image 20220721154556.png]] ![[Pasted image 20220721154535.png]] **Arden Koehler:** ![[Pasted image 20220721154405.png]] **Michelle Hutchinson:** ![[Pasted image 20220721154656.png]] I often served as tech support and nudge unit. **Niel Bowerman:** ![[Pasted image 20220725143007.png]] "80K Whois" is an internal tool that I designed and built in half a day, to make it easier to find out what we know about people across our different systems (including Zoho CRM, Google Drive, Gmail, LinkedIn, MailChmp, Mixpanel). After we validated the MVP, my colleague Roman spent a day or so making it better. In the first 6 months, we tracked >500 searches, and it was handling >100 searches per month. Our lower bound estimates suggest it saved ~40 hours of team time during the period, and led to >100 cases where team decisions were at least somewhat better informed. --> ## Coaching clients In winter 2023, I began working as an executive coach for [Alex Lawsen](https://www.openphilanthropy.org/about/team/alex-lawsen/), who works on AI grantmaking at Open Philanthropy. Here's what he has to say: > When I first reached out to Peter, I was in a new role which had longer feedback loops and less managerial support than I was used to. I was taking on many projects that were poorly scoped, which I needed to make well-scoped and then execute on. My work days felt very reactive, and I was having trouble keeping on top of things. I was struggling to carve out time to look at the bigger picture, and had a general concern that I was not prioritising well. In addition, I didn't have a good internal sense of how I was performing in the role, which led to me worrying a lot about that. > > Over the first few weeks, Peter helped me improve my approach to project management and weekly planning. We made it easy to get an overview of my active projects, to track progress and tasks on each project, and co-ordinate with collaborators. We experimented with changes to my weekly planning process to help set priorities in the context of my longer-term goals, to improve the balance between proactive and reactive work, and to help me quickly get to work on the most important things. Peter helped me develop and refine simple, low-friction, and low-overhead systems that I have stuck with over the long-term. Our work on these areas quickly and significantly improved my productivity, wellbeing, and my ability to manage large-scale projects.  > > Peter has also supported my work with brief daily check-ins. This has made a stark difference to how well I use my time and significantly improved my mood at work. The check-ins provide accountability and ensure I have a plan for each day. Even when I don't stick to the plan, the act of stating my intentions in advance sets a usefully higher bar for choosing to do something else. These check-ins, along with the measures described above, have greatly increased the consistency with which I achieve highly productive days. > > Sometimes we've used our calls to collaborate on particular projects I'm working on. Peter has a lot of context on the AI safety landscape, and deeply understands my goals and those of my team. This means he can serve as a sounding board and brainstorm partner at both the object and meta-levels. For example, his feedback on the project which was my top priority for Q1 of this year led to substantial improvements in the final output. And we've had useful discussions of many other challenges—onboarding new hires, reducing distractions, managing up, delegation, and much else. > > More generally, Peter often prompts me to distinguish essential and non-essential tasks, or to consider alternative approaches ("Alex, what's the 80:20?"), or to reframe a situation entirely. Such discussions often lead to substantial changes in my approach, and they've helped me develop a valuable habit of "stepping back". > > Overall: I'm really glad to be working with Peter as my coach. The return on investment was clearly very high over the first few months, and, to my surprise, has remained consistently "above the bar" over the longer term (we're 8 months in). Recommended! ## People I have managed **Srdjan Stajic:** > Working for Peter was a great experience. He has deep knowledge and understanding, both technical and product, and can communicate that very well.  > > He impressively juggled a lot of different domains, his versatility and ability to grasp complex concepts quickly would make him a valuable asset for any project. > > More importantly, he is a genuinely awesome and interesting guy, and his leadership and drive motivate. It was a pleasure to work with someone who not only leads by example but also genuinely cares about the well-being and success of their team. **Conor Barnes:** > Peter is astonishingly easy to work with and is a useful benchmark for how collaborations should be. He is crystal-clear about what he wants and is very appreciative of well-done work. He is generous with his time and is a great person to talk to and bounce ideas off of. He's also plain fun to work with due to his passion. Big recommend! **Katy Moore:** > As a manager, Peter consistently surprised me with his commitment to my wellbeing and awareness of what might be blocking my progress — whether that was within my role at TYPE III AUDIO or more generally in my career or life. I really valued getting his candid opinions on anything that was nagging at me, and he nearly always offered a fresh perspective that I hadn't considered. I found Peter's leadership to be a really motivational mix of ambitious thinking, realistic expectations, and open discussion of potential failure points (both of the project and our individual roles within it). And while at first I was worried I might be intimidated working with Peter, he surprised me with his laid-back yet engaging managerial style; I felt like I learned a lot in a very short period of time, as Peter always provided plenty of opportunities to expand my skills and try new things. **Perrin Walker:** > Peter really helped to get the best out of me while I was working with him – I feel that my work reached a new level of quality during our project together. **Maria Gutierrez:** > My favourite thing about Hartree is how low on bullshit he is. How low on faff, distraction, and pretension. > > When he was my manager, he protected my ingenuity from pointless stress, workplace politics, and bureaucracy, and enabled me to do satisfyingly-real work. > > I very fondly remember our time working together as full of trust, sincerity, kindness, and ambition. **Shaun Acker:** > I still can't believe I crossed paths with this deeply impressive person. So humble, bright and organised. And just the nicest guy ever. It's my privilege to work together. ## Freelance clients I mostly worked as a freelance web designer and developer from 2003-2014 (I started at age 15). I often worked in collaboration with a graphic designer or small web agency, but I also worked with >10 private clients. **Joseph Walker** (host of [The Jolly Swagman podcast](https://josephnoelwalker.com/)): > Pete is the most impressive web developer I’ve worked with. This is because of the unique combination of qualities he possesses. These include: technical competence, speed, professionalism, empathy, a clean and elegant design aesthetic, and an understanding of the bigger picture (e.g. the budgetary and strategic trade-offs involved in development decisions). Two things about my collaboration with Pete delighted me in particular. First, Pete is a polymath and a listener of my podcast, meaning he quickly 'got' me and was able to make decisions consistent with my brand and vibe, as well as provide extra advice about website copy. Second, Pete had an astute ability to nudge me in the right direction at the right time. For example, I was wavering between sticking with WordPress or switching to Ghost. Pete correctly surmised that Ghost would be better suited to my purposes and that my reluctance to embrace it was probably due to status quo bias, and so he persuaded me to choose Ghost—a decision I'm very glad I made. In 2021 I redesigned and rebuilt the [website](https://josephnoelwalker.com/) for Joseph Walker's podcast. A graphic designer took care of the visual identity. **Víkingur Ólafsson** (pianist): > Thank you Peter for your excellent and impressive work. It's a joy working with people like you. In 2016, I built Víkingur's personal website (replaced in 2023). From 2014-2019, I made several websites for the [Reykjavík Midsummer Music](https://reykjavikmidsummermusic.com/) festival, which Víkingur directs. **Valgeir Valdimarsson** (CEO, [Takk Takk](https://twitter.com/takktakk), an Icelandic marketing firm): <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-dnt="true"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">We hereby declare that <a href="https://twitter.com/PeterHartreeWeb?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@PeterHartreeWeb</a> is one of the finest people we&#39;ve had the pleasure of working with.</p>&mdash; Takk Takk (@takktakk) <a href="https://twitter.com/takktakk/status/493765459788201986?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 28, 2014</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> We made websites for a food shop, a wine shop, a perfume shop and a German investment firm that mainly buys supermarkets. We also made some wind turbine Twitter bots for Landsvirkjun, the national power company of Iceland. **Rod Farquhar** (graphic designer): > I have worked with Peter over the last 4 years, where his role as lead web developer has been invaluable to Farquhar Design. > > At all times I have found Peter to be reliable, hard-working, conscientious as well as adding value and creativity to all the projects on which we have collaborated. Rod and I worked on several large projects from 2007-2012, mostly for [Electrical Safety First](https://www.electricalsafetyfirst.org.uk/). As of 2022, the two children's websites—[Switched on Kids](https://www.switchedonkids.org.uk/) and [Two Thirty Volts](https://twothirtyvolts.org.uk/)—are still online, and used by thousands of schoolchildren each year. So too is the [Socket Overload Calculator](https://www.electricalsafetyfirst.org.uk/guidance/safety-around-the-home/overloading-sockets/) which is embedded on dozens of fire brigade websites around the UK. We still collaborate to maintain these and other sites (a few hours per year, on my part). **Kyle Scott** (Assistant to Nick Bostrom): > Peter gives the impression of quiet professionalism, and when I worked with him on Nick's website that held true. He communicated clearly and gracefully accommodated Nick's quite specific preferences. I would be delighted to work with him again if the opportunity arose. In 2016, I rewrote the HTML for [nickbostrom.com](https://nickbostrom.com) so that it would work on mobile and be easier for Nick to update. I also made some typographic improvements so the page would be easier to read. **Kristján Gunnarsson** (CEO of [Kosmos og Kaos](https://kosmosogkaos.is/), an Icelandic digital agency): > I had the pleasure to work closely with Peter on a challenging project for one of our most demanding clients. > > Peter has a strong end-user focus that helped us focus the scope of the project and had significant influence on the final project specification and scope. He is easy to work with and has great ability to communicate his opinions that always make good sense. His project management skills are exceptional, I will seek to work with Peter in the future and give him my best recommendations. In 2014, I helped design and build an electricity consumption calculator for Orka náttúrunnar, an Icelandic energy firm. The calculator helped educate consumers about how to reduce their energy bills. ## 1000+ people who left 5-star reviews for Inbox When Ready In 2016 I created [Inbox When Ready](https://inboxwhenready.org/), a browser extension that helps people avoid getting distracted by their email. As of December 2023 it had >5K MAU and >$200K all-time revenue. ![[D0939D3D-01C5-4E58-AAEC-F62C2CFE2C65.jpeg]] Lots more on the [Chrome Web Store](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/inbox-when-ready-for-gmai/cdedhgmbfjhobfnphaoihdfmnjidcpim/reviews?hl=en). ## AirBnB hosts Why include these? Well, I've rented a lot of AirBnBs for several weeks or months at a time, and these are random strangers with no particular incentive to say nice things. ![[Pasted image 20220721160743.png]] ![[Pasted image 20220721160731.png]] ![[Pasted image 20220721161018.png]] ![[Pasted image 20220721160846.png]] ![[Pasted image 20220721160904.png]] You can find more on my [AirBnB profile](https://www.airbnb.co.uk/users/show/2420503). ## My grandmother (1916-2020) > What a delightful young man! Sending love and admiration. Miss you Grandma. ## My wife (1997-) > He's alright. Nice biceps.