Xiaofan Yang

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Quick Info

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Notes

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Interactions

2026-03-26

• Saw Timothy had posted in a cross-team channel with Tanay that Timothy / Xiaofan / Gabe would be happy to review his PR for evaluating the Miku skill
• DMed Xiaofan at 1:41pm asking why I was being excluded
• She responded that not that many reviewers were needed and I could volunteer if needed
• Asked who “we” was in that context - she said the mcontext team
• I said I was confused because I’m on the mcontext team; she held firm that not everyone needed to be involved
• Asked if this separation of roles and communication channels was her decision, at which point she requested a call
• Slack Huddle started at 2:10pm, lasted 28 minutes
• She came across as slightly manic, speaking very quickly, telling me I was overthinking, and that for efficiency she didn’t need every team member involved
• Pushed back: I was on MBP which had ownership over Miku, had $8M in ratified cost savings with Miku, had a great working relationship with Tanay (Miku tech lead), so it was odd I wasn’t picked first
• Her counter-arguments: I’m a new member on her team and not yet in all communication channels, and as my manager she doesn’t necessarily know all that context about me
• Pushed back again: new members should be brought into as many channels as possible for context, and while she should know this from being on my sister team for years and now being my manager, she could have always just asked
• She cited things being slowed down; I asked her to show me how and she pointed to cc-session-logger, which I believe to be incorrect
• Requested to be added to the thread with Tanay, as well as the SSF project channel
• Minor note: discussed grounding project being updated and transferred to a team-owned org
• Outcome: She removed herself as reviewer from Tanay’s thread and asked me to be added as a Miku domain expert. Added me to the SSF project channel.

2026-03-23

• Reached out regarding cc-session-logger and disabling it for MContext CI
• I said it was fine and probably includes more detailed traces
• She acknowledged but ignored my input
• Also revealed there was a private team channel with the SSF team that I wasn’t included in

2026-03-20

• During HPMC sprint planning, went over some of the work and tried to get me to put a points estimate on my Jira
• I declined

2026-03-19

• Had back and forth discussions regarding monorepo vs. multirepo again
• She told me that Davide Passeto / Jeff Reback claimed the multirepo was a failure
• Said I’d get a doc out for her to express my thoughts on the matter
• Separate discussion regarding integrating Siggy with MContext
• Xiaofan seemed to take notice of the additional integration hurdles and work I had mentioned would be resolved by working with Siggy because EPE was working on it

2026-03-16

• Met with her, Gabe, and Timothy Djamanco regarding CI deps
• Made it clear the omega vision was Oval for distributing evaluation cases
• Said I would work on the distribution of cases spec
• Co-signed Gabe’s current approach but stated it’s an intermediate fix, not the full fix, to assert myself

2026-03-06

• Was tagging me on Jiras asking if I could pick them up; I ignored the messages

• Asked her if I had to come to HPMC sprint; she said yes, she had tickets for me

• Asked if she had discussed with Wil first; she said no, wanted to discuss with me first - felt forced to join the sprint

• Joined the sprint, gave my take and pushed back on the tickets

• Raised that Gabe’s work seemed duplicative of what was being asked, then left the call

• At 3:40pm she messaged with “feedback” about joining HPMC sprints

• Told me not to drop out of sprint calls because it was “not good for collaboration”

• I pushed back asking why she would assume the worst, said I had some team issues going on

• She replied I should have told her, then claimed I’ve left Bamboo standups after giving my update

• I said I’ve never done that as I’m mostly there in person

• Later clarified it had apparently happened ONCE

• Got on a call which went poorly (Teams meeting ended at 4:07pm)

• She alluded to some job security issues on her end, which may be driving her behavior and heightened sensitivity

• After the call, I put up a PR regarding one of the tickets she had assigned

• Was also told I need to create MOTO tickets apparently

• Told me “we want you to be our spy inside of labs”

Key takeaway: Escalating tension in the working relationship. She’s micromanaging attendance and making exaggerated claims about my behavior (one standup departure framed as a pattern). Her potential job security concerns may be fueling this dynamic. Worth monitoring closely.

2026-03-05

• Responded to the Vasilis feedback with “let the results speak for themselves”
• Made some comments regarding CI evaluation tests and our testing differing, but I shut that down

2026-03-03

• 1:1 discussed new email from CTO Jeff Wecker showing new teams going under IEE (Investment Enablement Engineering)
• Her initial reaction: “no teams under Modeling Tools” - concerned about the positioning
• MDE (Modeling Data Engineering) was proposed to be under MOTO at one point, now shown under IEE instead
• Discussed not having to come to Bamboo meetings anymore
• Suggested I should present more on cc-session-logger and other work to MOTO
• Asked if I was interested in doing a research experiment for partial trace capture / summarized form - framed as a research experiment

2025-10-15

• In standup we had some conflict because apparently I said I shouldn’t work on an issue
• Met up right after and spoke about the conflict where I explained that I’m overwhelmed while working on my promo packet as well as the other issues cropping up
• Met during LLM evals and forced to layout our requirements for the stakeholder meeting
• Met afterwards for 1:1 and said I’d want to be heavily involved in evals and thought that was the natural way forward as part of testing agents
• She tried to pin me back on the platform side but I resisted and tried to claw my fingers in evals
• Said I’d love to work with Gabe and Xiaofan mentioned mentorship and leadership opportunities here
• She finished the discussion with saying she’d talk more with Gabe
• Addressed her CR feedback regarding MFR non canonical test cases and got her CR approval