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I started building websites in 1997, started my first post-college job in 2004, and and have worked my way across the spectrum from user experience backwards through the stack to operations and architecture over the last 25 years. What do I do? What value do I bring to an organization? “Reliability and cybersecurity are critical features of any project, but these things require a deep understanding that most software engineers don’t have. I build platforms and tools which empower teams to ship highly-reliable, highly-secure software by default, enabling low-friction when it’s time to ship to production.” PHP and JavaScript were my bread-and-butter for 15 years. But I took the time to learn how to write highly effective, modern PHP with types, and linting, and static analysis to point out poor choices in my code. Besides teaching me to be a better developer, it also made it really easy to pick up Ruby, then Bash, then Python, then Go, and even some dabbling in Swift along the way. With each new language I learned, I was able to bring new ideas back to my day job. I have both Dev + Ops skills, so I also do a lot of work in AWS (beyond the “Big 4” of EC2, S3, RDS, and CloudFront), Terraform/Terragrunt (with modules), building AWS base images with Packer and AWS ImageBuilder, Monitoring-as-Code with Terraform + New Relic, built custom cybersecurity scanning tools that identified vulnerabilities and poor configurations across our suite of AWS accounts, and more. Stay humble, and stay hungry, because there is always somebody coming to eat you. As long as you’re respected, feel free to stay. If you’re not being treated the way you believe you should be treated, then go someplace else. Never let your ego get in the way. Never allow yourself to become too proud to make the right call. Lastly, but probably most importantly, is that very few things are done by individuals. Most things are done by teams. I teach, I share knowledge, and I work hard to build up the people around me, so that we can work collaboratively together to solve the big problems. I try very hard to magnify the talents of the people around me, rather than preventing them from growing beyond my own limitations. Even though I elected not to become a “manager“, I am still a “leader“. Find the thing you do which drives value, and market yourself that way. You are not a “PHP developer“. You are a “developer who uses PHP as one tool in the toolbox“. Just like how McDonald’s is not in the restaurant business; they’re in the real estate business. Google is not a search engine company; they’re an advertising company. Facebook is not a social networking company; they’re an advertising company. |