My journey

I was in a familiar situation, comfortable even: a conference room talking to an executive about the state of the engineering organization. We were talking about implementing a process to control the process that reviewed the output of the process that we used to refine work.

It was right then that I knew I wasn't doing the things that really made me happy. It was too far removed from the actual act of creating.

So let's back up.

The first computer I had saved data on a cassette tape.

My earliest memories of that computer (and technology) are copying BASIC programs to make balls bounce around the screen. I remember this computer existing in my life before I had access to video games.

In the summer of 1996, a friend told me that it was within the reach of normal people people to create websites, so I started creating fun things full of <blink> and <marquee> tags.

By 1997, people were paying me to create websites for them. Some amount of that that was high school teachers paying me to complete their college level projects as their pursued masters degrees. There were some business websites that I created as well that are long-defunct.

I started working immediately out of high school and the theme was building. I built websites and data management systems. Enrollment forms. An early link tracker to show a hotel chain which of their advertising campaigns were successful. A custom content management system to sell vacation packages for the same hotel chain. A system that let you buy TV advertisements. A website that let you search for building products delivered as a white-label system for major manufacturers. Scores of data-driven websites for small businesses. The majority of those things were built as part of a team.

Then came that fork in the road familiar to technical people with a desire to advance their career: higher level technical leadership or management. Choose one.

I managed teams from '16 until '24. Starting with one team and then pretty quickly managing managers. Before I knew it, the organization that I managed had around 120 people in it.

That brings us back to the conference room talking about room conversation about the third derivative of the actual creation of software. It was a step too far for me.

It was too far removed from the actual act of creating something that real people would use.

So I found a group of people building something that I was excited about and joined them as an engineer to build that business.

I don't think that I made a mistake in choosing the people leadership path. My experience as a manager and leader gives me a deep understanding of how organizations work. I have debugged complex organizational systems and help people grow their careers. I helped grow an engineering organization from 30 people to 400. I cleared a path for my teams to deliver really exciting things that touched millions.

I did good work, and I learned a lot along the way.

Management is important and it can be deeply satisfying, but I ended up too far removed from the thing that brings me the most personal satisfaction: creating software.

I was recently asked if was working on my next promotion. I'm emphatically not working on my next promotion.

I am really happy on this team of smart people who care more about building useful software and growing the business than they care about getting the next promotion. A huge bonus for me is that this business is deeply involved in how to use data and sane processes to build great engineering organizations.

This feels like a pretty good place to be, but I'm not done yet.

There is a better way to build businesses and teams than the lessons that we've learned through the time of cheap money. It's not necessary to have a huge team to build an impactful system. It's not necessary to implement the third derivative of work to make sure that work gets done.

It's wasteful to throw huge amounts of money and people at most problems.

If this resonates with you, let's talk.