Who am I?
I started tinkering in web development on a beige Intel Pentium 3 family computer as a kid, after becoming curious about what was going on in there. I thought my Geocities (RIP) fan site dedicated to my favourite magazine was captivating, and that feeling hasn't really left since.
Ten or so years & a Comp Sci MEng later I begun a career that has thus far seen me work in a digital agency, startups (in the video space and the privacy space) as well as a detour into finance somewhere in between.
That has involved me working with all sorts of difference technologies across the stack (still does!), and becoming familiar with modern software architecture. However, somewhere along the journey I have steadily carved out a deeper expertise in front end. I rode the front end wave early which allowed me to rip through the wild west of Backbone, Angular and Ember before finally landing where we are now with TypeScript and declaritive component based frameworks like React.
Despite that specialism, I like to think I am polyglot when it comes to langauges and technologies, and so try to be "T-Shaped" in that I am happy getting going in any area of Software Engineering & I often end up dabbling in Dev Ops also and there are regular forays into Back End most commonly with Node and Java. I've also been experimenting with Rust.
One takeaway is that I beleive the front end needs to be held to the same standards as the back end and that is something I strongly advocate for in the workplace.
In more recent years I have progressively become involved in Engineering Management, whilst still also having oversight over the UI and inputting into wider architectural discussions. I like to grow cross-functional collaborative teams that have a focus on getting down to the real business value of the work, and I strive for highly effective communication and indvidual ownership within my teams.
Building strong relationships with my team, Product, UX, and the other inner workings of a modern software company has been a successful endeavour for me, and has only strengthend further my own technical chops by keeping me focused on the value and keeping me pragmatic.