Hello Crew!
This put up is my utility for the open Employees Software program Engineer place.
A Bit About Me
I am a software program engineer from Omaha, NE (USA) with BS levels in Electrical Engineering and Pc Engineering from College of Nebraska and an MS in Pc Engineering from Carnegie Mellon. For the final 9 years, I have been self-employed working a bootstrapped software program firm, Unstack Software program. My purpose has been to construct, purchase, and run a portfolio of small SaaS and content material companies (extra on that later!).
I’ve 3 children (ages 6, 4, and a pair of) and a 4th on the way in which. As a solo-founder of 9 years with a younger and rising household, I am very used to (and get pleasure from) having a busy life-style with a lot of shifting components. Our favourite factor to do collectively is take lengthy street journeys to the mountains to go mountain climbing. We have finished journeys of 37 days and 41 days, children in tow, and all whereas I managed my enterprise and group.
Climbing Drugs Bow Peak in Wyoming
Sure, my timezone (Central) is off by 1 hour of your most popular timezone, however having managed a worldwide group (ranging anyplace from Brazil to Serbia to Japan) for the final 9 years, I’ve no drawback accomodating for and dealing with folks from vastly completely different timezones.
I am additionally snug with the contractor standing, as I already pay for my very own medical insurance and retirement plans.
However Why Rent Me?
I’ve packed a whole profession value of expertise within the final 12 years or so. A number of highlights:
- Throughout my masters diploma at Carnegie Mellon, I labored on their lunar rover venture for the Google X Prize, which spun off into Astrobotic and simply made their first launch try to the moon just a few weeks in the past.
- Additionally in my masters, I co-created Pixy and efficiently raised nearly $275k on Kickstarter. Pixy is now offered at most main on-line electronics retailers.
- Throughout my time at Sandia Nationwide Labs, I shifted extra in direction of a software program focus and labored on quite a lot of tasks, together with satellites, communication techniques, and extra.
- After leaving Sandia in 2015, I began and bootstrapped Unstack Software program the place I have been beginning, buying, and working software program merchandise, each solo and with a group.
- I began Stack Abuse (the positioning you are on now!) through the launch of Pixy in 2013 and have been actively rising it since 2015. At our peak, SA had over 1.5 million month-to-month guests, 5 full time employees, and we managed dozens of contract writers.
- I acquired Block Sender, rewrote every thing, and grew it from just a few hundred customers to over 60,000 customers at the moment. It is one of the crucial technically difficult merchandise I’ve labored on and could possibly be a case research for studying methods to cope with edge circumstances and conflicting buyer wants.
The factor I am most wanting ahead to on this function is the problem of studying new expertise and contributing to a product that I actually love. I really consider that your greatest work is finished if you’re straddling the road of consolation and discomfort, which this function would do for me. I’ll not examine all of the bins (i.e. lack of expertise in Rust and Accessibility), however my whole profession has been about studying no matter talent it’s that I must get issues finished – whether or not it is studying new languages, frameworks, methods to handle a group, methods to handle clients, or something in between.
As I tweeted just a few months in the past, Tailwind has been an unimaginable instructing instrument for me. It has taught me extra about CSS in the previous few years than I realized within the first 10. I consider that I can use my distinctive expertise and perspective to assist make Tailwind extra accessible to a broader vary of builders.
Technical Expertise
I think about myself a full-stack developer and nearly solely use JavaScript for all of my tasks. My most popular stack is AWS, Node.js, Subsequent/React, Tailwind, and PostgreSQL. In a earlier life I wrote lots of Python, Java, and C/C++, however I’ve primarily used JavaScript for the final 8 years. I have been desperately in search of an excuse to be taught Rust, however I promise I am making use of to this job for extra than simply that 😉
A number of issues I am happy with:
- Stack Abuse’s Course Platform: Along with the customized CMS, I additionally constructed a full course platform for Stack Abuse that has been utilized by hundreds of scholars. It is constructed with Subsequent.js, Tailwind, and PostgreSQL. That is the place I bought my first style of Tailwind and have been migrating my tasks to it ever since. At its peak, this platform was serving over 100,000 customers per day.
- Block Sender’s Backend: This was a small app I acquired in 2016 and utterly rewrote from scratch. To this point, it is processed over 750M emails, which taught me a fantastic deal about engaged on techniques that must scale. I additionally constructed a easy dashboard and Chrome extension for our 60,000+ customers.
- Camo, my open supply venture: What began as a enjoyable venture to be taught Node and Doc DBs 9 years in the past become a semi-popular ODM with over 550 GitHub stars. Whereas I can not say I am tremendous happy with the technical elements (in spite of everything, it was my first Node venture), it did train me loads about managing open supply software program and dealing with customers and contributors.
The customized CMS I am scripting this on. You will in all probability discover some early Tailwind UI elements in there!
Observe: I ought to level out that my GitHub profile’s exercise is just not consultant of the quantity of programming I do. Whereas nearly all of my tasks use git model management, I do not host most of them on GitHub.
Management
I have been main groups for the final 6 years, along with the code I write. The roles ranged from digital assistants to editors/writers to builders. Take a look at Stack Abuse’s About Us web page to see a number of the wonderful folks I started working with! Of the 120 employees displayed on that web page, I personally employed over half of them.
Writing
Since founding Stack Abuse, I’ve written/edited over 450 articles and edited 6 books. Listed here are just a few of my favorites:
Enjoyable and Ineffective Information
- My spouse and I’ve been avid CrossFitters for the final 9 years. Health is my third ardour after household and work.
- I share Adam’s love of steel – all of my productiveness will be attributed to bands like Soilwork, Darkest Hour, Software, and Korn.
- My workplace is on a farm. Our household has run an organization within the ag area for the final 130+ years. I am lucky to have the ability to lease workplace area from them and escape the noise at residence.
- My private greatest Rubick’s dice resolve is 42 seconds 🤓
