I do software: leading teams and hands-on work. I am pragmatic about software development. I started out my working life by doing manual labor in hazardous factory environments and worked my way up to doing doctoral thesis work in the hallowed halls of the Ivy League. Many times I have started in a software engineering position, then worked my way up to managing teams, moving up through Director, VP and CTO positions. This range of experience is what has given me a good sense of balance to apply in decision making across software design, organization and people management.
In the software industry, I've been fortunate to have had a wide variety of roles spanning software developer, data scientist, data analyst, systems architect, team leader, product owner, development manager, director VP and CTO. I co-founded a number of start-ups and helped lead teams from initial bootstrapping through rapid growth periods.
The best experiences I have had are being part of a small team, where there is a singular focus on trying to accomplish something that has not been done before. I sacrifice salary for equity in proportion to my estimate of the long-term business prospects. The role is not as important as the opportunity, but I am happiest when the team is small enough to be hands-on.
The breadth of my Computer Science background allows me to go deep on problems when I need to, and my range of experience helps me know what depth is appropriate for a project.
Areas where I have had the opportunity to go more in depth include distributed systems (especially distributed search), data analysis and data normalization.
It is important for a manager to be both "insulation" and "glue".
Interruptions and context switches are productivity killers, but also a necessary part of many business functions. A manager needs to "insulate" their team from this churn as much as possible.
The ability to recognize gaps in information, process or technology is an under-appreciated skill. I am good at identifying the holes and adding the necessary "glue" to hold it all together, including hands-on work when necessary.
See my Resume Page or the Companies Page for more details of my time at these companies.
