This is to help you get to know me. It’s the qualitative signal that often gets lost in a resume or LinkedIn profile—the aspects of a person that normally require a conversation to learn about.
I want to build a valuable and happy Developer Relations team at a company whose work is contributing to a better society in some way.
I’d also like for that company’s leaders to already be sold on the value of Developer Relations, or more generally, understand the value of a more personal, more authentic, and less transactional relationship with software developers.
I’m a generalist with experience as an Economic Consultant, Software Developer, Product Manager, startup founder, and now, Developer Advocate.
What fulfills and energizes me, in order of increasing importance:
Ever since I found software development, something about it “clicked” with me. It wasn’t just the newfound power to build things, it was also a way to express myself. The act of designing and writing software is a form of expression. The mechanics of the process excite me as much as getting to the end result.
Following several years as a Product Manager and a year working on a solo startup, it became clear to me that I derive a lot of fulfillment from helping other builders by sharing not only knowledge but also energy and inspiration.
In other words, while I enjoy creating software, I derive a more sustaining fulfillment and satisfaction from enabling other builders.
Strategic - Determining what’s important and aligning
Organizational - Creating and maintaining a happy and productive team
Individual contributions - Communicating with developers and developer communities
“Soft” skills - How my style or personality comes through in my work interactions
We’ll work together to determine which of these are most important and prioritize.
If you’ve made it this far, maybe you’re interested in some of the principles that drive my professional aspirations and my relationship with technology.
These are areas I’d like to shape my career around.
The right to personal privacy—the freedom to think, act, and communicate privately—is enabled by encryption in today’s society. Humans have an innate desire to feel safe. Without privacy, we are on display for anyone who wishes to pry into our life. Allowing portions of our life to be reliably obscured from others gives us the ability to live vibrant and fulfilling personal lives, to explore and take risks we might otherwise avoid, and to live without fear of constantly being judged. I firmly believe that governments shouldn’t meddle with the foundational bits of encryption. If they were to (or for those that have), cultural stagnation and mistrust is often the result.
Open source software has myriad benefits: it encourages collaboration bringing people together for a common cause, it contributes public goods to society, it promotes (or can promote) inclusivity breaking through barriers of race, gender, nationality, geography, economic status, etc., it provides learning opportunities for new developers, and it allows for a society-wide version of the “yes, and…” trope employed by improv groups—open source software is constantly building upon other open source software.
Cooperation, not conflict, has produced the most significant improvements for human society.1 Well-designed decentralized structures of power encourage cooperation. They incentivize us to find common goals, work together, and build empathy for others. When power or control is centralized, equitable democratic structures whither and mistrust, conflict, and stagnation start to take hold.
Designing effective and stable decentralized structures—social structures and technology—is one of the most important and difficult challenges of our time.
If any of my desires, past experiences, or personal principles resonate with or sound useful to you, please get in touch: [email protected] or @crc
the internet, Linux, the drafting of the U.S. Constitution, the development of COVID-19 vaccines, our species, among many other things↩︎