About
The best thing I can leave behind is a team that needs me less
My goal has always been to work myself out of a job. Not because I am eager to leave, but because a team that cannot function without me is a team I have failed.
I grew up on Guam. My parents went for mission work when I was five and stayed thirty-two years, so the island is where I learned most of what I know about people. Its name points at what a place has rather than what it lacks, and that is roughly how I look at a team.
The career after that went sideways more than up. ISP portals, fulfillment centers, Office 365, identity across a dozen Disney brands, tools for storytellers at Lucasfilm. Different industries, mostly the same problem wearing different clothes, which you only notice if you have been moved around enough.
My undergrad studies were in Bible and music, not computer science. It is usually the first thing people get wrong about me. It also taught me early that the credential and the qualification are not the same thing.
Teaching and mentoring
The part of the work I would keep if I had to give up the rest
Mentoring is slow. It is also the only part of this that sticks. Most of it is students and people early in their careers, where one conversation can still change what happens next. Anyone can ask.
Universities
Guest sessions for students and recent graduates seeking insight
One on one
Career direction and technical craft, for as long as it is useful.
How I tend to be useful
Decide what's right for you
Telling you what I would build is faster, and it does not survive contact with your constraints. Working out what to build takes longer and it is yours afterward.
Breadth, chosen knowingly
Most technical advice comes from someone who went deep in one thing. Mine went sideways, and the connections between industries are usually where the answer turns out to be.
Showing our work
Stepping through the process together is how we both come away understanding the what as well as the why.
Speaking