It’s been a while since I posted anything professionally, on social media, or anywhere else. I’m looking forward to reconnecting with the community and sharing my experiences through writing; here’s a little about me, what I’m up to right now and what I’d like to share.

A weird few years

On reflection, these past few years have been pretty strange.

In 2020, like many other people, I went into the office one day to be sent home, not realising that I would never return (to this day I work fully-remote). I spent the rest of the year working from my little apartment in Berlin with my partner, between our balcony and dining table.

In 2021, I gave birth to my first child (after a hectic few months of moving back to my native U.K. from Germany, where I spent 3.5 wonderful years). My airy dreams of working away on fun side projects while baby slept peacefully in their cot were swiftly dashed; I’ve never experienced exhaustion like it.

In 2022, I went back to work after parental leave, bought my first house and got married. I’m praying for a calm 2023, but then again, you never know 😅.

Prior to these wild years, I was very active in and connected to the tech community, particularly within communities for those less represented in tech. I looked for opportunities to talk about technology and my experiences as a dev, attend meet-ups and conferences, get involved in hackathons; and I want to get back to that (at least part-way!) this year.

Something to say

I often worry that I have nothing interesting to say; but on reflection, I know it’s not true. I am currently working as Head of Engineering at a tech-for-good start-up based in Europe and Australia; we are building technology that will make supply chains more transparent and allow us to automatically verify their sustainability practices (right now the system is human-based and flawed).

We use decentralised technology (including that buzzword, blockchain) and a very modern tech stack, of which there are a lot of interesting topics to cover. In a small start-up, you have to wear many hats; I am levelling up my DevOps skills, security and GDPR knowledge, and learning how to (or perhaps how not to!) scale. There’s also team dynamics, growth, management, coaching, and personal development to add to the list.

There are endless topics to discuss - AI (artificial intelligence), data science and engineering, emerging roles, frameworks, languages and types of development, ChatGPT and AI generated art, ethics in software, NFTs, ICOs… there is so much interesting stuff out there, and I want to share my personal experiences and learnings as I go.

To top it off, I also recently became a parent, which has been a rollercoaster, to put it lightly. It is unlike anything I have ever experienced and at times completely blows my mind (and at the same time is such a normal, common experience). I felt very lonely during that first year of parenthood, and connecting with others and sharing experiences really helped.

Dev life

I mostly want to share my experiences as a software engineer. Being a software engineer (aka dev/developer/programmer) has provided me with incredible opportunities to travel, live abroad, meet amazing people, get involved in innovative and exciting tech projects, and make a good living.

I feel like I stumbled upon this career by chance (a lot of hard work too, but plenty of coincidence and privilege), and I don’t think enough people, especially those from my generation, have had the chance to explore software engineering and coding, to try it out, potentially fall in love with it, and pursue a career in it. The industry is facing a huge skills shortage; interviewing to find the right people can be, in my experience, a nightmare. We need more people in tech; we need to make it more accessible and get people excited.

I want to share what I’ve learned along the way and make it less intimidating; I have always had an interest in teaching, and IMO tech careers still feel inaccessible to many people. I have been working in this field for quite some time now, and I still find certain topics difficult to break into (DevOps, decentralised tech) because of abstract concepts, overly technical language, poor documentation, rapid development and a variety of other barriers. Thankfully it’s changing all the time, and I hope I can help it along, even if only a tiny bit.

Wrap-up

You can connect and chat with me through the links in the footer below 👇

Credits

Title photo of laptop and books by Emile Perron on Unsplash