I’m Remotely Interesting

In 2006, my first kid was born. Around that time I wondered what I wanted my relationship with work to be, alongside the other roles. I nearly accidentally transitioned into doing remote work, all to avoid travel. I took a full time remote role and have mostly stayed working remote since then. I joined Stripe in 2015, and for some time was the only remote engineering manager at the company. I’m happy that is no longer the case, and we’ve formalized what Remote really means to the company. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic severely impacted the world, and the US failed to mitigate or contain the spread. Also in 2020, I stepped up to lead Stripe’s Remote Hub. Interesting times. I left Stripe in 2022 focusing on family and travels (spending summer break on break was wonderful).

If you want to talk about Remote life or leadership from a distance, I’d love to chat.

Technology + Psychology = Impact

After 10 years of writing software, a feeling presented itself that was hard to describe. It wasn't discontent. Perhaps displacement?

At the time I was working for Amazon and felt largely unfilled. I doubted the impact of my work. I left to pursue opportunities that joined my personal interests (motorsports), but the feeling soon returned. I was working with great people, but knew I was not even recognizing my potential, let alone living up to it.

I became frustrated with this feeling and thought that maybe a change of careers was necessary. I had been writing code and leading tech teams for 12 years then, and writing code for most of my life (I was that nerd in the 80s). I struggled with the discipline necessary to study and learn; then I studied how to study. Motivational psychology and behavioral economics was a paradigm shift for me. Since 2011 I have tried combining my development experience with psychology, behavioral economics, and coaching methodologies. It’s made my work, and myself, much better.

My first experience was creating The Daily Practice, a recurring Habit building application with variable schedules. I've enjoyed building TDP, and the value of hearing people talk about the improvements in their life cannot be understated. Since then, I've worked on other projects and collaborated with several people to change "what we know" into "what we do". My wife has been my favorite collaborator, mostly because she gives me the most honest feedback.

During the 7 years at Stripe, I was focused on my roles and responsibilities there. Now that that chapter has ended, I’m excited to show what’s coming next.

Technology

I write code in Ruby, Javascript, Perl, Scala and whatever language makes sense. I enjoy learning new languages.

I've built and managed large scale automated deployments on Linode, AWS and other cloud providers.

I am fascinated by the modern world and what it allows.

Psychology

I am very much an amateur, maybe some day I will have the opportunity to be something more.

I focus on research papers in Behavioral Economics and Social Psychology. Have something interesting? Send it my way! On occasion I'll dip into neuroscience, too.

Impact

I want to make an impact. People suffer, and that impacts the wonderful creations. While I'm not Buddhist, I believe fervently in alleviating suffering. 

I wish to help people find ways to maximize their entire life, in all areas: mental, emotional, spiritual and physical.