About me

My journey into tech has largely been a happy accident. I learned to tweak WordPress websites around 2006, went on to develop websites for friends and clients and ended up in tech full-time in 2016, first as a developer and later as a project and engineering manager. This is when I first encountered and fell in love with Laravel. I have since contributed minor fixes and changes to many open-source projects in my spare time.

Even after 18 years of working with web technologies and 8+ years of working in tech on a daily basis, I am still fascinated by the simple things. Like the fact that I can give you my exact age as you’re reading this, which is 13102 days, without needing to update the page every single day, even though the page you are reading is statically generated.

I consider myself no expert, but rather believe that hard work and discipline trump talent. I am willing to offer a hand to new developers and project managers coming into the tech industry.

I also have immense luck in working in an environment, where the goal is no more important than the way in which we reach it. This allows me to spend days thinking about business processes and conversations and to turn them into semi-automated systems of management. I have remade many of these lessons into meetup talks, conference talks and motivational speeches. You will soon be able to read idea recaps for some of them on the Talks page.

When I’m not working (which is rare, but it happens), I take pleasure in the simple things. I love reading to my son Leo and spending time with my family. I enjoy a good football game, and cheer for Philadelphia Eagles and Texas Longhorns. Taking photos. Playing the guitar or ukulele. Trying to build guitars myself and blogging about it at R. U. Guitars.

I hope to one day become better at writing code and half-decent at flying airplanes.