Work
I spent most of my career as a software developer, and most of that as a web developer. I consider myself reasonably skilled at JavaScript, Kotlin, and CSS, and I also know my way around Python, Rust, and C++. But ultimately, my development career was kind of a side track; my passion was never writing beautiful code, but rather solving problems, creating software. I consider myself more a software designer who knows just enough coding to write his own prototypes. Unfortunately, software design is nowadays too often confused and conflated with interaction, UI or visual design; while I'm certainly interested in these fields, my skill is limited. Software design, proper, is about understanding the problem and designing the solution — and in this, I believe I excel.
I also have some experience leading, coaching, and building teams, including stints as ScrumMaster and project manager, and technical co-founder.
Lastly, I have also worked as a professional writer. Most of that was in the field of Role-Playing Games (so-called “pen and paper”, not the computer variety); non-professionally I've done a lot of fantasy and sci-fi as well.
Strengths
As a professional, in both “sides” of my career (technical and creative), I believe I have two knacks and two passions which underlie and inform most of my work.
Two knacks:
Complex systems. Whether it's software achitecture, work processes, teams, or fictional worlds, these things have delicate balance, and I seem to be rather good at setting it all up so that it works. Whether I'm creating it from scratch, or co-creating it, or fixing one that's broken, or improving one that's already working well, I seem to be able to zoom easily between the big picture and the details, and spot the opportunities for improvement.
Forming teams. This came as a bit of a surprise to me when, inspired by a recent article, I was looking back at my life and seeing the kinds of positive impact I had on people's lives. As it turns out, again and again I gathered a group around me, identified their common goal(s), and united them to work towards these goals. Now if I'm honest, these efforts weren't always successful ;–) but I'd like to attribute that to the fact that I wasn't aware I was doing that, and didn't (in the cases where the group fall apart) prepare them to continue in my absence.
Two passions:
Solving problems. Again, my satisfaction comes from the feedback loop; not from how great or elegant my solution is, but from seeing its actual impact on those who had the problem to beging with. Maybe for this reason I'm so enamoured of Lean Startup and Customer Development.
Bildung, or self-improvement. Individuals, teams, and even customers, should always be getting better, more effective, and/or happier. That can include learning and adding capabilities, or assistance and automation — but it often also means removing waste.