Building thoughtful technology, one project at a time
The technology industry celebrates builders and quietly overlooks the engineers who keep systems alive. Drawing on two legacy rescues, this piece argues that stewardship is the more valuable — and rarer — skill, and offers a checklist for finding a caretaker before you sign a contract.
Every independent technologist eventually confronts the same question: where does billable expertise end and community goodwill begin? After a decade of consulting, I've landed on a ledger that works — and it's more generous than you might expect.
Some of the most consequential work in my career began as a Saturday-morning experiment with no roadmap, no budget, and no expectation of survival. This is a look at why small, time-boxed builds outperform ambitious plans — and how to know when a throwaway project deserves to grow up.