Work I'm looking for

I’m passionate about using open source software to solve business problems.

I prefer maintenance programming and working on existing applications rather than implementing new systems from scratch. This is because established software has a well understood environment in which it runs, has existing users who use it daily, and is not subject to rapidly changing requirements. New software, on the other hand, is almost never well defined and the requirements change daily. This oftentimes leads to unneeded churn, poor software, wasted work, and burnt out developers.

I enjoy digging deep into the codebase fixing bugs, refactoring code to make it more maintainable, and writing documentation to leave for the benefit of future developers.

How I like to work

I work best in the peace and quiet of my home office in Mount Vernon, WA. I find text chat to be a helpful way to stay in contact with team members throughout the day, such as IRC, Discord, or Skype. I appreciate when phone calls are reserved for scheduled meetings.

Every project needs to have a bug tracker. My favorite is Jira by Atlassian. Some projects can benefit further by using a Wiki such as Atlassian's Confluence.

I don't want to be on call. Not even a rotating on call. Outside of work hours I exercise my right to be off the grid.

I use a Mac as my daily development machine and prefer Linux as the testing and production environment. My favorite IDE is Eclipse.

FAQs

- How many years of experience do you have with ____________?

If you want to write the number of years of experience I have next to items on a list of various programming languages, frameworks, and APIs so that you can consider me "screened" then you're probably a headhunter and don't realize how pointless this question is. Let me explain. I worked for Spam Arrest for about 4 years. I used a JMS broker called ActiveMQ. This software ran all day, every day. Did I have to work on JMS related parts of the codebase every day? No. I dealt with it when I needed to as problems arose and I implemented new features. Does this mean I have 4 years of experience with ActiveMQ? I'm seriously asking. Either I can say "4 years" or else I would have had to micro-track every time I touched that part of the codebase so that I could add up each of those moments to arrive at some fraction of a year; “4 years” sounds a bit disingenuous, but the alternative is absurd. A much better question is, “Can you troubleshoot and configure JMS servers?” That I can answer with a definitive, “Yes.”

- Will you have a chat with out AI bot in order for it to learn more about you?

No, thanks. This is demeaning and a waste of my time. If you're an actual human being send me an email or give me a phone call. Let's talk.

- Are you willing to relocate?

No.

Tech I know and enjoy working with

Most of my experience has been in the development and maintenance of database driven Java web applications. Java, Linux, Unix, Raspberry Pi, Arduino, bash, Perl, J2EE, PostgreSQL, JMS, memcached, Redis, Python

Tech I do not want to work with

- NodeJS

- Microsoft technology stacks or operating systems

- Ruby