Hey! I'm Adam 👋🏻

I'm a software engineer turned founder who loves solving real problems in pragmatic ways. I co-founded Pilot West Studios with my good friend Jake Haynes because we were tired of seeing all the bloat and waste in the modern software agency.


I care deeply about maximizing our time here on Earth. We do not get re-do’s at this thing called life. To that end, I view the pursuit of excellence as a moral imperative.

Contact Me

My Background

Software Engineering

I've been a software engineer for over 9 years now, working with companies ranging from startups to enterprises, each with different engineering capabilities and diverse technology stacks.

I've steered away from being a specialist in any one technology or framework. Instead, I'd consider myself a jack-of-all-trades, master of a few. I've worn many hats across the dozens of projects I've led, from designer and developer, to project manager and team lead.

At the beginning of my career, I often worked with late-stage startups, some still backed by venture capital, and others still privately held.

These days, my work through Pilot West Studios typically involves working with mature small-to-medium sized, privately owned businesses with large amounts of technical debt.

Some examples of major initiatives I've worked on:

  • Multi-year legacy application migrations. I've worked on several teams that were in the process of migrating a legacy technology stack to a newer one. This is a very challenging process, requiring tons of communications from every facet of the business. I was very happy to have pushed major initiatives in several of these businesses resulting in advanced timelines and of course, less technical debt and faster profitability.
  • Front-end Rewrites. More than a few companies have had their major front-end framework de jour replaced by a newer and shinier one. While I don't advocate for extraneous rewrites, there are times where it must be done for maintainability's sake. I have spear-headed several re-writes and re-organizations of front-end codebases in my career.
  • Disaster Recovery. On more than one occasion a business has had a need to ensure that their data systems have robust failsafes that can be relied upon in the event of a catastrophic failure. I've worked on several disaster recovery projects that have ensured that businesses can continue to operate in the event of a major database catastrophe.
  • Internal collaboration. One of my favorite parts of being a software engineer is getting to interface with my less-technical colleagues to write tools that help them do their jobs more effectively. Both professionally and in my personal life, I've written scores of automation tools that have saved thousands of hours of manual work.

At the end of the day, I truly love the craft of engineering. You can frequently find me tinkering and coding in my free time. Feel free to peruse some of the projects I've worked on!

Myself (Adam) and my co-founder Jake Haynes

The biggest leap I've taken

Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship scratches many of the same itches that engineering does, but utilizes a different set of skills, tools, and processes. I love the challenge of working side-by-side with other leaders to build something of tangible value.

Some of my entrepreneurial ventures include:

  • Pilot West Studios
    We fix old software systems so you can move forward with your business. Specializing in fixing old, slow, or buggy software systems that power your business, we transform your software from a liability, into an asset.
  • MatNative
    Gym Management Made Simple. MatNative is a gym management platform that provides a simple, intuitive, and powerful way to manage your gym.
  • Tekton Social
    A social media management agency. This company didn't last long, but taught me a lot about what I was and was not good at. It helped me understand the impact I want to make on the world.
  • adamtaylor.me
    Yeah that's right! This website houses all of my writing, projects, and also contains the ways folks can contact me so that I can help them build out their entrepreneurial ventures with ownership, software, and a focus on legacy.
Check out Pilot West Studios See more projects

Legacy

A husband, and a father

I think people throw the word "legacy" around too often. However, there's not a better word to describe the impact that a father has on his children, and a husband on his wife.

Though I have failed many times, and will surely continue to fail in new and novel ways, I recognize that my role as a father and husband is the most important role I will ever play. To that end, my commitment to my family is of the utmost importance to me.

Recommended Reads

Reading is one of the most important habits I've cultivated in my life. There's no other way to fit in so many other lifetimes of lessons and wisdom into your mind. The books below have been instrumental in shaping my thinking and my mindset.

Discipline is Destiny
This book is a steadfast reminder of the power and necessity of temperance. The stoic virtue of temperance (or self-discipline) is one of the most important virtues to living a consequential life of purpose. I believe that without it, one cannot live 'The Good Life', whatever that means to them.
Getting Things Done: The art of stress-free productivity
This book should be required reading for high-school students. You should not be able to graduate without understanding how to put together a system for managing your time and your life. Especially in our digital age where remote work can create chaos for people without a system.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
This book introduced me to the idea that character is the fundamental bedrock upon which ALL other success is built. It also helped me understand that the way you trust people and empower them, especially if you have any authority over them, is a very important part of leadership and building others up.
Wild at Heart
Sometimes a book manages to answer questions that you weren't even aware you had. This book did that for me. It put words to a lot of the desires and fears I had always internally wrestled with, but never had the language to articulate. A must-read for mom's raising boys, or men who maybe feel like they've still got a lost little boy inside.
effortless
This book is a masterclass on reducing the friction that keeps us from achieving our goals. This book is a fine example of both unintuitive knowledge, and well-known wisdom packaged in a new way. "Less-is-more" we all know and acknowledge. How to simplify and execute is something I need reminding on almost a daily (certainly a weekly) basis.

Other great reads:

Photography

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