Among other things, I’m a full-stack software engineer with an entrepreneurial bent. I care deeply about maximizing our precious time here on Earth. We do not get re-do’s at this thing called life. We can’t afford to waste time on manual (digital) toil, half-baked solutions, or meaningless endeavors.
I am a software engineer by trade and enjoy spending my time building software that makes life better.
I've been doing full-stack development for over 8 years now, and I've worked on a wide variety of projects and tech stacks.
MatNative
My skill set is pretty varied. I'm a designer, a developer, a project manager, and a product manager. I've worked on projects ranging from small, one-off websites to large, multi-year projects with dozens of developers.
I've worn a fair number of hats as a software engineer, including: DevOps, Database Engineer, Data Engineer, and of course the aforementioned full-stack developer. The most frequent company size I've engaged with are late-stage startups, sometimes still backed by venture capital, but also sometimes acquired by a larger parent company (see: Watershed, or CrossBrowserTesting).
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.
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!
For the hustlers out there
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:
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.
This is my biggest priority (and greatest fear) in life. If I fail here, I fail everywhere. I can afford to fail in any other facet of life, but I cannot afford to miss my kids growing up. I can't afford to miss serving my wife as a humble, and faithful servant. Placing dedication and intense focus on work seems to come easily for most of the people I've met, but there's something confounding about the dichotomy of family life. It's simultaneously the hardest and yet most important arena to excel in. Though I'm nowhere near my own ideal, I strive to be 1% better every day.
Recommended Reads
I like to read a lot. Here are some books that impacted me in a memorable way!
This was the first book that actually introduced me to the idea of "working on myself", and the fact that character is the fundamental bedrock upon which ALL other success is built.
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.
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.