Hire Me! (v.2023.08)
Update: I’m no longer looking. :) Everything below is for reference/posterity.
Me
TL;DR
I’m pretty good at Python and web stuff, know some things you’d call DevOps (mostly AWS), and could be convinced to learn other things too. I like open source software, the community aspect of the tech industry, and a good developer experience. If that’s enough for you, just email me right away.
The Full Story
I wrote my first lines of code in the early 90s, when I was about 7. Don’t let this fool you, though—what followed was a cool decade and a half of not doing anything noteworthy with computers, until my first real computer-related job in 2006.
At that time I was in early college, rediscovering programming, and I started writing PHP and maintaining Linux servers part-time. Shortly thereafter I went off to get a design degree before going back to programming in 2011.
I then did more PHP than I ever really wanted to, until discovering Python sometime in 2014 or so. I immediately fell in love and dove into it pretty heavily. Ever since, I’ve thought of myself as a Python programmer first and foremost. At first that involved a lot of wrangling Django and Flask backed by PostgreSQL, deployed on Heroku or plain ol’ Linux boxes. Lately I’ve been building distributed systems comprising smaller services and deployed on AWS, thus relying not on web frameworks but the glue available in that ecosystem.
Said ecosystem has exposed me primarily to Lambda, ECS, DynamoDB, EventBridge, SQS, Kinesis, S3, and SES, all managed either by Terraform or CloudFormation.
I’ve also spent a non-trivial portion of the last few years working with TypeScript and Node, though I still wouldn’t label myself an expert with the JavaScript world nearly as comfortably as I might with Python. I’m open to learning and using a variety of other languages and technologies as well.
If you’re looking for my résumé, you can find it here.
You
You’re most likely a relatively small company, though not necessarily. You don’t cherish process for the sake of process, and prefer a methodology that works, which may very well evolve over time.
You likely rely on Python pretty heavily, and not exclusively for data science/engineering, ops, and/or light scripting. You may also utilize other languages in your stack to a significant degree, as appropriate.
If I’m lucky, you’re heavily invested into open source in some manner. Maybe your main product is open, or you share some ancillary tools with the world. Dare I dream about your developers being allowed (or even encouraged) to contribute back to the software they use for their work?
You support your staff in attending conferences, and perhaps even sponsor some as a way to give back to the community. Ditto for relevant meetups and other local events.
You believe in work-life balance, or however you refer to the idea that happy, well rested employees live better lives and do better work.
You’re not an adtech or defense company, and your products and services aren’t intended to be harmful to anyone. You don’t have contracts with law enforcement agencies, nor plans to enter any.
You’re fully remote and plan on being remote-only or at least remote-first forever. Asynchronous work is either the norm or a possibility.
Us
If the above sections have you feeling like it might be a match, you can email me at nik+hireme@nkantar.com. Do us both a favor and mention this post in the email, so I know you’re not entirely random. ;)
Note to recruiters: I’m not opposed to working with independent recruiters, but I tend to be very selective. If you choose to get in touch, please make sure what you send me makes sense based on the above. If you respect my time, I will respect yours, and quite likely remember you in the future for doing so.
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