So, hey...

I'm Alex, currently a Senior Staff Engineer at Shopify - but that's not the main event here, if you want my CV that's what LinkedIn is for. Rather I'm going to use this space for a more general "who am I" kind of thing (and probably iterate on it as I go).

I take some degree of pride in not being a "typical" programmer and having the "arts and humanities" part of my brain firing pretty well alongside the bit that can do algorithms, architecture and formal logic.

My degree was in Philosophy - I did some Psychology as well in my first year, which means I'm pretty interested in what makes people "tick" (and also mildly skeptical of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator - no judgement if you find it useful, but there are definitely more scientifically-validated and precise ways of looking at human personality if you feel the need). More recently, I've found big areas of History and Economics quite fascinating.

I spent a lot of my time at university and a few years afterward digging into the Hip-Hop scene in Leeds, West Yorkshire, trying to see how far I could get as a DJ and music journalist - it turns out not that far (!) but it was an interesting experience and I learnt a lot along the way.

After that, I got a wake-up call courtesy of the 2008 financial crisis and decided I needed to find an actual career and started working with data for the UK National Health Service (NHS), then steadily ramped up my programming skills, taking a mostly self-taught approach and moving into new technical areas as I moved from job to job. I've been lucky that this seems to have mostly worked out for me!

I've also learned from experience (often of doing the wrong thing and having to change course!) that technical skills are critical, but generally not enough on their own. Patience, empathy and assuming positive intent (in the sense of being willing to really explore the reasons people have for their actions and beliefs, not blindly ignoring problems) will get you a long way, as will clear communication and a willingness to ask "what is the systematic reason for this problem?"

In my current role, I code less than I used to (and certainly less than I'd ideally like) and a lot of my commits when they do happen are in private repos. Still love to try out languages and approaches though where I can.