Hire Me

Problems I solve

I have years of experience (as a developer, CTO, and technical founder) dealing with the following and can help you with:

• Development work ‘taking forever’ or ‘getting nothing done’
• Managing remote teams (including how to hire/fire/manage them)
• Security uncertainty (compliance, pentests, costs, risks, bug bounty programs)
• Building and consuming APIS
• Lack of automation (internally and within your product)
• Understanding 3rd party integrations
• Deciding on infrastructure (setting it up, managing it, reducing costs)
• Regression bugs (via automated testing)
• Anything a founder has to deal with!

Pricing

As a rule, I work in ‘days’. If you pay for a day, you get it exclusively. I can be in an office or on a call the entire working day.

Why you should hire me

I’ve built real, successful apps

I’ve built a number of apps from the first commit to managing a team. At Gleam I built out robust infrastructure that handled millions of daily users without a sweat and held terabytes of user data.

I’ve built and run remote teams

I’ve been managing remote teams since 2013 when it was a novel idea. At the peak, I was managing 11 remote developers directly. I went through the process of hiring and firing to improve these teams.

Most importantly, I owned half the company that was paying these devs. If I’m paying these people to do jobs that I can already do, you know it had to be worth it.

I simplify development

I approach development from the business’s perspective. How is development helping the business make money? Development is expensive and needs to be ‘worth it’.

I like to work towards a situation where a single part-time developer could handle the whole app through a combination of simplification and automation.

I will typically pick “boring” technologies and processes that have been proven. I’m happy to add new things but I would avoid getting locked into them.

For example, it would be rare that I would push for refactoring the code or rewriting the app. There are usually bigger problems to solve. If the app is insecure or can’t be deployed reliably, that’s a greater priority.

I’ve gone through SOC2 compliance and security questionnaires

At Gleam I went through the process of getting SOC2 Type II and maintained it for 3 years without any “Exceptions”. This involved infrastructure changes, writing policy docs, and adding various security controls.

I’ve been through integration partner questionnaires from Facebook, YouTube, and Twitch to maintain access to their APIs. I’ve had to do many security questionnaires from large vendors. After doing that, I documented the process and taught the team how to do the same. I’ve learned what these vendors/integration partners want and how to answer the questionnaires.

I’ve built high-volume embedded web components

Through my time at Gleam, Thinng, and StoreCrowd I learned a lot about running embedded

These embedded components were used by 10s of millions of users across thousands of different websites.

Fundamentally, putting your app into another page can have compatibility issues. Putting that app into literally thousands of other pages means you’re looking at huge numbers of potential issues.

I’m able to hire and fire people

My network is quite extensive so I can source great people locally (Australia) and remotely.

I’ve established playbooks for hiring people based on what the role actually looks like. Once they’ve been hired, I’ve learned how to onboard people and make them productive fast.

I’ve also got a playbook for managing performance and ultimately firing people if they don’t perform.

Flexibility

I’ve got other things to be working on and I don’t need these gigs. If you want to pause or stop these sessions, just pay the outstanding invoices and we can resume later (provided I have capacity).

Why you should not hire me

If you want the best developer out there

I am not the best developer. I’ve got a computer science degree, but I don’t often geek out over computer science. There are some truly amazing people out there who live and breathe this stuff and they aspire to be the greatest!

That said, it’s quite possible that you don’t actually want the best developer out there because they’ll be bored with your problems. Most of the time development involves figuring out what the problem is then cobbling together various frameworks in a way that’s unremarkable. Seeing the end result of doing that excites me and I could happily do that for another 20 years.

If you just want an app built

You can find someone cheaper than me who will be just as good at building an app.

If you want help starting this process (i.e. foundations, architecture, hiring) and guide it over time, I would be good at that.

If you want a mobile app

I predominantly develop apps for the web. I’m interested in this mobile apps and have dabbled but you would be better off finding someone that’s built successful apps previously.

If you need your printer fixed

You can just follow this delightful flow chart from XKCD yourself

Testimonials

Being able to have the input of an experienced CTO without having to employ one full time as made a big difference to our growth. Hands on involvement with structure, and internal and external stakeholders, including sourcing new remote developers for the team.

- Michael Maher, CEO of OnePassport

My history

• Lifelong computer nerd
• Built dozens of computer games throughout teenage years
• Comp Sci degree from Deakin University, Australia
• Honours research thesis titled
  “Survey and comparison of computer game engines for use in education”
• First professional software job in 2004. Haven’t stopped since.
• Founded a couple of startups that never took off between 2006-2008
• Co-founded StoreCrowd in 2009 as technical founder which had significant success
• Built a few more apps (ServerBear, Couponzor, Thinng) with varied success
• Used the knowledge from the previous apps to co-found Gleam in 2013 which made it big.

Let’s have a chat!

Here’s my Calendly link. Book a time to see if it makes sense to work together!