Introducing Axiomatic
I've crossed seven months in business now, thanks to the connections I've made with many of you.
The lights are still on, and I'm still making payroll.
I've also been thinking a lot over the summer and early autumn about what I'd like this business to be.
I mostly want to help create more straightforward, sane, and humane engineering cultures, including how they work inside of businesses. So much of software engineering culture and process is driven by consultants, or by folks who see a divide between engineering and business.
I think there's a different path, where engineering speaks business, understands business, and works with rather than against the business.
That sometimes requires a translation layer of sorts - some way to turn business context and decisions into engineering problems to be solved, and can then take an engineer's solved problems and map them back to that wider business context.
This can manifest in a lot of different ways.
You promote an engineer to a leadership position, and they get overwhelmed because they're juggling code and people, and people are hard.
Or the business and the engineering half talk past each other and aren't on the same page.
Or the founder is working with an outside engineering firm and always feels vaguely like they're getting ripped off.
This space between business and engineering is my happy place.
I coach software engineering leaders to transition into the role without burning out themselves or their team. This is especially helpful if folks are new to managing software engineers.
I can also help fill in or support when a team is lacking engineering leadership - either because they recently let somebody go or they have a founding engineer who's realizing they really don't want to be managing people.)
I can help translate business to engineering and engineering to business to help open up communication patterns and streamline processes to get teams unstuck and communicating.
And I can manage outside engineering firms so you, the founder, can go work on the business instead of in it. I can tell you if you're getting ripped off, and get that all on lock - translating what you're wanting them to do into terms they understand, and converting what they're trying to tell you into terms that you understand and need to properly plan the business. I worry about it so that you don't have to.
In the last seven months, a lot of my clients have also been in the dash of leadership, dash of software development bent, and I've been building a stable of folks I know and trust and can lean on to help with that sort of thing when it comes up.
Long story short - too late! - my business is starting to grow past just myself.
And that means it's time for my business to represent more than just myself.
That's why a while back I went searching for a log/brand designer.
And I bumped into the crew at FiveFour and was struck by not just the work, but also the similar clientele and vision - helping young businesses get off to a good start.
And they knocked the brand identity out of the park - kind of serious, but with a bit of whimsy and folksiness.
It's time to get ... Axiomatic.
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Related to the above, I'm taking part in a panel sponsored by Indy Hackers and Elevate Ventures covering specifically how business maps to engineering and engineering maps to business.
That panel will be from 5-7 p.m. on Oct. 29, 2024, at 16 Tech.
We're still working out all the details and finalizing the panelists, but I'll send you more info as it comes.
Super excited to nerd out about these topics.
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This ended up being a lot about me ... but how are you?
What are you working on these days?
What's exciting in your world?
Reply and let me know.
I'm excited to hear from ya.