Forge Ahead

Yesterday's reflection-contentment-and-work has a second-part this morning. As I was wrapping up a project I didn't realize the closed-off-ness of leaving... I handed in some notes, and mid-message to someone the clock struck midnight and I was locked out. It's fitting to be honest, and now in the wake of yesterday's contentment post, experiencing some more loss than I expected, today we forge ahead.

My main focus for work now is a project I will refer to as forge. It is what I will bring to Caterpillar Autonomy but I can only build it thanks to the gifts and experience God has given me. The thing I want to put on paper is a short list of experiences I think God in his sovereignty, gave me over the last few years and what they provide for me for Forge.

Cat Reman Platform

One of the first things that comes to mind is another project I was sad to lose: a platform I started for an analytics team in Cat Reman. That began as a simple python cli to automate some developer operations that was otherwise a dozen clicks through the AWS console. Using [boto3] and some simple python I gave that team the start of some real velocity gains. Eventually that grew into a larger kubernetes-based service where the data science operations: code quality, deployment, updates, webapps, etc. were all handled by our platform. It wasn't perfect, it wasn't self-contained, it was a set of things kind of glued together with systems and scripts, but it worked, it works today and is under fantastic ownership.

What I learned just from starting that cli was to be passionate about solving problems. No one asked me to make it, but it needed made, and the team is in such a better place for me having started it.

Kedro and OpenShift

Another short project I was able to participate in a few years ago was leading a data-syncronization task into a fiery horrific crash that lasted weeks - neigh months longer - than was necessary or appropriate... The details aren't relevant - I was the lead dev in a new place tasks with syncing up data between 2 applications. Ultimately, could've been a python script but I over-designed a kedro-based solution because of some requirements I misunderstood. Part of that misunderstanding was not knowing how to get the requirements I needed, but they weren't provided in full, I didn't know any better, so for weeks we were a corporate meme trying to use python to update a database that no one on our team understood if we were allowed to write to.... It was very confusing.

But what I learned was a lot about gathering requirements, questioning assumptions, and the importance of understanding your constraints as fully as possible as early as possible.

A Real Platform

Then one of the biggest blessings I see for Forge, is the experience I've gotten recently with AWS at scale... Not 1 or 2 services created with Medium.com copy pasta tutorials from docs... but experience working in a large project across many accounts, supporting several teams, using a wide variety of technologies from Terraform to Kubernetes.

On this project I learned about practical system design and gained a lot of confidence in supporting systems that are complicated... I'm not the smartest guy in the world but I'm no dummy, and even while lacking fluency in the system I was supporting on this project I learned a lot of troubleshooting skills and gained confidence in my ability to troubleshoot complex systems.

I'll need this for Forge - which will break certainly, but I'll be there to fix it and I'm sure I can because I've done these other things.

Fin

The Lord has been with me through these projects - he has certainly blessed me with a skillset and personality that lends itself to being really useful in the Tech world I've landed in (which is a whole 'nother story of God's sovereignty and provision). I am very grateful for the swath of experience I've gotten over the last 8 years or so, and this season I'm in of change is rocking me a little more than I anticipated but by God's grace I think I see the purpose, or at least a purpose, and I pray I am making the choices for work he wants me to make.