Adam Keys is a software developer, and engineering manager. Also, a sometimes writer, pub quiz’er, and weight lifter. Occasionally, funny.
Work
At Pingboard, I’m an engineering manager. That means I manage a team of several developers, lead project teams, and work hands-on to deliver those projects. I’ve built several features, designed integration infrastructure, onboarded new developers, mentored and coached team members, and collaborated on improving our process and product.
At ShippingEasy, I was a senior developer. I worked mostly on the inventory management product. I collaborated extensively with product man agers and the team architect to design, implement, ship, and support this product within the larger system.
I wore lots of hats at LivingSocial. I started off as a senior developer working on improving the backend services and systems that powered the customer-facing deals site. I later took on managing that team and helping to improve the services powering the consumer website. Later, I was an architect tasked with p roviding a little clarity and order in a system with more deployable applications than developer headcount.
Start Here
These are computers, I know this encourages everyone to pursue curiosity in order to grant themselves superpowers. The difference between mediocre and excellent developers is often the understanding of adjacent topics and the software below theirs in the stack. Treating all software as knowable and following our curiosity makes us better problem solvers.
Furthermore
The absurd and the profound. That’s what Twitter’s about. Mine is like that too. Twitter is also a tool for thinking with the internet. If applied correctly, an “idea warrior” can get a lot out of it.
If Twitter’s a boxing gym, an email newsletter is a quiet room with a window onto the countryside of our inner reflections. Mine is a little more flippant than that, but at least there’s always a photo of a Texas sunset.
GitHub is part community resource, part performative professionalism. I use it more as a notebook of inventions and ideas.
Pop culture, quips, quotes, little ideas, bad ideas all end up on my “micro” blog.
- Ever forward, eventually, to the new way
- I’m no good at photography, but Texas sunsets make it easy.
- I’ve been tinkering this weekend and MVP.css may be one of my new favorite tools. Drop in some CSS and then just use HTML elements as their name would suggest. No layout, no grids, no typographical system. No classes to memorize. Build now, worry about all the other stuff later.
- This weekend, I’m revisiting some of David Perell’s writing on writing, thinking, and aiming high. My favorites: Why You Should Write, Learn Like an Athlete, Networked Writing.
- That is a beautiful machine. I must have a soft spot for extensive air-cooling schemes. If Windows/PCs were a thing I could get with, I would get with this hardware.
