Going Independent

Happy New Year! I have some big news to share - as of the end of last year, I've officially left Bosch and started my own company, Half Systems.

I spent almost seven years at Five (recently acquired by Bosch). I got to work on some incredible challenges: running Kubernetes at scale, building out Terraform for developers at every level to run their services at scale. We went from melting NAS's in a cupboard to scary bills in AWS. Building robotaxis to developing a simulation testing platform to scale to millions of miles. I'm deeply grateful for that experience but infrastructure was what I fell into and not what I've wanted to do.

An oppurtunity turned up and I've wanted to build my own products. When Five was smaller I got to write software but as it grew, I became an expert at HCL and YAML. Not exactly what I signed up for, especially when I was looking to slide into the development side over time.

My client and I are taking a chance on each other to renovate their software. Their previous supplier has caused too many frustrations and fails to deliver a reliable product. Something I know I can do for them.

Half Systems to the rescue. The plan for HS was to build tools and products but I'm more than happy to take on consulting work to kick us off! I've got a few ideas I'm already prototyping around infrastructure tooling and monitoring. Things that scratch my own itch and that I think other developers and small teams will find useful.

It's early days. I don't have all the answers yet, and I'm sure I'll make plenty of mistakes along the way. But I'm excited in a way I haven't been in a while.

As always, I appreciate any feedback or if you want to reach out, I'm @neuralsandwich on twitter and most other places.