I’m a professional, I went to uni where I learned some theoretical computer science as well as to code properly (although I’d been a casual hobbyist a year or so before) and have been in the industry ever since as a software engineer. I’ve always been primarily focussed on the backend but I could keep a postgres database ticking over if push came to shove and I’m currently cross-training to do some operations stuff too as I don’t think I’ve ever worked on a team with enough staff let alone a reasonable bus factor in my life. I’m definitely a startups person too at least for the time being, job security’s been pretty dreadful lately but I’ll take insecure but interesting work over safe and boring for now while I don’t have a house or kids to worry about.

At the moment I’m working for a medtech company using AI to speed up cancer diagnoses, really cool stuff that I’d probably have palmed off as the press sensationalising things if I hadn’t seen it work first hand.