Whoami?
My name is Asher Bond and I am a Software Engineer focused on solving problems of unpredictable scale. These are problems that cannot be solved by capacity planning alone, because the capacity required is unknown. I entered the Technology field in 1995 working for Internet Service Providers. These days I work with a team of engineers enhance the feature-sets and capabilities of distributed systems and ensure that these systems and the services they expose are reliable and available to users. Much of this is achieved through automation of systems bootstrapping/delivery pipelines, immutable infrastructure, and observability of systems and runtimes. I believe that who we are is heavily influenced by our experiences and meaningful interactions with people who made an impression. I have been fortunate as an engineer to be able to pursue many childhood dreams and I have also been fortunate to be surrounded by many good people who allowed me to participate in brainstorming and bringing their great ideas to life. Regardless of what I alone may or may not be able to fix, the most meaningful advancements, especially to solve a problem of unpredictable scale, were made by a fortunate combination of great ideas being entrusted to dedicated people who are willing and capable to stick together through good times and bad and make the most out of every resource along the way. Who I am and what I know is in large part the result of this process and the perserverence of people I could trust to expose and respond to any failures within.
Here are some examples of how my fellow engineer has influenced who I am. The people who hire me, sponsor my work, and invest in my growth and understanding of how things and myself work. People who can be trusted with secrets who resist outside pressures and temptations and who do the right thing when secrets need to be kept. The people who stuck together and did not allow competition to divide or distract the team. And when the right time came for us to go separate ways there were people who continue to vouch for me and check in to see what I'm up to. The people who stayed late with me when the stakes were high and worked through problems with me, sometimes even with calmness and grace. The people who as peers believed in me by giving a +1 to my code during review.. and often more importantly the peers who believed in me, but offered criticism by not giving me a +1 during code review and instead took the time to question my methods and possibly spending more time to suggest alternatives. The people who set a good example by requiring an explanation of how something works, rather than expecting it to work like magic. The people who happened to be subject matter experts, sometimes even the number one expert, but transferred knowledge and built systems without single points of failure. They did the right thing by not allowing themselves to be a single point of failure. These are the people who have improved my understanding. These are the people who I strive to become more and more like.