Hi my name is Drew. I am your average Software Engineer with a sense of humor that only other developers seem to fully understand at times. I am currently a Sr. Full Stack Software Developer working and living in Dallas, Texas.
Why Create a Brand Now?
I wanted to create Rubber Stamped Code in order to give back a small piece to the community that helped me get to where I am now. With the advantage of becoming a developer in the information age I have been lucky enough to leverage knowledge from those who came before me in order to help guide me towards the destination of where I wanted to be today and hopefully that trend will continue. Whether it was learning a new framework by taking Pluralsight courses for a new project or position, watching career advice videos on Youtube, or just talking about coding standards and system architecture with peers in the breakroom.
I decided to create content now because I feel like I have learned enough to share and help others. I feel like it would be much harder to be taken serious without first putting in the time towards honing my craft first but now as I am several years in I feel like the knowledge I can share may be more worthwhile than when I was first starting out and everything was new and shiny.
What are My Plans?
My plan is to to do what I can in order to help bridge the gap for developers in certain areas that they may have weaknesses in. I have yet to meet any developer with any amount of experience that has zero flaws or nothing they can improve on.
I would also like to create tutorials, give career advice, share my opinion on concepts and architecture, and possibly even interview others to get different opinions or journeys. Not all Sr level developers agree on every single thing. I personally believe that what distinguishes a developer from a Sr is knowing how systems are designed and work together from a high level, the ability to create one from scratch, not following code blindly, and having strong opinions or convictions on certain things whether the masses think they are right or wrong.
What Do I Get From This?
The next logical step in my journey is to become a mentor to the next generation of developers or at the very least share what I know with others. I have led some development teams and have had great impact at companies but just because your title or responsibilities are that of a lead developer, being a mentor is a completely different level and I always find myself teaching others around me.
Every company I have worked for always stresses talent. It seems to be a big talking point in development circles. There certainly isn't a shortage of people to interview but a shortage of people that we actually want to hire. The best developers make well above average household income in the United States so why is the talent always lacking? Development isn't that complicated and I certainly don't think its the most boring job out there. I'm sure there are plenty of people willing to become developers and cash the checks so why do we always seem to be begging for talent? My opinion is that either on our way up the mountain we are not sharing enough knowledge with developers who want to become better or a lot of developers are not that passionate about their craft and are content with collecting a paycheck so they end up becoming stagnant at a certain point in their career and are used to fill in for roles that talent doesn't want. I personally believe both could be true and I want to do my part to help change the former.