Welcome to the Rarefied Err Newsletter
Hi, I’m Matt.
Welcome to this new little corner of the internet that I’m carving out for myself.
I’m a principal data engineer at a tech company in Kansas City. I joined eight years when we were a small scrappy startup, and we’re several hundred employees strong today (but still scrappy!). Some of my future writing here will touch on the experiences I’ve had working at a high-growth company, on software engineering, and on the engineering practices I'm most familiar with. Expect a number of future issues to touch on data engineering, platform engineering, and platform-as-a-product thinking, for starters.
Before I got into software development, I was doing a PhD in Slavic Linguistics, studying verbal aspect in Russian and related languages. (I did not finish the PhD). I continue to be interested in linguistics and I expect some future issues of this newsletter to touch on that area as well. I might even write about "the dissertation I would have written, had I completed the PhD".
A little bit more about me: I’m married, and have two young kids (the older of whom is autistic, with a PDA profile - that may be a topic for future issues as well). We've also got two big dogs and two regular-sized cats, and a hundred-year-old brick foursquare house that we're slowly (very slowly) renovating.
I don't have much time for hobbies these days, but I nevertheless love to collect hobbies. Journaling and running are the two I'm trying hardest to make time for these days. I also enjoy Lego (my son and I share this hobby) video games (Farming Simulator, sim racing, platformers and RPGs), reading, fiction writing (or at least, thinking about writing fiction), DIY projects, woodworking, auto repair, bicycling and bicycle repair, Magic the Gathering, Dungeons & Dragons, the list goes on. I'm sure my hobbies will be reflected in future issues as well.
Why am I starting a newsletter? Well, I'm not exactly sure. I don't have (I don't think I have) any grand goals to "build a brand", monetize, or quit my day job. Rather, I'm just interested to write in public, and put some of myself - my thoughts, my experience, my opinions - out into the world. I think it was Joan Didion who said "I don't know what I think until I write it down". I'm interested in using public writing as a tool to better learn where I stand, to write externally in order to understand myself internally.
Maybe this isn't interesting, and that's okay. I expect I'll find it valuable to write it, regardless of who reads it. But if it does interest you, stick around. I'd love to hear from you.