Hello, World!

This is my first blog post on Github Pages. Hopefully I will make many more, and you will find them useful.

About me

My name is Dylan Brown, and I’ve been working in the software engineering space for over 10 years. I studied Computer Science at the University of Cape Town, partly because of my interest in game development, which comes from my interest in playing games.

Some of the first programs I would build in high school were games. Whilst I’ve never really worked in game development, what I did learn about game development has helped me think about user experiences and engineering design.

I completed my Honours in Computer Science, but unfortunately never finished my Masters. Both were in the field of AI/ML, which was of a lot of interest to me (including from a game design perspective).

In my career I’ve held various technical leadership positions, including Team Lead, CTO and Senior Engineering manager. I’ve always wanted to make a positive difference in the world with the work I do.

Since 2018 I’ve been working in the chatbot space, learning a lot about what is different about this space, and obviously seeing a lot of change in this space along the way.

I once, for a few years, also had a side “career” in esports. I enjoyed playing Hearthstone competitively, winning various tournaments in South Africa and peaking with a top 16 at Dreamhack Tours where I was fortunate enough to play against some top level professionals. Competing taught me a lot about more positive self reflection, and the value of preparation and group practice for these kinds of events. Maybe I’ll write more about that in here one day.

I was also diagnosed with ADHD as an adult (undiagnosed ADHD was likely a factor in my struggles to complete my Masters), so I will likely be writing about my experience of that in this blog.

My ADHD has lead me down various hyperfocuses, and the ones that have mostly stuck as hobbies are boardgames, coffee brewing and 3D printing. Gaming has remained a hobby, with some games sometimes kicking into that hyperfocus.

Why this blog

So that brings us to to the question of why does this blog exist?

Well I’ve always enjoyed sharing ideas and perspectives with others, and as I have grown in technical leadership roles I’ve seen the value of writing things down. Writing down my perspectives on engineering best practices or learnings from my experiences, makes it a lot easier to point to these as a supporting document for colleagues on my teams.

I also want a space to try and express my ideas in a way that is both creative and constructive. It seems like a better option than just ranting on LinkedIn or Twitter when I inevitably get exhausted by all the slop on those platforms.

I think that writing is a very valuable skill for anyone leading a team, and so this is also a way for me to grow those skills.

So hopefully what you will find here are some honest expressions of my personal experiences and opinions, and hopefully you will find that useful in some way.