I’m a software engineer leading a small team at a London-based startup, where we build systems that solve real-world problems. My work sits somewhere between engineering and controlled chaos, designing workflows, tools, and platforms that need to hold up under real-world use by diverse groups of people. At this point, I’ve come to believe that the real engineering challenge is building systems that don’t break when exposed to “normal human behavior.”
At work, I wear so many hats that I’ve stopped identifying as just an engineer and started leaning into “Swiss Army knife”, useful in slightly too many unrelated situations, and somehow still expected to fit in a pocket. One day I’m debugging a failed queue job, the next I’m untangling product logic that fell apart because someone decided to do work with their twin, and their date of birth and surname break our identification logic. More often than not, I’m just translating human requirements, often slightly grandiose ideas, into something a computer won’t immediately reject.
Outside of work, I spend a considerable amount of time reading about technology and human behaviour, whether neurology, economics, or anything in between, in an attempt to better understand this twisted world we live in. Over time, I’ve decided to turn the ideas that capture my attention into a creative outlet of my own.
I’ve named this space Distraktiv. It takes its name from those distracting subjects you stumble across that pull you out of your day-to-day loop and make you think differently for a moment. I find those moments genuinely enjoyable, and I hope to create that same sense of curiosity and interruption for others here.