Technology problems are usually people problems in a technical costume.

I started out doing what most people in my position start out doing: fixing things. A colleague's laptop that couldn't print. A server nobody wanted to touch. A backup that had silently stopped running three months ago. It taught me that technology problems are usually people problems wearing a technical costume.

That lesson turned into a job. Over the years the work has moved from break/fix into longer arcs — designing networks for a growing office, untangling a decade of inherited infrastructure, automating a reporting process that had eaten four hours of someone's Friday every single week.

The last few years I've been deliberately splitting my time between delivery and learning. Consulting is still how I pay for this, but writing is how I think. If I can save you the two weeks I lost to something I already wrote about, that's a good trade for both of us.