Brian Schalme

My professional goal is to help your organization make the best use of software to attain your business objectives. I begin this by ensuring my teams have a clear understanding of the business problem to be solved, and the constraints we have. Then I lead teams in architecting, designing, and building systems that are robust, reliable, and secure. I place a high importance on making these systems easier to change as business, regulatory, and legislative requirements change. Much of my work has been in financial services, and I've also worked in manufacturing, aerospace, transportation, distribution, and healthcare.

I derive a great deal of satisfaction from coaching and mentoring other developers. Many people smarter than me have mentored me during my career, so I want to pay it forward. I love seeing how people use my teachings to solve ever more complicated problems, and to grow their own careers. I don't just teach people how to do something, but I also explain why. They can use this to inform their own judgment when they need to make similar decisions or solve similar problems in the future.

The primary reason we write software is not for the computer, but for the people who have to read it and figure it out. The code must be clear and expressive; ideally it should read like prose to a software developer. To make systems easier to change, they must be modular, with clear separation of concerns, and it needs observe the principles and best practices of software design. It needs to handle errors and unusual situations gracefully, and provide clues as to what happened, and why it happened, and provide guidance on what to do next. This is the philosophy I bring to your teams and to you as a mentee.