Who is Steven Talcott Smith?
AELOGICA is a software consultancy specializing in Team Augmentation and Application Development with presence in Reno, Manila, and Mexico City. I designed AELOGICA to be the kind of place I always wanted to work--where nothing gets in the way of doing great work and where developers can really Level Up.
I fell in love with programming when my family got our first home computer in 1983 when I was 10 years old. A few years later, I taught myself assembly language on a dual-floppy XT compatible computer around the same time I was learning Turbo Pascal in school. And by age 15 I got my first job answering the phone on a computer help desk at my local university.
That job meant a lot to me. It gave me a much needed income, helped support me through college, and it made me feel useful to other people. It also taught me a lot about how normal users struggle with technolgy.
I spent the first 10 years of my career doing Unix system administration. It wasn't until my mid-twenties that I got my first full-time programming job.
I wanted to program professionally because I wanted to create , not just run and maintain software and computers for big institutions.
Over the last 20+ years, I have worked for 3 startups, built products and companies of my own, consulted for major corporations, and worked in almost a dozen different industries. But I always wanted to create a happy place where I would be free to do my best and work with excellent people who share my love for this thing we do. In 2006, I rediscovered the joy of programming when I adopted Ruby on Rails. I continue to develop in Ruby (and Javascript) and I enjoy every chance I get to write code.
In the last 10 years, I have recruited, hired and managed dozens of developers. When I wrote my first book, Level Up, a few years ago, I really began to see myself as a developer of developers.
I became keenly interested in what makes developers productive, what helps them grow, and what they want from their workplace and employers. I also became very aware of how employers see developers and what they want and expect from them.
I conceived the 10X Dev Academy as a scalable way to share my knowledge and wisdom with more developers and the people who employ them. I hope that you will enjoy these courses and apply the principles and techniques to create more value and accelerate your career.