My name is Richard Bown.
I describe myself as a recovering software engineer but, honestly, you never really recover. As someone who started programming young, and has always been fiddling about with computers, even now I spend too much of the day on them.
I work as a developer and systems administrator: a DevOps engineer as they call it.
While I’m too old now to care about which programming language or to argue about design patterns, in the past, I’ve built systems for global companies. Telecom giants, investment banks, credit insurers, energy companies, retailers, start-ups and scale-ups in the Software-as-a-Service space and for many others.
I’ve contributed to the world of Open-Source Software, since the mid-’90s. I’ve also worked as a technology journalist and I continue to contribute to the discussion about how we build more humane software engineering organisations. I regularly publish blogs on my “consulting” website, and I have an occasional podcast. I’m also active and usually a bit angry over on LinkedIn.
I also post on BlueSky and Mastodon.
Human Software is my debut novel and is scheduled for self-publication in 2025.
