Community is everything

After moving to the San Francisco Bay Area from Detroit in 2020, I was leaving behind the techno and embarking on a new journey. I had spent the past 5 years there making music, friends and incredible memories. Creation amidst constant change was the only thing centering me in my twenties. And in Detroit, I found a city where the resilience of people was rooted in it.

San Francisco was exciting in a different way. I quickly found myself in various maker communities surrounded by brilliant minds. It was an inspiring bohemia — with an intrinsic and inexhaustible curiosity shared between engineers and designers.

Embracing the suck

There's a lot that came with surrounding myself with folks executing their craft at the highest level. It was similar to going to a jazz jam session, where you feel terrible about yourself every time, but just keep going back.

Devotion to craft involves willingly embracing failure

The only way to grow is to embrace, and love, the suck. Just like you can't learn skateboarding by reading a book about it. You simply need to get on the thing and get hurt a bunch.

And at some point, something clicks.

The intricacies of a problem suddenly become visible. And the mechanics of a solution fit in a familiar context. And that magical moment is a result of a continuous practice — of choosing to get back on that skateboard. And keep falling.

True progress is achieved by embracing the moments of perceived failure with an abundance of love and humanity. It's a constant practice, and it's really hard.

Building with values

I want to be the kind of chef that spends a day off sharpening his knife. Not because I work too much, but because I love my work. And love is a damn complicated thing.

Values do not operate in the short timescales that we spend most of our working days in. They operate on a much longer one — one that is unconcerned with skill or ability.

But aren't we designers and engineers? We are all about the what and how.

The what and the how don't matter without an intention

Without a foundation of values, there is a void in our work.

#1 Be worthy of trust

I'm interested in everyday habits that compound over time towards our goals. Less so in grandiose thought. Dreams are important, believe me, but can also prevent us from seeing the status quo and improving it.

The challenge is being able to see both what's directly in front and in the distance at the same time. Small and regular actions reflect a clarity of vision.

All this to say - earning trust happens in the moments when no one is watching.

#2 Give a shit

Despite the groundbreaking abstractions that LLMs are providing, great products remain grounded in human centered design, relationships, and decision making. There is a human, somewhere, personally accountable for the quality and performance of a system.

Giving a shit invites a sense of service to our work.

For Amarillo, this means an intrinsic commitment to best in class user experience. Backends like Convex, and React frameworks like TanStack Start and Next.js provide sturdy abstractions for developers. We use these human operated, maintained and trusted open-source tools so that we can focus on shipping software that scales and feels good.

Having fun

I love this Paul McCartney lyric:

"There is a fine line, between recklessness and courage. It's about time, you understood which road to take. It's a fine line, and your decision makes a difference, get it wrong you'd be making a big mistake."

There is great joy and thrill in creation. To experience fully and embrace uncertainty — this is what courage means to me. I'm just along for the ride, with the great fortune of working on extraordinary projects with amazing people.