👋 I'm Jonathan.

I help developers find clarity, perspective, and purpose in their careers.

Most Recent Post

What I Learned About Software Development in Flight School

I don't talk about it online often, but I've had my pilot's license for a few years now. As I progressed through flight training, I realized…

Current Work

Senior Engineer, Clearbit

Building next-generation business data interfaces and world-class user experiences.
Here's a project I worked on recently.

Host, Developer Tea

Developer Tea is a top-100 podcast in the Technology category on iTunes. The podcast is approaching 13m all-time downloads by listeners in over 200 countries.
Latest episode: Two More Guidelines for Better Feedback Loops (Part Three)

Co-founder, Spec.fm

I co-founded a podcast network called Spec for designers and developers who want to level up in their careers. Spec hosts episodes from 13 different podcasts today, with millions of listens.
Previously
I helped grow Whiteboard, an agency servicing clients with web projects all over the spectrum. As CTO at Whiteboard, I worked with companies from non-profit to Fortune 500 to pre-funding startup. Before that, I started building digital products in 2007. (Those first ones weren't very good though.) I helped start a music company and then freelanced as a technical writer and frontend developer.
Notable experiences:
  • Architected an app to power a conference experience for over 5,000 attendees
  • Helped build a startup to reimagine the experience around memories captured in old VHS home movies
  • Built proof-of-concept experience for an ed-tech startup (and earned a patent for it)
  • Strategized and built system powering Purposity, a donor-to-need matching platform
Education
  • B.A. Communications, Graduated Magna Cum Laude, Lee University
  • M.S. Digital Media, Georgia Institute of Technology, 4.0 GPA
  • Certificate, Management of Technology, Georgia Institute of Technology
Skills
Leadership and CoachingSpeaking / PresentationTechnical WritingSoftware DesignJavaScript (React, ES6)Ruby (Sinatra, Rails)Front-end Development (SCSS, build processes)Decision Science