Engineer. Speaker. Teacher.

"Communication is the biggest asset and the biggest failure of any institution."

I leverage 20+ years of experience to empower engineers and businesses. My journey started with code (PHP!), but communication became my passion. Now, I help teams and companies thrive by building strong communication bridges and fostering collaboration.

The Pitfalls of the Big Rewrite: Why Evolution Often Beats Revolution

April 16, 2025

Software / Systems

In many conversations about how products and systems evolve within companies, a recurring theme emerges: the pitfalls we encounter. One of the most significant is the pattern of the major rewrite, sometimes called “building off to the side.” Now, don’t get me wrong – a well-executed strangler pattern can lead to amazing transformations of codebases and products. However, embarking on a major rewrite can also be the first step towards building a company’s own tombstone.

Closing a chapter

September 1, 2024

Career

This is it; the house is mostly empty as I sit in my temporary home office, the living room table. Our Dutch lives are mostly in boxes in a container, and the only things left to go are Bella, our retriever, and me.

Productive Slacking

October 18, 2019

Software / Systems, Tips and Tricks

Back in 2016 I joined Usabilla, just around the time we were evaluating our work chat solutions. Usabilla was at the time on Hipchat and Slack was the up and coming solution, with plenty of advanced features and goodies. I will not try to sell Slack here, but it clearly was the better contender and worth our move.

Solving conflicts in composer.lock

November 28, 2016

Desenvolvimento, Dicas e Truques, PHP

We have all been there:

CONFLICT (content): Merge conflict in composer.lock Automatic merge failed; fix conflicts and then commit the result.

Don’t panic, breathe, let’s walk through this.

Land ho! New challenge ahead.

June 30, 2016

Career, PHP

A few months ago I posted about the situation at my former company and the uncertain future of our team. During these 3 months we explored many new opportunities and interviewed with many companies, from startups to consolidated giants, from financial market to education and user feedback, it was an amazing journey.

Code Reviews - Not just a quality tool

May 17, 2016

Development

I’m a big fan of Code Reviews, or Peer Reviews, within the work flow of a team. But many times when talking about them people refer to them mostly as a tool to avoid bugs, improve quality or the overlooking of details. While these things do surely come out of having a review process, I do not believe they are the real reason why they are a good thing for teams.

Need a Lead? Here's my story.

April 5, 2016

Career

After 2,5 years working with Symbid, our paths must now diverge. After having contributed as a partner company and then joined to build the in-house development team that would later form the base of Symbid’s Product Development team, and finally push it over into a fintech company, sadly we part ways before achieving our long dreamed and much schemed plans.

20 Years of PHP, and how I got on this train

June 8, 2015

PHP, the most loved and hated language on the internet turns 20 today, 20 years ago Rasmus released Personal HomePages to the public, what happened next will blow you away™.

Why I support "The League"

March 10, 2015

There has been a lot of drama and press around it lately, but which does it really deserve?