Hi, I’m Dylan Thomas 👋 My legal name is Dominic Thomas, but Dylan is a poetry-related1 nickname that I’ve had since I was a teen. I’m a geographer by training and a (slow) cyclist by nature.
People first and then the machines #
Skip to my resume (PDF) if you just need a rundown of my career, or check out examples of my work.
Professionally I describe myself as a technologist, with a focus on both cloud-based products and things with a geospatial twist.
I’ve coded for money, but I’m really all about using any technology2 to solve problems. I really like to start with the people and eventually get to the machines. If you’re not solving a problem for somebody or some class of people, you’re not doing it right. There are probably exceptions to that principle, but I find it’s a good place to start.
I’ve also learned that working in the open by default is a superpower both individually and collectively. Working at GitHub—the home of open source software—was a revelation in that regard (hat tip to Ben). It confirmed by fundamental belief that writing things down as publicly as possible is a game changer.
Learning My Way Through a Career #
I am an incurable and curious tinkerer, which I believe is a strength in my work. The ability and desire to learn got me from being a geographer in both the UK and the USA to things as varied as:
- Sales engineering with Esri
- Consulting software developer with municipal utilities
- Building social features into MSN and Bing
- Starting Google Maps customer success
- Launching Android Auto in 70M vehicles
- Building a Cloud consulting product and practice
- Leading the TPM team at GitHub through major product and platform shifts.
- Having a life by taking two sabbaticals as Head of DadOps for my family.
Again, my resume / C.V. has all the details.
Get In Touch #
Follow the various links below to connect👇. A LinkedIn message is a good start.
Dylan Thomas being a famous Welsh poet. I’ve been known to read a bit during seasonal social events at work ↩︎
My proudest early moment in the 1990s was piping a 60MB file through a
sedcommand. It worked so darn fast that I spent 20 minutes trying to figure out what has gone ‘wrong’ 😅 ↩︎