Senior Rails engineer with 20+ years of experience, available for fractional,
retainer, or contract engagements. I specialise in architecture, API
design, legacy modernisation, and cross stack integrations (Ruby, Python,
Node). Recent clients include Citizens Advice, Babbel, Alertive, and Johnson
& Johnson. Strong track record delivering under tight deadlines and mentoring
teams.
Open to part-time or ongoing work with UK, US, and European teams.
Open to fractional contract work (part-time or project-based). Senior engineer with strong background in Ruby/Rails, Python, Node.js, modern AWS infrastructure, DevOps, and ML-enabled systems. Experienced leading architecture, scaling, and reliability efforts for production systems.
Very good point indeed. And that is how the publishing industry used to do with segmented magazines. Each publication built their own reader's profile and ad agencies would chose a publication over another based on who they would like to target. That is a much more ethical approach, in my opinion.
This still happens with online ads, but supply quality matters. Location of an ad, quality of the domain (ESPN is very good value). But roughly 100 junk auctions come in (no bidder) for every ok auction (single bid reduces to floor) and just a tenth of that represents a good location (bids drive the price above the floor). So yes, people still hit up espn's college football pages with truck ads and the Washington post got targeted for ads by the Bahraini embassy trying to drum up support during their spat with Saudi Arabia.
But it also comes down to trust. I would rather "trust" (in a sense that Apple's business model does not explicitly benefits from selling my user data) than any other business. And yes, I would much rather pay for any service than have it for "free".
To me "trust" is an absolute thing; it comes in degrees, but the anchor is absolute, and in you. "rather trust" in contrast is relative and something entirely different. Yeah, sometimes we have to bite bullets or choose poisons, but I'd still set apart from things I really like and want to see prosper in the world.
For me, not collecting data warrants trust, not whatever mental gymnastics involving "collecting data, but". If that data is vital for companies or applications beyond a certain scale, then I don't trust companies or applications beyond a certain scale, and would prefer to see them all pruned by consumers using their brains to vote with their wallets. Some behemoths so desperately want a world in which they're vital, to me that's a world doomed to die in important ways. That's not aimed at Apple, but among tech companies, they don't even make my list of considerations for top N thousand I like or trust. Not to mention companies and organizations in general.
But more importantly it's not like I have to chose whom of a bunch of shady fucks I trust most. If I don't trust any of them, that's fine with me, too.
As for business, I like the people at my local bakery. I trust them with bread, I guess, and I know when they smile they mean it. Those people have stature to me, and the bigger a company is, the more pervasive marketing is in it, the more it resembles a lot of tiny people playing big person. I don't trust that, and I laugh when those then put out marketing to make themselves seem 0.1% as cool as random individual people are to me, to whom the thought of being cool doesn't even occur. True, Apple might be less of a POS than its direct siblings, but that's still a rounding error in the grand scheme of things. I'd say we'll outright settle for one or several of them and the precedents they set at our own peril.
Sorry for the rant, please don't take this as some sort of violent disagreement with you, I was really just ranting. But it does sicken me how far we fell.
Remote: Yes
Willing to relocate: No
Technologies: Ruby on Rails, Ruby, Python, Node.js, Go, React, TypeScript, AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, FastAPI, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, GraphQL, REST, Hotwire/Turbo/Stimulus
Résumé/CV: https://wagnermatos.co.uk/
Email: wm@wagnermatos.co.uk
Senior Rails engineer with 20+ years of experience, available for fractional, retainer, or contract engagements. I specialise in architecture, API design, legacy modernisation, and cross stack integrations (Ruby, Python, Node). Recent clients include Citizens Advice, Babbel, Alertive, and Johnson & Johnson. Strong track record delivering under tight deadlines and mentoring teams.
Open to part-time or ongoing work with UK, US, and European teams.