Engineering

 ┌──────────────┐
 │   Research   │◀──────────╮
 └──────┬───────┘           │
        │                 Learn
 ┌──────▼───────┐           │
 │    Build     │◀──────────┤
 └──────┬───────┘           │
        │                 Learn
 ┌──────▼───────┐           │
 │    Scale     │───────────╯
 └──────────────┘

Preface

The first versions of these pages were written as operating documentation for Valentina, my wife.

She and I both started as Chemical Engineers and both ended up in “Tech” — similar paths, same timeline, different employers, pulling each other up along the way.

She’s my partner. In life, career, this work - everything. She’s currently employed as a “Principal Data Platform Architect” at The Nature Conservancy.

She’s the engineer I’ve trusted longest to tell me when I’m wrong. We build and iterate on systems to keep each other (mostly me if we’re being honest) sharp. We’re better because of that. I’m proud of her, and I’m grateful for us.

The Chemical Engineering parallels in these pages aren’t just for funsies — they’re the vocabulary we were originally trained in together. It’s how we talk about things more often than you’d expect.

What you’re reading now are the versions of those docs for everyone else, and some of the parallels are kept to make a point.

What’s Going On Here?

We’re running a system that refines itself while we watch and steer. Research source tables, some CRON, some model tiering, and a whole lot of iterating.

The stack doesn’t matter. I’ll expose some of that in downstream pages, but it’s all just Engineering.

Collect data around every operation. Tune upstream further and further every time that data reveals issues.

Discover and try to leverage the latest tools available like it’s the job (it is). Collect scar tissue — your own and from everyone else who found out before you — like it’s gold (it is).

Iterate.

At Ocean Spray — Valentina’s and my first real engineering gig (and our last together, officially) — this loop was pointed at how much tissue damage you wanted freezing to cause inside a cranberry, so downstream extraction and reinfusion are effective → Craisins.

In software that’s data flowing through services. Same loop. Valentina and I have been running that together since the beginning.

We think good engineers treat adaptation not only as opportunity, but as a requirement — and in today’s landscape we think it might be our only hope.

Factoryˣ

Projects that build and improve each other — the tooling project improves the product projects, and building the products exposes what the tooling needs next.

Why Factoryˣ?

The Factory is a derivative of itself.

headquarters/ is the nervous system. Design basis, contracts, architecture, automation. Everything flows through it.

óyeme/ is something people actually use. The only traditional ‘product’ here (so far). Legitimately useful for my family and me. I hope it grows in a way that helps others without us personally footing all the bills.

blog/ is sneaky. This looks like content, and I hope it’s enjoyed that way — but it’s actually part of the refinement loop. Every post forces me to review and explain what I built, and the output feeds straight back into the system.

employment/ writes itself sitting in this system. Valentina’s employer deserves her — her work already aligns with what she’d build anyway. This will try to get me there.

In Chemical Engineering consulting the same teams run radically different projects in parallel — something goes sideways in one project and the learnings show up in another. Each one feeds the other.

Same drill here.

Research, Build, Scale (Repeat)

Every cycle, the system gets better. The audit phase grades the harness against itself. The artifact is a sharper Design Basis. Yesterday’s findings improve tomorrow’s constraints.

Shifting reliability from humans into systems has always been a big name in the game of Engineering. Human variability has always been an enemy. This has been openly discussed for centuries in Engineering.

LLMs and Agents, in my opinion, are just the latest tools. Tokens are a new medium. Time for some new plumbing.

We’re not building towards lights-out here. We’re just abstracting again.

Constraints Change - The Discipline Doesn’t

I was always scrappy with computers.

Good enough to get away with things I shouldn’t be doing. Only “impressive” to people much later (love you Mom & Dad).

I was self-aware enough to know that what I was doing wasn’t productive for anyone, and that the road I was on had consequences. In getting my act together, I found thermodynamics particularly interesting at the time, and I pointed this energy at that.

Then the slow loop. Stamps, reviews, ten rounds of red ink before a single pipe got installed. One letter wrong on a single P&ID (Piping and Instrumentation Diagram) in a set of hundreds and a valve fails in the wrong direction. Boom - people might die.

Boy do you learn to be careful up front, but often that’s not enough — because the contractor who told a contractor who told a contractor could still make a mess somewhere in the handoffs. Failures were expensive. Iterations were quarters. The constraints were physics, then procurement, then construction.

Talking about “Spec Driven Development” with some of the legends I was fortunate enough to cross paths with in my past industries would probably be a good time (some of you will probably read this later - please reach out if I haven’t already).

Software was a homecoming, not a pivot. The loop dropped from quarters to months, then from months to weeks. Now it’s hours. Where’s it end?

We’re exploring with Factoryˣ