Work
I run Survant James. We are a high-end boutique software consulting firm—an engine that turns heaping piles of money into highly refined software ingots. We are weird as hell, and we’re insanely good at what we do.
I’ve been getting paid to sling software for quite some time. I’ve worked with startups, government, agencies, non-profits, and megacorps. I have an unusual breadth and depth of software engineering experience across languages, platforms, and paradigms. You name it, I’ve probably worked with it.
These days, I leverage over 15 years of design, engineering, and project management experience to lead teams that consistently deliver quality software. I am both rigorously detail-oriented and capable of executing on large, high-level initiatives.
I think strategically about organizational goals and relationships, advise and mentor engineers, and help groups of people working toward a common goal make good decisions.
Play
I like to ride bikes. I ride fast, take the lane, track-stand at intersections, and drag race motorists up hills. I’m the idiot in all black, with no lights and no brakes, whip-skidding around corners in the rain and beating a whole line of cars to the next intersection.
Aviation has fascinated me since I was a small child. I own a sailplane and I have been on the board of the Willamette Valley Soaring Club since 2015. Soaring is a hell of a thing—an unpowered glider can remain aloft for hours, climb tens of thousands of feet, and cover hundreds of miles of ground. I like to say it gets me closer to God, and it feels like breaking every possible rule. God knows I love breaking rules.
Motoring with form and grace is hard. The ways in which it can be done both properly and improperly are rich and diverse. I write from time to time on the topic of how to properly operate, maintain, and park an automobile, and document my adventures in a certain hot hatch that spends a little too much time in the garage and gets washed a little too frequently.
Contact
Twitter: @bvanderveen
Github: @bvanderveen
Instagram: @bvanderveen
Email: b c/o bvanderveen.com