Relationships Drive My Business
I've been working exclusively out of my home office here in Burlington, Vermont since 2000 and working in development for over 20 years. The technology has changed a lot since then, which means the quest to excel in the current technologies never stops. But Job One is always looking out for my clients' best interests. My clients need to see their investment on the page. They don't want to know how things work behind the scenes, they don't care. They have businesses to run. My job is to shelter them from the technical nuts and bolts of development and deliver a flawless product in as little time and for as little money as possible. It's a responsibility I take very seriously, because I am taking care of friends.
As a freelance developer my philosophy is all about the relationships I maintain with my clients, with the three pillars of those relationships being 1) articulated and shared objectives, 2) constant attention to productivity, and 3) never taking our eye off of why we started the project in the first place: to realize a shared vision. I have clients that go back over 10 years because I don't work on a project, I enter into a relationship with great people and great companies for the long term.
I turned 50-years-old recently, so I have a bit of history with the Internet. The first web site I created was on an NCSA HTTPd web server which I installed on an RS/6000 AIX Unix box in 1994, the same box I had previously installed the WAIS and Gopher systems that pre-dated the web. I was an Assistant Professor then, but I left Academia later that year to work in business. I have been building web applications ever since. It's been a great ride, and Lord Willing, that ride is far from over.