Software engineer. Building @usefathom since 2019. Sharing all the technical details from behind the scenes.
Joined May 2008
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I’ve spent nearly seven years documenting how we built Fathom: outages, DDoS attacks, migrations, $100k AWS savings, my cofounder’s retirement, and a divorce. I write transparently because I want other people to learn from my mistakes. These 18 posts tell the story:
There are more vulnerable PHP sites right now than patched ones. Most people have no idea what went down today.
Look at how every vendor behaved today in response to the gigantic PHP security release and make your future choices based on the evidence. Laravel was the winner today. DigitalOcean was six hours late and sent nothing yesterday. Better late than never, I guess...
A huge thank you to the Laravel team for everything they've done (and are still doing) in response to the critical PHP security advisory. We took preventative measures yesterday and I was very happy to receive a "we are handling it" email from them. Well done to all involved.
One of the top exchanges I've seen on this platform. Someone tries to dunk on PHP developers and... well... 🤣
I gave the same audit prompt to Opus fast mode on Cursor and Conductor with my Claude subscription powering it. I paid Cursor $3.61, which is API pricing, but the audit was finished in 2 minutes. Conductor was still going after 16 minutes. Cursor caught everything. Time is money.
I have Cursor Ultra, Claude Max 20x and ChatGPT Plus. The only harness that gives me a flow state is Cursor. You pay API pricing to move rapidly and the harness is absolutely top tier. But if you're happy with your current setup, don't try Cursor, because you'll be hooked.
Last night I asked ChatGPT to build a replacement for an app I pay $10/month for. I wanted to build out some features specifically for my use case. Today I woke up and checked it, it was the perfect clone. Then I decided that this project was a waste of my time and deleted it.
What should a junior software engineer do in 2026? Learn. You have an infinite supply of educational resources. Learn to prompt, make mistakes, ship things, break things, get hacked, and document your journey. When I had my first job interview at 17, I had shipped 20+ projects.
I don't know enough about cybersecurity to comment but I do know about DevOps. I think that the bar has risen for entry into every role and that we may see the return of the full-stack software engineer who does everything.
@JackEllis unrelated but what future jobs that may have many chances in the AI era in the incoming years: DevOps, cybersecurity... ?
The hiring of junior developers is at an all time low because the role is dead. A junior of the past would be fresh out of bootcamp/university and require mentorship from a team for ~3 years. But now they have AI. The role titles should be "builder" and "distinguished builder".
Resisted adding AI to Fathom for a long time because I was concerned about the added cost. We launched our new AI chat feature (for support & analyzing data) two weeks ago and the grand total is $35.69 and 20% of that was from our beta testers. The real cost was my resistance.
We receive 10 spam emails for every genuine customer support email. Those spam emails bypass Help Scout's filter. The only way to fight against this attack is to use AI for defence. I built a spam filter in one hour and I'm shocked that a $35 million ARR company can't solve this.
Reminder: Add team functionality to your project at the start, not 8 years into it. This refactor will be fun 😅
