Paula Paul

I've enjoyed many adventures as a software engineer, from raised floors, server closets and data centers, to clouds.

The lessons I first learned as a mainframe product developer at IBM (shipped my first software product on magnetic tape!) give me a perspective on the constant churn in technology. Maya Angelou put it best: "If you don't know where you've come from, you don't know where you're going."  

Since my mainframe product days, I've shipped desktop software products for Microsoft, built microservices, managed infrastructure as code, collaborated on data pipelines, and taught people of all ages to code. Technology may be a wild adventure with endless opportunity but continues to have very stable underpinnings. It's always been true that as technology becomes both more powerful and more accessible, the decisions become more complex (or, as I like to say, 'the technology is the easy part').  

Many of my adventures are published in various formats, including the Insights articles below, and articles, podcasts, and videos you can find in this collection.

I came to Thoughtworks by way of the Grace Hopper Conference and am passionate about diversity in tech, and giving everyone equal opportunities for technical literacy.

One of the best parts of my role is working with Thoughtworkers, who put up with me when I joke that functional programming reminds me of JES2, and Kubernetes of VM/370. But the absolute best part of my role is working with our customers, to help them build capability and unlock the potential of their investments in technology, and technologists.