Mike Zornek

Stabilizing Inherited Software: My First-Week Checklist

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 11:17:33 -0400

Not every consulting engagement starts with joining a team that’s humming along. Sometimes it starts with a handoff: the developers who built the software have moved on, but the software itself is still live, still has users, and still needs to keep working. There’s no team culture to learn – there might not be much of a team at all. This is how two of my recent client projects went.

The goal in week one on these projects isn’t to improve anything. It’s narrower than that: get to a place where you can react safely if something breaks. Everything below is in service of that one goal.

The Previous Developers are Long Gone: This is our problem now.

Get the app running locally

You can’t safely change what you can’t run. This sounds obvious, but on inherited software it’s rarely trivial.

Get repo access (GitHub or wherever the code lives)
Reproduce the dev environment exactly – asdf-pinned versions, a Docker Compose setup, whatever the project actually uses
Make sure you are using specific database versions, not just “latest.” You’d be amazed what little bugs show up from a minor version mismatch

Run the app as a user

Before touching the code, build a real domain understanding of what the software actually does for the people who use it.

Take lots of annotated screenshots, ask questions as they come up
Put those questions (and their answers) in a shared, durable place – a Google Doc or, better, GitHub Issues/Discussions, so there’s a paper trail and other people can chip in beyond whoever you happened to be on a call with
Use this discovery work as an opportunity to create valuable artifacts: your questions, improved onboarding docs, etc. Future developers (and AI tools) benefit from the knowledge extraction you are doing
Be deliberate as a team about where knowledge goes and why. I tend to prefer GitHub Issues and Discussions as they live next to the code, and are less likely to disappear. Also, searching a term in GitHub surfaces the related conversations, not just the code

Explore the codebase

Pick a feature and trace how it’s actually implemented, end to end
Document your questions as you go, and circle back to capture the answers
If you have a peer or time with the previous developer available, have them walk you through their recent work

Understand how the app is deployed and how releases work

This is the highest-stakes item on the list, and on adoption projects it’s the one I prioritize most. If something breaks in production and you don’t understand the release process, you can’t react – and reacting safely is the whole point of week one.

Make a small, low-risk change and push it through the full release cycle yourself, start to finish, as early as you can
Once you’ve been through onboarding yourself, look back at what you just did. What would have made it faster or clearer for the next person? Contribute that back to the docs

Create learning projects

This project will almost certainly include some technology you’re less experienced with. Name it explicitly rather than quietly muddling through. Ask others on the team (or in the broader community) for advice on a skill-up path, and give yourself room to actually follow it.

Meet your peers

Set up introduction calls – try to talk to everyone, even if it’s a short, purely social call. You’ll be working with these people for a while; it’s worth actually getting to know them
Ask two questions in particular: what’s working well on this project, and where are the opportunities for improvement

Re-sync with whoever hired you

By this point you’ll have a much more detailed picture of the environment you’ve stepped into than you did on day one.

Set up a follow-up conversation with the person who hired you, or whoever you ultimately answer to
Get your open questions answered
Reaffirm and evolve a clear list of expectations and responsibilities. On some engagements I own the full stack end to end; on others I’m explicitly scoped to a specific area and asked not to touch the rest. Make sure that scope is actually agreed on, not assumed

Why all of this, before any of the fun stuff

None of this is glamorous. It’s not refactoring, it’s not new features, it’s not the kind of work that makes for an exciting commit history. But when it comes to inherited software, confidence comes first. You earn the right to improve something by first proving – to yourself and to the team – that you can be trusted to react safely when it breaks. Everything else follows from that.

Open for Software Dev Coffee Talk

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Mon, 26 May 2025 16:26:55 -0400

One of the joys of self-employment is having a little extra control over your day-to-day schedule.

In the past, during the time between paid projects, I have enjoyed casual open meetings with folks around the software developer community.

Right now, work is light, and I have extra room to chat, so I figured I’d promote the opportunity.

If you have an interesting side project in the works, an Elixir or LiveView question, or just want to chat about software development, schedule a call.

Schedule time on my calendar: https://savvycal.com/zorn/pairing

Potential Consulting Client Questions

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Fri, 03 Mar 2023 10:18:42 -0500

There is a process that kicks off after I hear that a company is looking for help with their Elixir project. This process usually involves a series of emails and calls. During this process, the prospective client will have many questions for me. Some of these questions will be straightforward logistics: availability, costs, verification of technical skills, etc. Hopefully, they will also ask a bunch of questions to understand if and how I might be a good fit for the company’s values, culture, and needs – ideally filling a gap they have identified outside just of an additional set of Elixir hands.

I will have my own series of questions to understand the client’s current situation, what they are looking for, and if it’s a good fit for my interests.

When doing these kinds of interviews, it is essential to be deliberate about what questions you want to ask and what you are trying to learn from each answer. Time can fly by, and it can be easy to fall into a casual chat that might be entertaining but not helpful towards the decision to be made.

Additionally, this is the client’s first impression of you. If you can show up, be well prepared, and ask solid questions alongside implied suggestions for raising the bar, it will come off well.

Aside: I’ve worked as both in individual contributor roles as well as team management roles. All of these questions are relivent to both, but if I am in a manager-level role, I’m likely to have more influence.

Company Background Questions

Who is CompanyX, who are their customers? what do they sell, what is the pitch/positioning? Why do they serve these customers and needs over something else?

Why: Basic background questions. We all have some industries and customers that are more or less attractive to us. I have a personal value of Meaningful Work, so the better the client aligns with my perspective of this, the better.

Is the company owned privately or by venture capital/public stock? Is there a parent company? What phase is the company in? Is it profitable? Trying to find market fit? Is there a growth target on the horizon?

Why: Knowing the company’s financial situation helps me have some context around the project. For example, if the company is investing in exploration or market fit, there might be more appetite for quicker prototype turnaround over production-ready software.

What are the company’s core values? How are those values demonstrated in day-to-day actions?

Why: Having a detailed expression of your company values helps those who contribute to the company fill in the details as they do work. With the values defined, it is easier to reconcile a problem with a particular solution when you can ensure it aligns with the company values. Without defined values, people start to substitute their personal values, and when that happens across the organization, a lot of friction is introduced because the values and the solutions they derived do not align.

Name an aspect of the company’s culture that you love and something that you think should be better. What experiments is the company actively doing to improve that unsatisfactory element? How does the company come together to identify and work towards improvements to day-to-day processes?

Why: I have a personal value of Continuous Improvement, and so I would hope to work with a company that has some process in place for ongoing reflection and experimentation towards improving themselves. This can come in many forms, but a traditional format is regular team retrospective meetings or 1:1 meetings with team leaders.

Can I see or demo the software product I’d be working on? Can you give me a demo (live or previously recorded)? Are their publicly available customer support pages?

Why: I’m trying to look and see how polished the user experience is. I want to know some specific things: Does it work in multiple browsers? Is it responsive? Is it fast? How do the forms look and feel? What is the error/validation experience for these forms like?

Team Process Questions

How many developers are there? How are projects and teams organized? Is there an org chart? If so, can I see it? What about this organization style is working well? What challenges does it introduce? What does my position in this look like? To whom do I answer to?

Why: This is a kickoff question more than anything. My historic clients have extremes, some with 100s of engineers and large team structures and some with very small teams. The key questions are built to inform the knowledge of what they have and how I would fit in.

Is the team fully remote? Do we ever have in-person retreats?

Why: I’m working with the assumption that I will only ever work remotely, but it is good to know if the whole team is remote or if some work together in an office. I’m a big fan of retreats to help build camaraderie, so if the team is remote, I would hope they have retreats on occasion.

What is the company’s proficiency ratio between senior level / mid level / junior level developers? How does the company/team prioritize individual learning / improvement?

Why: Seeing a healthy mix here is an excellent sign. Specific allotments of time/resources are also nice. A good answer might include that education goals are captured in manager 1:1 sessions and, when possible, assignments are reworked to allow an individual to get experience in a topic of interest (ie: deployment, documentation, testing).

How do you plan and track work? Who decides what to work on / prioritize? What is the process like from napkin idea to deployed feature? How do you make time for refactoring / experimentation / learning new technologies? Where am I in this process?

Why: Again, I’m looking for alignment with my personal value of short feedback loops. Also good to understand my position in this flow. Ideally, I’m near the top and have an opportunity to influence the shaping of the features. I’m particularly good at discovering edge cases for new features, so the better a client can get that out of me, the better value for their dollar.

How do you measure/guess/estimate how much work can be done in a given timeframe/sprint? How do you understand the team’s velocity? Is this working well for you?

Why: There is a balance to be found regarding software estimates. It will be curious to hear how the company currently does this. I prefer measuring some kind of points / complexity size on tickets along with historical data to help inform the contributors what the team has been accomplishing sprint to sprint. But in that same breath, the group decides the sprint’s scope with possible stretch goals. It is NOT about Amy doing X points and Bobby doing Y points. It is about team velocity. Once you start pointing out individual numbers, team members stop doing acts of generosity (helping answer questions, pairing, code review) in preference of more selfish goals.

How do teams communicate internally? With other teams? How is knowledge captured and shared? Does everything live in Slack, or is there more structure?

Why: I hope there is more structure than just Slack. I’ve done Slack-driven development before and try to avoid it when possible. I don’t have firm requirements on the specifics of the other structure, but I value it being updated with the work as it is done and favor async processes as much as possible. I like the idea of ShapeUp pitches, as it does an excellent job of helping to shape the scope via appetite.

What regular events, meetings, or other team ceremonies should I expect? What happens at these events, and on what cadence do they occur?

Why: I have some specific questions about events I like (sprint grooming / retrospectives), but this is more open-ended so that they can fill in unique events.

Do you have a testing process before new work hits production? Dedicated QA teams?

Why: Good QA teams can add significant value to the software. Not every client I interact with uses them, but asking this and getting a positive answer is a good sign.

After deployment, how do you measure or understand the success of a new feature?

Why: Meaningful work (see Personal Values) is work that solves real problems for people. Verifying the features we worked so hard on are successful in production means a lot. Knowing how unsuccessful features are observed and tweaked is essential too.

Is there a company manual outlining all these processes and the reasons behind them? Can I see it?

Why: I’ve asked how they work over the last few questions, but have they documented it? Is this written down and well-understood across the company?

How does upper management communicate with the company at large? What is the cadence for scheduled communications?

Why: I get value from regular updates on the company’s progress at large. I don’t have a significant preference for the format, but quarterly updates would be a minimum acceptable threshold.

Does the project have dedicated UI designers? Do they work closely with the development team? Is there a standard process for handing off assets, specs, and motion simulations?

Why: While I can do a minimum level of competent UI work, ideally, there would be some people on the team who were focused on designing the user experience exclusively. I’m curious to hear how they interact with the development team and how mockups in a tool like Figma make their way into the code.

How is customer support handled? Do I have any interaction with the customers or their bug reports?

Why: I’m a more customer-focused developer than most (having built my own set of products in the past). Having some vision into the feedback and errors customers report helps me better prioritize future work. When building out a sprint of work, you need to find a balance in addressing customer bugs/feedback, code refactoring, general project de-weeding, and future enhancements. Excluding any of these at an extreme can, overtime, cause issues.

Technical / Code Questions

Do you use GitHub or some other version control? Is there a single repo or multiple repos?

Why: Kickoff question of sorts. I’ve almost exclusively used GitHub but I am curious about GitLab and others.

How do contributors merge in new code? What is the process? Can I see some recent pull requests? What kind of automated code checks do you run? (Test runners? Credo? Dialyzer? Sobelow? Code coverage?)

Why: I want to understand how they branch and do code reviews. I want examples of constructive code review comments and not endless chatter or empty approvals. I want to see that PRs are small and short-lived. I’m looking to see what kind of PR automations they run.

Do you require tests with code changes? What is your testing philosophy?

Why: My personal preference is to test, and test at the user-contract level way more so that validating specific implementation internals. Some places require a 1:1 module to test module design. Others do no testing or have left past test degrade and no longer run the test suite. Good to know where they stand.

How do you deploy? How often do you deploy? Are there dedicated stage-like environments? Can I deploy WIP branches to a temp environment?

Why: I’m looking for evidence of regular and automated deployments. The ability to deploy WIP branches is nice and has been valuable in past work, but it is not something you see everywhere.

How do you observe production? Log capture? Error capture? Telemetry? Flame graph per HTTP request? What aspects of the current observability system are working well? What would you like to improve?

Why: There is a large gradient of possibilities here. Understanding what they have and where they want to be is helpful. Personally, I’m interested in getting better at observability.

Do you write inline project documentation for modules and functions? Do you write other guides or docs that live in the repo? Is this documentation published anywhere? Automated publication? Can I see it?

Why: If they are documenting their domain-level modules and functions, there is a high likelihood they are investing in the codebase’s quality. The lack of inline docs is a bad sign for me.

How do you track work to be done? What kind of issue/ticket tracker software do you use? How do separate idea tickets vs. scoped/shaped tickets? Do you ever have ticket grooming sessions to answer open questions that block ticket implementation? Can I see the ticket board and some current/recent tickets?

Why: We asked broad questions about the process, but this is more specific. I’m looking for a clean separation of tickets in the idea stage vs. the scoped/shaped stage. A good scoped/shaped ticket has all the info the implementor needs to do the work: descriptions of the wanted behavior, things that we are not doing with this work, links to pitch documents, designed mockups, references to people who can unblock questions, a clear understanding of when the ticket is considered complete. Most complex work should happen across a series of tickets: how is that organized/tracked?

How do you track bugs? Who enters these bug tickets? How do you prioritize and schedule bug fixes? Can I see some recent bug tickets?

Why: I’m looking to see how detailed the bug capture is. If the bugs are being entered by customer support, how much info do they transfer? Do they attempt to verify the bug before it is handed to engineering?

Does the team do any pair programming? If so, what tools do you use to facilitate those sessions?

Why: I like pair programming but do less of it than I would like. I use VS Code Live Share but am interested in tools like Tuple.

Do you publish a changelog to the users? If so, how?

Why: Most of my recent clients have not done public changelogs, but depending on the product, I could see them being valuable and challenging to deliver at scale. Curious if the potential client has this need and how they are solving it.

Is there any high-level documentation for the structure or architecture of the application? Can you give me a short code walkaround? Are there specific areas of the codebase you suspect I would be working in more than others?

Why: It will be hard to grok any complex architecture during a single meeting, but getting an overview and some specific guidance on what you’d likely be contributing to is helpful.

Understanding My Role

Will I be in an individual contributor role or a team management role? What does that role look like, and what would my responsibilities be?

Why: I’ve done both, and they are very different. This was probably answered before but listed here for verification.

What observable characteristics would signal a successful consulting outcome? What would signal a negative consulting outcome?

Why: I am probably not their first consultant. Knowing specific quirks about the previous positive and negative experiences can significantly shape what I want to focus on for this unique client.

If I were interviewing for a full time job there were be a whole bunch more questions about compensation, perks, vacation and the like – but these are questions for potential consutling clients so I will not list them.

Hopefully this list of questions has inspiried you to dig a little deeper during your own initial project proposal calls. If you have something I am missing I’d love to hear it.

Recent Estimating Work Notes

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Fri, 04 Nov 2022 13:12:04 -0400

This week I completed my third week with a new client. It was a notably challenging week since the main goal was to write up a significant project estimate, which was due by Friday. We delivered the estimate earlier this morning, and I think we did a good job. I’m sure the estimates themselves are WAY off from where reality will land, but that isn’t the goal as I see it.

The goal of this estimate is to, in a time-boxed format, create a framework for more meaningful discussions to happen. These numbers should not be looked at as facts but shape those first steps of discovery.

A few notes and observations:

While it brought on a bit of anxiety in the early part of the week, I think we greatly benefited from the time-boxed nature of the request. We knew we had to deliver something on Friday, which influenced how much fidelity we could give toward specific feature estimates.
We used typical Fibonacci story points for each fundamental feature/focus. We had a base point value and then a high point value. We also labeled each estimate as Low/Medium/High risk, which was meant to signal that, should the fidelity of this range be too large to make an informed business decision, we could do more discovery and sharpen those numbers.
This was tough for me since I am still new to the codebase. I was able to partner with the previous tech lead, and that helped a ton, but my number ranges were still significantly larger than if I had been on the project previously with a known team.
Once we had the base and high points, we totaled them and crafted some team scenarios. This was the worst part. Usually, I’m able to gauge a team point velocity based on historical observations, but this would be a team who would be new to a codebase and each other, so the numbers are very suspect. We did our best and tried to document uncertainty as transparently as possible. We noted that should this proposal be accepted, we should set up regular check-in against these numbers and adjust the team/scope/timeline as necessary.
We worked in an onboarding penalty to the team velocity, spread across many months. I think this was a good move and made the scenarios more realistic.
In our recommendations for team size, we noted the risk that an individual contributor may not stay on the team for the entirety of the project. Adding an additional contractor is not about a 1:1 increase in velocity but risk management. We want to maintain domain knowledge through expected staff changes.
In our scenarios, we did not document time towards routine platform maintenance (this is in production with real customers) or personal vacation time. We did document our non-documentation so that when it comes time for realistic scheduling, these can be considered.

For what it needed to be, I think the outcome document of the week will help the stakeholders.

It is by far not my favorite way to approach projects. For that, I’d probably lean toward something like Shape Up.

Advice for New Consultants

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Tue, 11 Oct 2022 10:34:09 -0400

Was introduced to a new member of the Philly CocoaHeads who is starting out as an iOS consultant. He asked for my advice and I figured I’d share it will you all too:

Nice to meet you too. I’ll keep my eye out for new work. I usually share gigs in the #gig-swap channel when they find me. I am no longer doing iOS development (doing Elixir / Phoenix web apps instead), but I hear about things from time to time.

My biggest recommendation is to network and meet as many people as possible. Be shameless about sharing your contracting availability and short-term goals. Most of the work I get is through my little circle of work friends.

Also, build in public as much as possible, blog what you learn to teach others and when you have time, don’t be afraid to approach the people/projects you care about and ask, “how can I help?”

Good luck to ya.

What did I miss? Let me know.

September 2021 Elixir Consulting Availability

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Tue, 24 Aug 2021 13:23:17 -0400

My summer vacation is coming to a close and I am once again looking for my next consulting project.

An ideal project would involve a healthy mix of:

Elixir/Phoenix programming
Product and user interface design
Technical documentation writing
Mentoring junior developers (or those new to Elixir)
Open source projects would be a plus
Quality assurance and testing could be a good fit too.

I am interested in both part time and full time engagement opportunities.

If you have a project or referral please shoot me an email or grab some time on my calendar.

Open Office Hours: Summer 2021

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Thu, 01 Jul 2021 17:32:00 -0400

With some well earned extended summer downtime underway I once again have a more flexible schedule and want to promote my open office hours!

Open office hours is a great way for me to give back to the community and hopefully help people explore a problem. I love hearing what people are excited about and working on. Noting too formal, just coffee over a Zoom video chat.

Recommend discussion topics might include:

Code questions about Elixir, Phoenix or Ecto
Software testing strategies
Team communication challenges
Website structure and design
Product development
Customer research
Static website development with Hugo
Technical presentations and teaching

Slots are 1 hours in length to allow for breathing room but need not go the full time.

[Grab some time on the calendar!](ht

Consulting Retrospective and Summer Learning Plans

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Fri, 25 Jun 2021 16:51:24 -0400

After dedicating a full time effort towards an Elixir/Phoenix consulting project since October, I’m taking some time off and looking forward to a nice mix of vacation and personal projects.

Consulting Retrospective

The project itself is under NDA, but I can say it was primarily Elixir and Phoenix coding as a subcontractor through Test Double. Test Double was great to work for, and very supportive. I had a lot of flexibility allowing me to shape my responsibilities, primarily landing on team support through code review, work shaping and mentoring. I did take ownership of some specific platform features but team support was the primary task.

This was easily the largest team project I ever worked on. We had over 100 code-level contributors to the repo and that does not even include a whole host of product managers, designers and customer support folks who were involved. The product we worked on is a high traffic, consumer-facing website. There were many concerns for technical scaling but I was actually more interested in the human scaling concerns, like how do you get a such a large technical team to align on a technical design decisions.

Day to day I expanded my Elixir skills a ton and enjoyed getting new or improved production experience with a bunch of tools:

Developer Tooling: asdf, CircleCI, Docker, VSCode
System Observability: DataDog, Splunk
Frontend: NodeJS, Jest, Phoenix LiveView
Elixir: bypass, credo, dialyzer, ex_doc, ex_machina, faker, floki, mix_test_watch, mox, oban

Summer Learning Plans

The basic plan is to take off all of July and August. I’ll be going down the shore for a week or so in July but the expectation is I’ll spend the rest of the time working on some personal projects and catching up on some learning paths. Some specific goals include:

Finish a deployable version my open source LiveView retrospective tool, RetroTaxi.
Continue to publish educational material under my ElixirFocus brand, formally Phoenix by Example. Ideally working towards some kind of small educational product.
Get more familiar with event source / CQRQ programming patterns Hoping to land an Elixir project in this style in the fall.
Read and work through a Rust/WebAssembly course/book; mostly for curiosity alongside my goal of learning a new programming language each year.

Having the time off, I’m also down for more coffee chats. If you want to grab some time, check out my calendar.

Consulting Availability: Elixir, iOS and User Experience

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Thu, 10 Sep 2020 12:04:34 -0400

I would like to once again remind people I am looking for work. You can see more details about my freelance and consulting offerings on my For Hire page but to summarize, the following types of projects are usually a good match for me:

Elixir / Phoenix web development
Native iOS development
iOS code review / code auditing
iOS mentoring / teaching (individuals or teams)
Help setting up continuous integration / deployment systems
Static website development with Hugo

I do still prefer freelance contracts but am starting to soften on considerations of full time remote offers as well.

I appreciate you all keeping an eye out for me. Almost all the work I get is through referrals so your help means a lot.

Consulting Availability for iOS and Web Development

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Mon, 06 Jul 2020 11:02:56 -0400

While I know many are struggling with productivity during lock down (and I’ve certain had some bad days) on the whole I have been able to use the time fairly well. I’ve been putting major hours into Guildflow (Elixir / Phoenix web development), catching up with WWDC things (SwiftUI mostly) as well as kicking off my own Android Book Club. And while these things are great, they are not how I make a living.

Native iOS development
iOS code review / code auditing
iOS mentoring / teaching (individuals or teams)
Elixir / Phoenix web development
Help setting up continuous integration / deployment systems
Static website development with Hugo

I do still prefer freelance contracts but am starting to soften on considerations of full time remote offers as well. I appreciate you all keeping an eye out for me. Almost all the work I get is through referrals so it means a lot.

How Much Does It Cost to Build an iOS App?

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Sun, 17 May 2020 16:26:38 -0400

As I take prospective client calls, particularly for those clients looking to build a new iOS app from scratch, the big question ultimately is raised:

How much does it cost to build an iOS app?

I think Ken Yarmosh’s summary hits the nail on the head:

… most quality apps cost between $100,000 to $1,000,000. Some apps will be less and some more. If you’re looking for an app built with great design, superior development, and clever marketing though, it will be somewhere in that range.

I highly encourage you to read that article to learn more. You should also check out The Nature of Software Development by Ron Jeffries which is a great, short and visual book on the topic (not specifically of costs, but of quality project development practices).

Open Office Hours

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Thu, 02 Apr 2020 10:25:12 -0400

Yesterday was my last day on contract and once again I have Consulting Availability and am available for hire.

With some time to kill I’m looking forward to catching up on some personal projects but today I wanted to share my Open Office Hours.

If you’d like a free, casual consultation about your project or code issues please schedule an online meeting. Slots are 1 hour in length and recommend topics would include:

iOS / Swift Questions
Phoenix / Ecto / Elixir Questions
Testing Help
Continuous Integration Setup
HTML / CSS
Static website development with Hugo
Public Speaking / Technical Presentations / Teaching

Make your appointment today!

Consulting Availability

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Fri, 20 Mar 2020 11:39:29 -0400

Just a quick post today to share that my current client project will end April 1st and I’ll have consulting availability opening up.

For more info you can check out my For Hire page but to summarize, the following types of projects are usually a good match for me:

Native iOS development
iOS code review / code auditing
iOS mentoring / teaching (individuals or teams)
Elixir / Phoenix development
Help setting up continuous integration / deployment systems
Static website development with Hugo

Thanks for keeping your ears to the ground and sharing my info when you think it might be a good match.

iOS and Web Consulting Availability

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Fri, 03 Jan 2020 10:53:23 -0500

Happy New Year everyone. Hope you enjoyed your break.

Just a quick post today to share that I do have consulting availability and would love to start work on a new client project.

I recently updated my For Hire page but to summarize, the following types of projects are usually a good match for me:

Native iOS development
iOS code review / code auditing
iOS mentoring / teaching (individuals or teams)
Elixir / Phoenix development
Help setting up continuous integration / deployment systems
Static website development with Hugo

Thanks for keeping your ears to the ground and sharing my info when you think it might be a good match.

Available for Consulting: Web and Mobile, Elixir and iOS

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Thu, 24 Oct 2019 13:16:52 -0400

A few planned consulting projects have been postponed and I now have some consulting availability headed into November/December. If you could use some help with an Elixir or iOS project, let’s chat.

I am very comfortable working remotely with on-site travel for big project milestones.

I am also up for some teaching / mentoring work for any junior developers out there. I love helping solo projects and teams improve process, introduce automation and other good practices.

Most of the work I get is from word of mouth so please consider sharing in your own social circles. Thanks!!

Introducing Zorn Labs LLC

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Tue, 28 Mar 2017 17:44:06 +0000

As I alluded to after loosing my job at the end of January, I knew I’d take the majority of February to recover from my neck surgery and then get serious about work in March. We’ll it’s almost the end of March so I figured I’d do an update.

First, welcome Zorn Labs LLC, my new company. It will house my future consulting and product work.

Second, I am still looking for work. My goal is to find something 10-30 hours a week, doing iOS or iOS mentoring. To help express my skill set and goals I’ll point you to the new company site. I would appreciate all friends and followers to help spread the word.

Outside of setting up the new business and website, much of March has been spent towards marketing and planning. I had many lunches and coffees with prospects and friends. I even had a few offers but they sadly weren’t the right fit for me at this time. When I haven’t been marketing I’ve been trying to jumpstart some new web skills, refreshing my HTML5/CSS3 knowledge, getting deeper into Hugo template design for the new Philly CocoaHead website, and experimenting with Elixir and Phoenix.

For those interested in my Mac app project, you can also check out my project journal blog at: http://restedexperience.com. I’ve been trying to update that a little more often with my recent progress.

So that’s my March update. Thanks for the interest! More to come in April! 🙂

“For the times they are a-changing”

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Wed, 01 Feb 2017 17:33:35 +0000

I am no longer an employee of Big Nerd Ranch. The news came down on Monday. I can’t speak to any of the details but suffice to say I am disappointed. I really enjoyed working at BNR. My time there was productive, for my own personal growth as well as that of my students and clients. I wish them well, and continue to recommend them as a good source for iOS education.

So, what’s next for me?

On the immediate horizon, I’m a bit focused on my neck surgery, which is on Feb 10th. Its been scheduled since November. The goal is to remove a large cyst on the back of my neck. I will be put under for this surgery, so tomorrow I have to get a bunch of blood work and X-rays done.

For work, I open to ideas. Generally speaking I’m unlikely to make long term plans and would probably prefer to take on some smaller consulting work. I’d like to steep a bit on my long term options. If you have anyone who might be in need for an experienced iOS or Mac developer, let me know. Thanks for your help.

Know Your Role: Contractor or Consultant

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Wed, 22 Apr 2015 14:23:12 +0000

I guess I could have use a more sophisticated reference in the title like Know Thyself but I can’t help quoting the most electrifying man in sports entertainment, The Rock.

Know Your Role!

When trying to breakdown the relationship with your clients and to help define expectations you need to define your role. One high level way to do this is to decide if you are a contractor or a consultant.

A contractor is someone who comes on to a job site to execute. They are given all the specifications they need. They act in a professional manner. They produce.

A consultant may produce as well but their primary responsibility is help design the solution. They work with the client to understand, identify and document the problems and the pains. Then through their lens of their experience in the industry propose a solution. Usually they stick around to help build that solution.

If the client looks to you for help to build the product right, you are probably a contractor. If the client looks to you for help to build the right product, you are probably a consultant.

Personally, I consider myself a consultant. I love designing the solutions and while I can code, and continually strive to improve my craft, coding by itself is not truly fulfilling.

It’s been challenging over the last few years since leaving independent life and working for larger companies. These days I don’t have a lot of involvement in the sales process so by the time I’m working a project expectations are already set and a fair amount of time it feels like we are hired as contractors, which I have nothing against, but if I’m going to be a code mercenary you need to be really good about those specifications and more times than not, they fall short. They explain only the happy paths or they misuse platform norms at the cost of more engineering and two steps back in user experience.

I suspect this phenomena is not an isolated problem but discussion about that will have to wait for a future post.

Mike Monteiro on Selling Design, Getting Paid and Working with Clients

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Tue, 17 Mar 2015 18:51:47 +0000

I’m not sure if “Selling Design” is the real title for the Keynote at Interaction15 (1h5m) but that’s the topic your are going to see. Mike Monteiro a does a great job reviewing some of the pitfalls creative people run into when working with and presenting their work to clients and all the delicacies of those relationships. For those doing contract work, a must see.

You might also like Mike’s talk: Fuck You, Pay Me or his books, Design is a Job and You’re My Favorite Client.

Contracting and project management are topics that regularly come up at my job, Philly CocoaHeads and IndyHall so I’m going to try to do better about writing about those issues here. In the mean time, I highly recommend Mike’s work to get your own brain turning.

On disappointment with clients who are prioritizing production over quality

mike@mikezornek.com (Mike Zornek) — Sun, 24 Aug 2014 02:28:52 +0000

A friend of mine emailed me, amongst a few others, asking for advice. He’s been working as a consultant for a little while now but has been unhappy about his recent clients. He says they haven’t been focused on the quality of things as much the general production speed and it disappoints him. My reply:

Without knowing the details of your current experiences I would encourage you to look within to improve the situation. I say this not to let the client off the hook but if you wait for other people to change to make YOUR life easier you are going to be waiting a long fucking time.

One of the huge problems is that most of the clients you will interact with have no experience producing software. It is your job to explain to them what a professional software development process looks like and if all the parties are in agreement, and contracts are signed, it is your job to execute that process.

When you were in the early talks with this client how did you teach them what your professional process was like? How did they react when you explained your core values?

If they agreed to your process and then changed the rules midway, shame on them, Walk away as soon as professionally possible, preferably under the comfort of a contract clause they are breaking.

If you never talked about this and just assumed they knew what was in your head about what the process was going to be like then shame on you.

Look inward. Figure out your core values, your development process. Make this part of the marketing of the consultant you. Make it clear to those interested in hiring you, this is how you work. This is how they will get the best value from your time, their money and in the long run, the code base they will own.

And to be clear, finding good clients is hard work. I think making your own expectations clear to them is half the battle, the other half is getting out there to market yourself to more and more people so that A) in the early days you have enough options to weed out the bad clients and then B) you get to a point that through word of mouth you get more and more clients looking for you because your process worked so well for their friends. If you aren’t turning away 4 projects for every 1 you work on, you probably aren’t marketing enough.

Have a question for me? Send me an email.