Blog


Posts about life, engineering management, the web industry, and things that I've been up to

2024

Holidays in Japan with a toddler

21 April 2024

Despite growing up as a third culture kid used to travel, and having spent almost 20 years visiting various places around Japan, this spring brought a new experience... taking my kid on their first international holiday.

2023 into 2024

9 January 2024

My annual, lengthy, round-up tradition continues into another year. 2023 brought a return to Japan, a return to work, a lot of fatigue and health challenges to navigate, but also a lot of lovely memories.

2023

Interviewing whilst caring for a young baby

23 April 2023

My job hunt experience this time around was very different to previous rounds. Being the day-to-day carer for a baby under a year old, I knew that juggling the two commitments would be tricky, but I hadn’t quite expected all of the ways that it turned out to be, especially around power dynamics.

Tell me about a time documents

22 February 2023

During my latest job search, I found myself wishing I’d kept more detailed notes on situations encountered in previous roles. It’s led me to put together something I’m calling a ‘Tell me about a time…’ document.

2022 into 2023

15 January 2023

It’s time for another annual roundup, but this one’s been a notably very different year. Here’s some of the memorable bits… fashionably late this time around!

2022

How technology can influence business decisions

29 November 2022

I was recently invited to be on Skiller Whale's Primarily Context-Based podcast to talk about the topic of how technology can influence business decisions. This is a big and nuanced topic, and as we only managed to cover a small slither of it in the original discussion I thought I’d share some of my thoughts in a long-form blog post form as well as whatever ends up making it into the show.

Planning a new chapter...

21 November 2022

I’m not going to bury the lede… I’m making some life changes and am looking for a new role in 2023, and I’d love your help to find it!

Learning Japanese (part three) 🇯🇵

25 September 2022

After a very long, pandemic-tastic gap, I’m back with an update on my Japanese learning adventures.

dConstruct: The final chapter!

16 September 2022

According to the dConstruct archive, the previous iteration of the conference was in 2015. 2015! My digital footprint tells me that I wasn't able to make it as I was speaking at a small web event in some Kentish woods, and so my last attendance was in 2014, a year that I remember vividly for the content being exceedingly post-apocalyptic and even more brain-melting than usual. Poor, sweet, naive 2014 Sally had no idea what would eventually be coming down the line in the real world...

Digital shadow inheritance

25 August 2022

Earlier this year I had a big life moment. I had a child. As with all big life moments it’s come with a lot of introspection for me, and one of the things that I pondered a lot and felt most strongly about was around how much or little to post online about them; how much of a trail of their life I’d be creating for them to inherit in the future.