The probationary year
Learn the rig, the hydrants, and the standard — and learn quickly that under pressure you don't rise to the occasion, you fall to your training.
No. 08 — Operational History
Fire Service.
Before the software, the underwriting, and the security work, there was the apparatus. Thirteen years with the Lafayette Fire Department is where the method was forged — and it still sets the standard everything else is held to.
Build the system before you need it.What the fireground teaches
The record
What the years built.
Firefighter & Engineer
Operating the apparatus and the pump: responsible for getting the crew there and putting water exactly where it's needed. Ownership measured in seconds, not sprints.
Thirteen years in
Training, teamwork, and command, carried off the fireground and into every system built since. The habits didn't stay at the station.
The transfer
What the fire service taught the rest of the building.
- Decisions under pressure → resilient software
Design for the worst moment, not the best.
The fireground assumes everything that can go wrong will. Every tool I build makes the same assumption — the failure path gets more attention than the happy path.
- Standard operating procedures → automation
Procedure beats improvisation.
A fire runs on SOPs — steps anyone on the crew can execute the same way, every time. A piece of software is just an SOP reliable enough to run itself.
- Drill → reliability
Reliability is rehearsed, never hoped for.
You run the boring drill a thousand times so it holds the one time it counts. Systems earn trust the same way: repetition, not optimism.
- Command → ownership
Clear roles, clean handoffs, one commander.
No one fights a fire alone, and no one guesses who's responsible. Good systems inherit that: explicit owners and unambiguous handoffs.
- Checklists → externalized judgment
Memory fails under load. The checklist doesn't.
The most experienced crews still run the list. The lesson underneath all my work: move judgment out of your head and into the system, where pressure can't erase it.
Training record
Work under load.
Drills, apparatus work, and physical training in gear — documented as it happens. Footage and photographs appear here as they're added to the archive; nothing is staged for the camera.