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Back on the Tools
Rediscovering the Joy of Technical Work
It used to be easy. Turn up, do a job of work, get paid. Maybe there was some on-call, but you got paid for that, or time in lieu. More than that, you didn't really care because you were 25 and you loved working in tech.
But somewhere along the way you grew ambitious, you led, you managed, and that ambition turned on you. Now you don't know which way is up. You feel the younger engineers have all the cards. They are smarter, cheaper, harder working.
So what's your next move?
This is what I did.
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About
About the Book
Five years ago, I was a stressed-out, unhappy Engineering Manager who had realised I'd reached the end of my upward path.
After a decade or more of taking on more responsibility and moving into different roles, I'd discovered that none of it was making me happier at work. I'd grown tired of side projects that didn't pay particularly well and didn't fulfil me professionally.
Somewhere along the way, I'd lost touch with the developer I'd been: the person who was endlessly curious about building better systems, solving problems and working with a team to make things better.
So I went back.
I rediscovered the joy of being technical. The satisfaction of solving problems. The pleasure of mentoring and coaching from within a team rather than from above it. I became just another (senior) team member: working the tickets, building things, helping others, and making the world a little better.
What did I learn?
Back on the Tools is the story of what I learned to say yes to — and what I learned to leave to those in a higher pay grade.
I found happiness back on the tools.
Maybe you can too.
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This book is a work in progress.
I'm writing it because I think there's a story worth telling about finding your way back to technical work after years of career progression. If that sounds like something you'd like to read, join me and I'll share the book as it develops.
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Author
About the Author
Richard Bown
I'm a writer and software engineer who has worked in corporate technology for over thirty years. I've helped build and run plenty of elaborate technical systems, but I slowly came to realise that the real art of building systems, and the part I enjoyed most, was understanding the people who built them.
Alongside my work, I've taken regular breaks to write, record music, develop open-source software and build software products. I've written and spoken extensively about the human side of working in technology, including case studies for the second edition of Team Topologies and talks at conferences on socio-technical systems and what it means to be a human working in tech.
Human Software was my debut novel, published in 2025. It grew out of what it actually feels like to work inside corporate systems, alongside a growing disquiet about data centres and AI, and the thin line executives tread between ambition and greed.
I'm currently writing the follow-up, One More Island, as well as Back on the Tools, a non-fiction book about navigating a late-career life in engineering in the 2020s.
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