If you took everything about Bob Clark — a résumé, a passion for Apple software development (macOS, iOS, additional platforms), a hodgepodge of social-networking links, a select cross-section of projects old and new, and links to family web pages — whizzed ’em up in a blender, and spilled ’em out onto a single web page, you might end up with this. This very page you’re reading right now.

My “philosophy” of engineering and engineering management can be scrutinized through the lens of what I consider to be my personal brand pillars.

These are five characteristics that I try to embody to drive my career and my life.

No long-term relationship — with a spouse, with a friend, or with a company — can survive without a pillar of honesty. Deception, even workplace examples as innocuous as estimating a task too optimistically or sugarcoating an employee’s performance appraisal, will lead to situations that are worse in the end than if they had been handled candidly in the first place.

I can acknowledge that there are times (buying a car, say) when it would be a tactical advantage to be able to skirt the truth a bit, but for better or worse — usually better, to be honest — I strive to be honest.

Some disciplines require instant feedback and snappy rejoinders. Engineering, fortunately, is generally not one of them. Software Engineering involves crafting products of beauty and simplicity over the course of weeks, months, or years. Knee-jerk responses and overreactions are damaging. My deliberative approach to solving problems ensures that decisions aren’t made in the heat of the moment, but rather there has been a chance to let things brew for awhile.

Although it can be awkward the first few weeks I work with someone (“Let me process that for a couple days” is a phrase many of my teammates have heard), a professional relationship is much more successful when I deliberate.

Kindness does not come naturally enough to many of us engineers. We can focus so strongly on a technical problem that we forget that those around us are humans, too, with human frailties and human emotions. Inadvertent hurtfulness can cause repercussions for years.

I have always enjoyed long-term (years or decades) working relationships; building and maintaining those relationships has required that I reciprocate others’ kindness and that I, too, show kindness.

Curiosity is how we inoculate ourselves against painful or even deadly surprises. When people learn something that might contradict their assumptions, some people will be incurious or even find themselves in denial. Others will be delighted to find an opportunity to expand their knowledge.

Keeping a vibrant and always-learning mind — being curious — ensures that I don’t get stuck.

A very few people have the ineffable quality of empowering the people around them. Somehow, you drop one of these people onto a project and everyone else steps up and creates magic. I have been fortunate to work with some people like this (Peopleware’s DeMarco and Lister call them catalysts, and so do I), and I try to improve the life and productivity of those around me as well.

In my own life and work, I try to catalyze.

Historically I have not been much of a job-hopper. I’ve been at Apple for over a decade; my tenure at most of my jobs are more often measured in decades than years.

• Apple (Cupertino, CA) 2012-present. Software Engineer.
• RealNetworks, Inc. (Seattle) 1998-2012. At RealNetworks I was Development Manager for the development team creating mobile clients (notably iOS/iPhone/iPad) for several RealNetworks products. My team was also responsible for the Mac OS X version of RealNetworks’ flagship product RealPlayer.
• Edmark, Inc. (Redmond, WA) 1995-1998. I contributed to Edmark’s award-winning “House” line (Millie’s Math House and others) and other products as Software Engineer and Lead Macintosh Engineer.
  Millie’s Math House; Bailey’s Book House; Trudy’s Time & Place House; Stanley’s Sticker Stories; Imagination Express; Astro Algebra; Travel the World with Timmy; Millie & Bailey: Pre-School; Millie & Bailey: Kindergarten.
• Curriculum Networking Specialists (Walla Walla, WA) 1987-1995. Software Engineer. (The company was known as Computer Networking Specialists, then renamed to Curriculum Networking Specialists, then was bought by Chancery Software... and the cornerstone product still lives on elsewhere as ClassWorks.)
• Clarkwood Software (Lynnwood, WA/San José, CA) active 1995-2016. Clarkwood Software is where I have gone for creative release, to work on products and ventures that don’t fit into my day job.
• Walla Walla College 1995. BSEE (Electrical Engineering) cum laude

My goal — whether it’s as a software engineer, a technical leader, or as a development manager — is to bring a calm, deliberative presence to an often-chaotic environment.

My résumé would reflect a pragmatic passion for iOS and Mac software development: the passion necessary to release quality software, and the pragmatism necessary to release quality software.

If this were my résumé, I’d be sure to include bullet-item buzzwords associated with expertise. Buzzwords like Swift, Objective-C, C, C++, Cocoa, UIKit, Xcode, macOS, iPhone, iPad, and iOS.

If this were the résumé of Bob Clark, surely there would be room to mention low-level expertise in techniques like multiprocessing, networking, and optimization, and could mention source control experience (especially git, subversion, and cvs).

Bob Clark’s résumé might include some words about how I am effective (and happiest) when I am thoroughly and deeply involved in shepherding a product through all phases of development, from inspiration and planning through implementation, deployment, and ongoing maintenance.

A résumé of Bob Clark might have a subtext that building strong products requires building strong teams, and nurturing the health of a team is one of the most important responsibilities for every professional in the high-tech industry.

(If this were, in fact, the résumé of Bob Clark.)

What an odd landscape has been provided to us by a plethora of social media platforms over the last couple of decades. I dabble in a few sites, and that mix of sites tends to change from year to year.

• Bob Clark on Facebook is where I inflict puns and sporadic hike/bike pictures upon friends and acquaintances.
• Bob Clark on LinkedIn — not a lot of activity other than the chore of staying findable on LI.
• Bob Clark on Threads for intermittent tweet-length observations.
• Bob Clark on BlueSky, yet another social media account; mostly for completeness with a slightly higher ratio of political snark than the others.
• Bob Clark (“fyrmstr”) on Instagram for all my influencer content. (There is no influencer content.)
• The Bob Runs the Numbers Substack holds a collection of long-form opinionated pieces with numerical underpinnings.
• Don’t Let The Smoke Out, also on Substack, is the home of The BBQ Manifesto and is a holding place for further explorations of things out of which one oughtn’t let the smoke.

This plethora of social networking sites is ... inelegant. Each of them has a slightly different way of doing things. Two-way connections! One-to-many assymetric relationships! Wildly-different character limits! Algorithms! O, the algorithms that will be the death of us all!

And, to make the situation even more inelegant, there’s no good way to social-network between social-networking sites. I see invitations from the same people on LinkedIn and Facebook, and then see them following me on Threads. (Or vice versa, I’ll send invitations to the same people on different sites.)

Yuck! It offends my delicate sensibilities to have to reproduce the same work over and over.

I am currently a resident of San José ... the Bay Area ... Silicon Valley. For many years I lived in the also-awesome Seattle area. High tech and playing outside is a sublime combination and something that is deeply satisfying for me.

• Family web site: Those Clarks.
• Christmas Newsletters: The Clark Chronicle (December 2024).
• PCT Stevens Pass to Snoqualmie Pass Segment hike.

I have a bookshelf with “Bob’s Top Five Novels.” Right now that shelf includes:

• The Brothers K, David James Duncan
• East of Eden, John Steinbeck
• Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy, Douglas Adams
• The Three-Body Problem, Cixin Liu

There are a number of projects in which I have been involved, from college assignments to just-for-fun tinkering.

• My Macquarium, a project decades in the making.
• Peculiar Occurrences, a Stranger Things homage using individually-addressable Christmas lights on an alphabet board to send messages.
• Occasional grilling-related videos like slow-cooking a brisket and spatchcocking a turkey.
• LED holiday lighting on my home.
• I’m a Big Fan, a terrible payoff for a kind of fun project.
• Distributed processing on the Mac, senior project for my BSEE at Walla Walla College.
• Micromysticism, a four-bit microprocessor done as part of my BSEE.

More Clarkwood Software articles are available from the Extras page.

If you need to contact me without the overhead of “friend”ing me on Facebook, or “connect”ing on LinkedIn, you can find my email address on my résumé.