About

I'm Zach Mowrey. I'm VP of Engineering at Yard Management Solutions, where I focus on delivering value to customers through software engineering excellence - from my own hands and from the organization I lead.

I've spent 26 years in technology, 12 in engineering, 6 deep in cloud infrastructure, and the last 3 navigating the AI revolution alongside everyone else. My strongest work happens at the intersection of software and infrastructure - the place where code meets the systems that run it.

What I Believe

• Simple is better than smart. Done is better than perfect.
• Stay out of the way of brilliant people unless it really matters.
• Every line of code is a liability. Every abstraction is a bet on the future. Make fewer bets, and make them count.

What I Write About

This blog covers the things I spend my days thinking about: DevOps, SRE, platform engineering, software development practices, quality assurance, and the craft of building systems that actually work. I'm interested in one-piece flow, lean manufacturing principles applied to software, and proofs-of-concept from real projects.

Lately, the balance has tilted toward AI and agentic workflows - not because it's trendy, but because it's the most consequential shift in how we build software that I've seen in 26 years. I'm enamored, excited, and - if I'm honest - a little anxious. This revolution is going to challenge assumptions we've built entire systems on, and navigating that well will take more than good engineering. But that's part of what makes it worth writing about.

Who This Is For

Someone like me, a few years back. Someone on the learning path who hasn't picked up everything yet - and wants concrete, immediate value from every visit. No paywalls, no newsletter gates, no monetization. Just useful information from someone who's been in the trenches.

Outside the Terminal

I'm a fantasy and sci-fi nerd with a large book collection - Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, George R.R. Martin, Tolkien, The Expanse, and plenty more. I also have a collection of beautiful business and strategy books that are rapidly collecting dust. I play D&D. I listen to metal from the 70s through the 2000s, some punk, and some genuinely weird music that I won't try to defend.

I watch documentaries about mathematical problems I have no hope of understanding, just for the joy of realizing how little I understand of this tiny slice of reality.

I'm a Tampa Bay Lightning fan. I have a wife, two kids, two dogs, and roughly a thousand bills.

History and society weigh on me, but not in a heavy way - more like a good backpack on a long hike. I study how we solved problems in the past because the problems rarely change, only the tools do. And honestly, that's encouraging. We've been figuring things out for a long time. No reason to stop now.