News & Opinion
5 Reasons You Should Hire Richie Rump Today.
We’re discontinuing our apps (not the First Responder Kit scripts, just the apps), which means I’m laying off Richie Rump, my developer that’s worked with me for the last decade.
Calling him “my developer” doesn’t do justice to Richie’s role here, and he’s really humble, so I wanted to lay out the top 5 reasons you should hire him.
5. He’s got >25 years of lead/architecture experience. When I met him, he’d already been a Principal Engineer, a consultant, a manager, a senior analyst, and more. Calling him “my developer” is awful and I should have stopped it long ago, because he’s an architect first.
4. He’s an extraordinary self-motivated, self-starter. I’m a terrible manager: I just point at the horizon, I describe what the destination will look like, and I dictate very few architecture components if any. He researches everything else, writes a plan, and comes back to me at great points for sanity checks. Then, he builds everything out.
3. He builds really reliable stuff. Right from the get-go, he wanted to do test-driven development, and I got on board. As a result, we’ve been able to build a lot of different tools with a lot of different technologies, some of which soldier on for years unattended. Then, when we want to update something, he’s able to jump back into that untouched code with confidence – stuff he’s long since forgotten – and make changes that he can test, knowing he’s gonna be able to catch problems before they ship.
2. He embraces AI. He was an early adopter of Cursor, and loves trying stuff out to see where it will legitimately help us iterate faster, and where it produces garbage. He loves technology, loves experimenting, and stays up to date.
1. If I could keep him, I would. I’ll be honest, dear reader: if it were up to me, you would never have the chance to poach him from me. I kept him locked up my basement (that’s what we call Florida around here) and didn’t sing his praises over the last decade. I lived in fear that another company would poach him from me, because if it wasn’t for working with Richie, I wouldn’t want to work with anyone else. I honestly wanted to coast out into retirement with Richie, but unfortunately, this whole AI thing means I’m just not comfortable hosting apps with other peoples’ data right now. If it wasn’t for that, you would never get the chance.
But you DO have the chance, so if you have interesting data and architecture roles, you should email him at jorriss@gmail.com. I want him to find the right landing spot at the kind of place that employs people who read this blog.
People like you, dear reader.
Update 2026/07/30 – he landed at Straight Path. Congratulations to Mike, Richie, and everyone involved, and I’m excited to see what they build together.
Free, 3× a week
Get my new posts by email
Three posts a week, plus a Monday roundup of the best database news from around the web.
Awww, thank you Brent! ?
My pleasure sir! You rock!
Does it make sense to post about Richie on LinkedIn? Richie have you done the flower exercise to help evaluate opportunities from a different perspective?
The Flower Exercise is a classic, comprehensive self-assessment tool featured in the long-running career guide What Color Is Your Parachute? by Richard N. Bolles. It is designed to help individuals gain deep insight into their professional and personal preferences by visually mapping their “ideal” life and work landscape across seven “petals.”
Rather than starting with job titles or industries, the exercise works from the inside out, helping you identify what you truly value and what you are best at.
The Seven Petals of the Flower
Each petal represents a key factor in your career and life satisfaction:
People: What kind of people do you enjoy working with? (e.g., mentors, creative peers, highly analytical thinkers).
Working Conditions: In what environment do you perform best? (e.g., remote, quiet, collaborative, flexible hours, nature-filled).
Transferable Skills: What are the things you can do and love to do? (These are the core strengths you bring to any role, such as organizing, teaching, problem-solving, or system-building).
Fields of Interest: What are your favorite subjects or areas of knowledge? (What do you naturally gravitate toward learning or talking about?)
Salary & Responsibility: What are your financial requirements and your preferred level of responsibility?
Geographical Location: Where do you want to live, and what kind of community do you want to be a part of?
Purpose/Goals: What impact do you want to have on the world? What gives you a sense of meaning?
Why It’s Effective
Holistic Approach: It treats your career as part of your life rather than a separate compartment, ensuring your work aligns with your overall lifestyle goals.
Self-Directed Discovery: It forces you to define your own terms of success rather than chasing external trends or roles that might not fit your personality.
Adaptability: It is highly flexible. Whether you are job searching, considering a pivot, or just seeking greater clarity in your current path, the exercise helps you prioritize what matters most to you right now.
How to Use It
Most people work through the exercise by completing a worksheet or a blank “flower” diagram provided in the book or via various online templates. You spend time reflecting on each petal individually, writing down your preferences, and eventually synthesizing them to create a “career profile.” This profile then serves as a filter for evaluating potential job opportunities or life decisions.
Note: If you are exploring this to help clarify your own goals, it is often helpful to keep in mind that your “flower” is meant to evolve. As your life circumstances and priorities change, you can revisit and redraw your petals to reflect the current chapter of your life.
I’d second all that stuff. Having met Richie, talked with him, and seen him present, he knows his stuff.
The big downside is he’s a Miami fan.
Statistics Parser is bad ass work, my dude. I lovingly use it and pass it along to everyone I know doing performance tuning.
Hi Brent,
This kind of an adjacent question, but I’m curious.
Can you elaborate on this closing remark, like are you concerned that advances in AI can potentially lead to a mass data breach?
“.. unfortunately, this whole AI thing means I’m just not comfortable hosting apps with other peoples’ data right now.”
Yep, bingo. AI is making it much easier for less-qualified people to mount more-sophisticated attacks with less cost, and less time.
For a close-to-home example, take a look at the increasing frequency of security holes that have been found in SQL Server itself over the last year.
At SQLBits this year, I had the fun of sitting through a presentation about using AI to find SQL injection vulnerabilities in built-in system stored procedures. There are more newly-discovered ones out there that Microsoft is hard at work patching, that have been out there for years, and nobody knew. It’s pretty scary.
[…] You should also check out Richie Rump – he’s on the market! […]
Will the Consultant Toolkit still be offered anywhere? I understand not wanting to host data but will that be on github or someplace to still live on?
No, I’ve stopped sales on the Consultant Toolkit, and existing customers will get updates for the next year.
Does it just stop working after that, or keep working but with no future updates?
It will keep working as long as it keeps working, but if it breaks for any reason, it’s unsupported. I won’t be doing fixes on it.
[…] Skip to content You should hire Richie Rump. Here's why. […]