CODE IN TOKYO

After 30 Years as an Engineer, I Reread My Skill Sheet—and Finally Understood What My Job Actually Is

The other day, I updated my skill sheet.

As a freelancer, it is a sales document I revise regularly.

When I finished writing and read it back, something struck me.

When you line up 30 years of projects, the true nature of your job comes into view.

That is what I want to talk about today.

A Quick Career Summary

I entered this industry in 1996.

My first job was at a contract development company.

Back then, there was no cloud. Servers were physical machines humming away in a corner of the office.

After that, I spent 13 years in the development division of a major web production company.

I did a bit of everything: building sites in Java and PHP, project management, bridge SE work, and eventually a stint as development department manager.

Then, in 2014, I went independent and became a freelancer.

I have been writing code in the field ever since.

At First Glance, There Is No Consistency

The projects on my skill sheet look something like this:

A truly scattered list.

Different industries. Different scales. Different tech stacks.

As a sales document, it practically invites the question: “So, what exactly is your specialty?”

But My Role Was the Same Every Time

Then I noticed something in the “role” column of each project.

Almost every entry contains the same words:

Technical research. Sample program development. Infrastructure setup.

In other words, my job goes like this.

I get called in at the stage when nobody knows how to do it yet.

I investigate.

I build the first working version.

I set up a working environment.

I teach the team how to use it.

Once things are on track, the team takes it from there.

In short, my job has always been to be the “first person” on a project.

Demand for the “First Person” Is Surprisingly High

Come to think of it, every project has a beginning.

A company wants to use LLMs, but nobody in-house has ever touched one.

They want to go serverless on AWS, but nobody can design the architecture.

They want a POC to verify feasibility, but they have no idea who to ask.

Getting past this “first wall” is the hardest part.

Reading books and documentation does not produce a working system.

So they call someone who can build a working system while figuring it out.

The reason I could move across industries and technologies for 30 years is not that my expertise is broad.

It is that “researching an unfamiliar technology, making it work, and handing it over” is itself my specialty.

AI Has Made the “First Person” Even Faster

In recent projects, the way I do this job has changed dramatically.

For example, I recently built a system that provisions AWS backend environments for multiple web applications almost at the push of a button.

By generating CDK code from requirement definitions using AI, we cut the implementation period dramatically.

In a form-editor POC for government agencies, I refine the specifications during requirement meetings by modifying a working program on the spot.

What used to be “let me take this back to the office—give me two weeks” is now a live screen changing during the meeting.

The time it takes to deliver the “first working version” has shrunk by an order of magnitude thanks to AI.

For someone in my line of work, this is close to a revolution.

What Changed in 30 Years, and What Did Not

Physical servers became the cloud.

Handwritten design documents became CDK code.

And my implementation partner changed from humans to AI.

The technology has been completely replaced.

But the essence of the job has not changed.

Take something nobody has done before, figure it out, make it work, and hand it over.

In 1996 and in 2027, that is all I have ever done.

A skill sheet is a curious thing. While you are writing it, it looks like nothing more than a list of projects.

Only when you line up 30 years of it does it tell you who you really are.

If your project is missing its “first person”—

that job is probably my specialty.

Contact

I provide system development and technical consulting using AI, AWS, and Claude Code.

Contact form: https://holly-money-e94.notion.site/390ff30cf18c8086a676fe630d171873