About the Author

Basics

My name is Steven Tammen. I currently work in Warner Robins Georgia as a civilian employee of the AFSC Software Directorate, United States Air Force. My team in particular does full-stack web applications with C# (ASP.NET Core) on the backend and Angular on the frontend. At present, I am an assistant project manager, and help coordinate all the work for a group of ~18 software developers that are split into three separate scrum teams.

I graduated from the University of Georgia in December 2019 with three majors: Computer Science, Ancient Greek, and Classics. I spent the first two years of my college experience (out of a total of 5.5 – that’s what changing your major twice and ending up a triple major does to you) at Georgia Tech studying engineering, before deciding I wanted to learn Ancient Greek in college for the sake of my Bible teaching ministry. Georgia Tech is excellent for engineering, but Ancient Greek is something that it doesn’t even offer – hence why I ended up at UGA. You can see more about me, including things I did in college, in my CV.

Hobbies and interests

My intellectual interests center in large part around optimization and the pursuit of maximal efficiency across all facets of life, with concentrations in areas like productivity, gear, software, exercise, nutrition, and health.

Here’s some of the things I enjoy in my time outside of work:

  • Theorycrafting about exercise and nutrition. I do follow some of my theories too (so do work out reasonably regularly and eat pretty healthy… as generalizations), but it is honestly the process of trying to optimize these things that I find the most fun. (Relevant xkcd).
  • I’m not big on watching sports, playing video games, or doing stuff on social media, so most of my relaxation time/time spent trying to unwind is taken up by consuming fiction. Books, audiobooks, movies, TV shows, anime—that sort of thing.

I’m also a Christian, and spend a lot of time on things relating to my faith. As already linked above, if you are interested, I run a separate ministry site for all of my writings related to Christianity.

Contact

In general, I check my email most frequently. But what works for you works for me.

Declaration of biases

General background

I grew up white, Protestant, and middle class as part of a stable and caring family in suburban America. I went through the public education system K-12 in relatively affluent school districts with good teachers (first in Florida, then in Georgia). I graduated from the University of Georgia summa cum laude as a triple major (Computer Science, Ancient Greek, and Classics).

For these reasons, I have not had personal experience with many of the hardships that other people face (such as poverty, racism, instability at home, and general lack of opportunities).

I do try to remind myself often that a lot of the advantages I had growing up in truth had very little to do with me or choices that I made; in other words, that a large measure of where I am today is due to what other people invested in me rather than my own personal merits.

Employment

I work as a software engineer in a civilian division of the Air Force, under the wider umbrella of the United States Department of Defense.

I am proud to support our servicemembers. Our military and especially our government are not perfect, but I am in no way ashamed of doing what I do in support of our armed forces and our country in general.

Other organizational and institutional entanglements

I suppose I graduated college as a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, although I auto-delete their marketing emails, if that says anything about how much I care about it.

Other than that, I do not have any other organizational or institutional entanglements. So, for example, I am not an active member of any advocacy groups, lobbyist groups, or corporate boards that might create conflicts of interest.

Politics

I am a member of neither political party in America. I certainly have opinions, but find modern politics decidedly distasteful in general. In broad strokes, I dislike politicians (of all political persuasions) and view them as generally dishonest and problematically narcissistic, although I do recognize that the job of political leadership is necessary, and also difficult and thankless.

Rather than getting personally tied up in politics, I instead attempt to live my individual life in accordance with integrity and justice, and let the wider issues fall where they may.

Media sources

I read multiple sides of most issues from publications across the political spectrum (e.g., the New York Times, Fox News). Usually the truth (inasmuch as the actual truth ever really shows up in the mainstream media) lies somewhere in the middle.

I am not very fond of mainstream media sources due to widespread bias and lack of journalistic rigor (e.g., basic fact-checking). I often find the writing of non-affiliated individuals to be much less biased and much more insightful.

Religion

I am a Christian. While by choice I do not belong to any particular denomination or group, my beliefs can probably be fairly labeled as belonging to the classification of “non-denominational evangelical.”

Despite being a Christian, I disagree with much done in the name of Christianity via organized religion. In fact, I generally view most of what passes for Christianity today as quite misguided.

I run a separate site that contains all of my writings on Christianity, if you’d like to read more about what exactly it is that I believe.

I don’t mix my Christianity with my politics because I don’t do politics.

TOC