About Karsten Silz
Summary
I have worked as a full-stack Java developer for 23 years in Europe and the US. In 2004, I co-founded a software product start-up in the U.S. I led product development for 13 years and left after the company was sold successfully. Since 2017, I have been a contractor in Germany and the UK (Spring Boot, Angular, Flutter). I co-founded the SaaS start-up “Your Home in Good Hands” as CTO in 2020.
More Details
I grew up in East Germany, behind the Iron Curtain. I wrote my first BASIC program on a Sinclair Spectrum ZX81 in 1984 and never looked back. I got a Master’s degree in Computer science from the Dresden University of Technology in 1996.
My first job after college was with American Management Systems. From 1996 through 2001, I worked in Sweden, The Netherlands, Berlin, and Great Britain. My next job was at Mundwerk, a start-up in Berlin, from 2001 to 2002. I then became a contractor in 2003.
My biggest adventure so far began in 2004 — Seldon Systems, a software product start-up near Atlanta, Georgia, USA. For 12 years, I was the VP of Engineering and led the development of a monitoring software product. My co-founder and I successfully sold that company in 2016.
From 2017 to 2019, I was a Java contract developer in Stuttgart, Germany. I followed my wife to Milton Keynes, UK, in July 2019.
In January 2020, I embarked on a new adventure - “Your Home in Good Hands”, a SaaS start-up for cat-sitters in the UK. I’m the CTO & sole developer for the Java back-end, a web front-end, and native mobile apps.
Contact
Reach out on LinkedIn or Xing, follow me on Twitter, or drop me an email at ksilz@outlook.com.
In my free quarterly newsletter, I recommend the tools you need to build Java applications today by observing what all Java developers do. Check it out here:
Developer job ads dipped 30% in 2023. Monthly Stack Overflow questions dropped 42% since ChatGPT, with JavaScript at -56% and Python at -59%. Since June 22, Udemy's first-time Python course purchases have outpaced Java's 7.1 million to 2 million. Job ads for Quarkus and Micronaut continue to rebound.
See All Issues & Subscribe
Privacy & Disclaimer
The privacy policy for this site is available here.
- I use Disqus to host comments. The Disqus privacy policy is available here.
- I use Substack for my mailing list. The Substack privacy policy is available here.
- I use Short.com for link shortening. The Short.cm privacy policy is available here.
The disclaimer for this site is available here.
About this site
I build this site with Hugo, the world’s fastest framework for building websites.
The market leader in cloud-based image and video management, Cloudinary, hosts the images.
Disqus, the leading networked community platform, hosts comments for blog articles.
Substack makes it simple for a writer to start an email newsletter. It hosts my weekly newsletter.
I use Short.io, an excellent URL shortening service.