My name is Caleb. I live in Taipei, Taiwan. I'm a software engineer and founder. I have a degree in Creative Writing from the University of Houston and nine years of professional software engineering experience. Right now I'm growing a software engineering contracting and consultancy firm called 508.dev, organizing coworking events in Taiwan, writing blog posts, doing various volunteer engineering work in Taiwan, and studying Mandarin. The best way to reach me is by email, and my address is caleb at calebjay dot com. For 508 related inquiries, that would be caleb at 508.dev.
Skills
I'm able to do basically anything in fullstack at this point. I've yet to be presented with something I can't build, and I've built from scratch several startup's prod apps. I'm sure I'd stumble on building a super complex API or mobile app, but that's what LLMs are for :)
When building, I prefer to keep things simple, and lately I've been a big fan of self-hosting or just chucking things on VPSs.
See all the tech I've touched on my resume.
Professional History
Looking for a brief overview of my professional experience? See the short version of my resume.
Basically, I've spent the last 10 years working at various startups, except for 2 years working at a design and development agency, where we worked mostly on startup-style projects for Google.
Since I moved to Taiwan, I've led the intial development of two YC startup apps: Reactwise, and Cofactr. Other than that, I've been working on building out my co-op design and development firm, 508.dev.
I'm a bootcamp kid, I've written about that:
- How I Became a Software Engineer
- How to Search for a Job as a Bootcamp Grad
- How this Coding Bootcamp Grad Found a Job
- How to Use LinkedIn as a Coding Bootcamp Grad
Before I was an engineer, I was a recruiter, and before that, I was a teacher, and before that, I was a project manager at a publishing company, and before that, I was the VP of international sales development at AIESEC Taiwan. I have some old blogs from that previous go at living in Taiwan:
Professional Goals
My current largest focus is on striking the correct balance between leveraging AI tools to increase my productivity, while maintaining codebases of good quality and maintainability. This mostly just involves trying out every AI tool as it comes out for a couple weeks and taking a lot of notes. I'm really excited about ThePrimeagen's 99 tool. OpenClaw I also really like, but I've yet to find a way to make it very useful in without leaving gaping security holes that I'm not comfortable with.
I've founded a general software engineering LLC, 508.dev, and I've been developing this business further to enable my team to reach a level of income that lets us begin spending time developing our own products or platforms. 2025 has been an explosive year for us in terms of revenue and new members. This year I'd like to develop alternative revenue streams, such as internally developed apps, games, or services.
I'm making a content play, for now mostly blog posts, but also youtube videos, as soon as I can find time to edit. I have a theory that if I focus on publishing on the fediverse, I can develop a small niche audience that's much more highly engaged than the larger audience one would try to develop on youtube.
Values
All people are equal. Systemic racism is real, and harmful. Black Lives Matter. Trans rights are human rights.
People are inherently good.
Taiwan is a sovereign nation.
Information should be free and easily accessed. In fact, it should be actively given to people that could find it useful. So therefore, efforts to hide, obscure, or obfuscate information are bad. I support libraries and the taxes that pay for them, the free software movement and the organizations that support it such as GNU, whistle-blowers, journalists, grey-hat hackers, and bio-hackers. I don't support efforts to suppress the free flow of information, such as many aspect of international copyright law, big pharma lobbying, whistle-blower crackdowns, governments that restrict information and harm journalists, or highly expensive scientific publications. When I write code, I try to write extensive documentation as I do so, with the objective of my non-technical coworkers being able to read and understand what my code is doing. I prefer libre tools to do my work, such as Emacs and Linux. I love teaching. Web accessibility should be first-class consideration when building a web application. I welcome anybody and everybody to email me about anything they think I can help them with understanding better. Also, education should be free.
Climate change is real and is the number one existential threat we face. I try to do my small part in avoiding climate-damaging activities. I prefer jobs in locations to which I can walk, bike or take public transit. I believe cars should be almost entirely banned inside most major cities (among many other reasons). I support public transit, bicycle lanes, and the taxes that support these things. I probably won't work for, or create applications for, climate-damaging corporations in industries such as Oil and Gas.
People are interconnected in the current era as well as to our past and future in an inextricable network. Attempting to assert a perfectly independent identity is a fallacy. This interconnectedness comes with a responsibility of mutual aid, or at the very least, mutual respect.
One aspect of the inseperability of onesself from society is the fact that one's psychology is established in certain unchangeable ways from childhood. That said, culture and personality are still malleable. I'll engage in moral relativism to an extent, but I'll not compromise on my core values in order to validate someone else's, no matter the long history or culture that established those values. I'll also always try to maintain good grace, and I reject the notion that some people are "just like that," especially when that notion is used to imply that one region of people are all "a certain way." That's just racism with extra steps.
Violence is almost never an acceptable solution to a problem, but it is a valid last resort. In a revolutionary context, it seems violent tactics typically just invite the full might of a State's military and police response, getting a revolution squashed more quickly. Trying to use the techniques of imperialists against themselves intuitively feels wrong. The few times it works, it seems to establish just as violent and oppressive societies as the one that was overthrown, or worse: see the PRC and the cultural revolution for an example. For me, day to day, I can't think of any reason I would need to apply violence to any situation I'm reasonably likely to encounter, and will always strive to avoid doing so.
"Value" and "worth" are words that have been semantically overloaded by capitalists. Take for example "a person's value," in that sense the word is taken to mean a person's instrumental value (their ability to produce), moral worth, your personal attachment to them (e.g. you would "value" a family member more than someone in a different country), and how much of a given scarce resource should be allocated to them. We should stop using "value" like that and be more specific.
Self determination is good. Violation of sovereignty is generally bad. I support the sovereign nation of Taiwan and reject CPC imperialist efforts towards conquering it. It also means I support a free Hong Kong. If you have fallen under the sway of CPC propaganda and believe Taiwan isn't a sovereign nation, email me and I'll help you understand why you're wrong. I reject all forms of imperialism, including those of Russia against Ukraine, the United States against Venezuela as well as basically the whole world, and Israel against Palestine.
Life is short and should be enjoyed. I reject restrictive dogmas that demonize human tendencies. I celebrate good food, friendship, and happiness. I reject excessive materialism.
Capitalism isn't working to serve the needs of humans anymore. We should eliminate artificial scarcity, and begin planning today for what we intend for humans to do when we no longer have to justify our existence through labor. It seems nobody is planning for this inevitability.
Everything ICE is doing in the USA is bad and it should be disbanded. That said, I have no hope for the USA to prevent itself from sliding into full fascism, and so my goal is to never step foot there again.
The CPC is engaging in Han Chauvinism and attempting to create a State Race that in English it calls "Chinese" and in Mandarin it calls "華人." If you consider yourself "Chinese," I challenge you to consider what your identity means to you if you leave aside considerations of State or government. Do you believe the CPC has the right to decide for you who are members of your ethnicity? The definition will be stretched to enforce a monoculture that fits within the values of the CPC, and to aid the CPC in its cultural imperialism: note that people in Xinjiang are now considered "Chinese" (even though they maintain a token minority classification), and this Han Chauvinism is a key aspect of the CPC's imperialist efforts against Taiwan. I reject this attempt by the CPC to claim a mythological mantle of heaven that allows them to rule from the position of inheritor of all governments in the history of the region.
My political ideology is best described as "anarchist."
Hobbies
I'm currently obsessed with self hosting, and have deployed a self hosted netflix alternative, Audible alternative, comic book reader, two ebook readers and OPDS servers (second), Spotify alternative, events management platform, public polling platform, Google Photos alternative, RSS reader, two JIRA alternatives (second) , business expense and invoice tracking software, time tracking software, a youtube video backup tool, and Google Drive alternative. I have more things I want to deploy, and I get new ideas from the really cool Github repo Awesome Self Hosted. I learned a ton about unix and devops doing this, and is why I deploy most personal projects now on a VPS.
I really love photography
I like writing, and I think everyone should write occasionally in a journal, or even just stream of consciousness. I'd like to write sci-fi novels eventually. I believe writing by hand is very effective, and am running several experiments with pen and paper right now.
Thus obviously I really like reading, particularly sci-fi novels.
I like cooking and baking, and am really good at both.
I like learning about older tools and technologies. That means I like being the Emacs guy at work. (Update: I switched to nvim.) (Update2: Now I use both lol.) I'm constantly trying to improve my vim skills. I like learning about various GNU command line tools, though I still have a lot to learn. I prefer building simple, accessible, static webpages whenever the opportunity arises. If I can get away with it, I like to write web applications in plain old Javascript without any frameworks, although this is rarely possible. If I can really get away with it, I like building websites without any Javascript at all, although this typically just leads to me building whatever site in some sort of server-side rendering type tool such as Hugo or Django.
I like playing videogames, sometimes. Mostly lately I just like setting up streaming from my PC to my phone or Steam Deck, or building out a really cool emulation setup that I never use. I have a couple blog posts on the subject.
I really like riding motorcycles. I usually rent a motorcycle when I travel. So far I've ridden a motorcycle across Vietnam, around a bit in Japan, around a bit in the French and Italian Riviera, and around a whole lot of Taiwan. I have a lot of riding videos on youtube. I also blog about this.
I like learning languages. I speak a bit of Japanese and a bit more Chinese. Fluency in Mandarin is a lifelong goal. At this point I'm pretty good. Here's a video of me giving a presentation in Mandarin at a g0v hackathon.
I love traveling. I can sometimes feel stuck somewhere, and life seems very, very short. Traveling alleviates those feelings. Plus, I love food, and traveling is a great way to eat.
I'm idly into horology and am a slow-burning watch collector. I blog about this, too. I enjoy modding watches. My projects so far have been a crystal swap on a seiko turtle, a bezel and caseback swap on a Vostok, a dial and handswap on a seiko skx007 that ended in disaster, and a failed attempt to repair a broken datewheel on a pagani.
I like meditating.
I like weightlifting, and believe it's crucial in keeping up my mental health.
I'm getting into drumming lately.
I love camping, and am always open to backpacking trips!