Ben Sinclair

Hey! I'm Ben. I’m a Christian (a child of God), husband, father, son, friend and I work at Tithe.ly. I'm passionate about Jesus, finance and technology. These writings are for me, however, maybe they’ll be interesting to others. Thanks for stopping by!
October 25, 2022

Why we use Domain-Driven Design and Hexagonal Architecture

We have been using Domain-Driven Design and Hexagonal Architecture for several years in both legacy and newer products we are building. This post is dedicated to why we use Domain-Driven Design and Hexagonal Architecture. One of our engineers, Josh McRae made the call all those years ago to utilize these approaches and I’m glad we did....
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October 25, 2022

Importance of engaging in distributed workplaces

Something on my mind at the moment is the importance of engagement, especially in a distributed workplace. The people who are going to do really well at distributed work are those who engage. What do I mean when I say “engage”? • Participate in your team and company wide meetings. • Communicate to your internal team effectively. • Comm...
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October 25, 2022

Security for start-up software companies

I’ll admit, when I started my first company 9 years ago, security wasn’t something that crossed my mind. I just wanted to build great software and fast. I think a lot of start-ups have this same mentality. Get the product out the door and worry about “all the things” later. This article talks about some of the things start-ups should b...
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October 25, 2022

We started using Basecamp. Should you?

I’ve read Jason Fried’s books and really like them. I’ve known about his software Basecamp for years but always thought of it as some project management tool I’d never need. Boy was I wrong. Basecamp to me isn’t a project management tool anymore. Basecamp is a communication platform. And it comes with a philosophy around how we should ...
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October 25, 2022

Encouragement goes a long way

No matter who you are, a leader, a peer, a follower, valuing someone by encouraging them is big. Whether you’re all in the same room, on the other side of the office or working remotely, it’s quite easy to fail to remember to encourage those around you. Some people are just natural encouragers. Others, like me, not so much. Some people...
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October 25, 2022

Estimating deadlines in Scrum - the 4 layers of certainty

We started rolling out Scrum across our engineering team this year and we’ve seen some great success so far. When building software, the “when will it be finished” question is always looming in the face of Product Owners. Attaching deadlines to Scrum is possible. It can, however, be complicated when it comes to committing to meet those...
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October 25, 2022

Onboarding and mentoring new engineers remotely

Onboarding engineers is generally an afterthought for most engineering teams. When you start a project you’re not thinking about how new people are going to be introduced in the future. It’s one of those things I think everyone wants to spend time on but let’s face it, we are too busy coding. This post talks about some practical ways y...
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October 25, 2022

Moving from a traditional office to fully remote

After being acquired by Tithe.ly, a 100% remote company, my team from Elvanto in the last 12 months has gone from everyone in the office to almost all working remotely. I wanted to share our journey in this post. The idea of having remote employees is super scary for most employers. Questions start to roll around in our brains thinking...
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October 25, 2022

Hiring remote engineers

Before working at Tithe.ly, I was a little old school at my company Elvanto where everyone worked in the office. Now that I’m at Tithe.ly, they’ve introduced me to the world of remote — and I absolutely love it! I’ll do a write up on switching from traditional office space to working remotely in another post. But for now, I wanted to t...
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October 25, 2022

Share knowledge freely

I’m no night owl. I’m not really a morning person either. I love my sleep. I always have. When I cannot sleep, which is rare, it’s frustrating. Tonight is one of those nights. The thing in my head Tonight I was laying in bed contemplating how people or companies who share information freely are successful. Not everyone is successful wh...
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