About · Richard Kern

I’m a product manager, and for the best part of twenty years that has meant New Zealand telecommunications. I work on the connectivity and wholesale products that sit under most people’s internet without them ever having to think about them.

I picked coding back up during the covid lockdowns, when everyone was stuck at home, relearning a bit through The Odin Project and freeCodeCamp. It was never meant as a career change. I’d got tired of having ideas for small, useful tools and then either paying someone to make them or letting them go. So what I build tends to be narrow and practical, pointed at problems I already understand rather than whatever happens to be fashionable.

At the moment that’s two things: this site, and a rebuild of the Westgate Baptist Church website in Auckland, where I volunteer as tech lead. Both sit on the same stack, which is half the reason they exist. Two projects that teach each other.

The bigger dream is the kit-build side of aviation and cars: an experimental aircraft, or a kit car put together in a shed rather than bought finished. For now that’s mostly vicarious, a handful of YouTube channels I follow while telling myself I’ll be in a position to have a real go one day. This site is the small version of getting off the couch and building something of my own, outside the day job, instead of only watching other people do it. Running is part of the same shift, the one long project I’ve managed to keep going.

The links below are the best way to reach me.