The short version
I’m Forrester Terry — but most people call me FoFo. I’m a self-taught software engineering manager with 11+ years at Stanford University, where I lead a four-person team that builds and maintains 20+ applications serving 17,000+ faculty and staff across a fleet of 105,000+ devices. Outside of Stanford I run Sweet Papa Technologies, a bootstrapped studio where I build AI-native products and tools on my own terms.
The story
My path into software was not the typical one. I started as IT support — fixing laptops, running scripts, learning by necessity. Over 11+ years at Stanford I taught myself the craft one project at a time: bash scripts became Python tools, Python tools became web apps, web apps became cross-platform applications, and cross-platform applications became AI-powered systems. I went from Technical Consultant to Software Developer, to Software Developer Lead in May 2021, to Manager, Software Engineering in November 2022 — three promotions in 18 months.
Today I lead the development team within Stanford’s Endpoint Engineering & Development group. My team builds and maintains roughly 20 applications used across the university by 17,000+ faculty and staff, on a device fleet of 105,000+ machines. Recent work has spanned AI-powered support tooling with documented seven-figure cumulative savings projections, agentic developer tooling, identity and security infrastructure, and cloud cost optimization.
In parallel, I founded Sweet Papa Technologies — a place where I build and ship things end to end. SPT is where I’ve explored what AI-native development really looks like: shipping a mobile game in roughly 30 hours, running a fully autonomous art-to-Etsy pipeline, building a multi-brain agentic coding assistant, and publishing fine-tuned language models on Hugging Face. Some of it became real product (FoFoClip, ARTbyFOFO, two published Google Play games); some became open source (eGit, startupctl); and some became writing on Dev.to that people actually read.
My consulting practice grew out of all of this. I work with teams that need someone who can wear multiple hats — architect, engineer, manager, AI specialist, DevOps lead — and who can deliver instead of just advising. I’m especially good at the messy seam where traditional software engineering meets the new AI-augmented stack: legacy systems, real users, and a team that needs to actually adopt the tools rather than be replaced by them.
I’m based in the Bay Area. I produce lo-fi music as Sweet Papa and the Tones. I think in systems and analogies. And I’ve built a career on the conviction that the most powerful tools in human history should be accessible to anyone willing to put in the work.
Force Multiplier Engineering
The frame I keep coming back to is Force Multiplier Engineering: problem-first thinking, AI as an amplifier rather than a replacement, and shipping work that’s actually maintainable after I’m gone. I use AI heavily and I know exactly where it falls down. You won’t get vibe-coded disasters from me.
Recognition
- Two “Exceptional Year” performance ratings at Stanford University (2021, 2022) — the top tier of Stanford’s annual review system
- Five-plus consecutive “Very Successful Year” ratings at Stanford University
- Three promotions in 18 months (2021–2022): Software Developer → Lead → Manager
- Spoke at the Jamf Nation User Conference (JNUC) 2022 on Stanford’s Jamf iOS migration; an Apple representative publicly called the Site Mapper solution “innovative”
- Participated in the Stanford Technology Leadership Program (STLP) 2024 cohort
Publicly referenced Stanford work includes Stanford Device Registration (105,000+ devices), Stanford Mobile, the Cardinal Key Installer (32,000+ installs, 92% success rate), and Site Mapper (15,000+ devices, presented at JNUC 2022).