About
4 min read
Tim Armstrong, Founder, Consultant Engineer, Expert in Performance & SecurityWe Build Things That Actually Work
Here’s the thing about most consultancies: They’ll dazzle you with buzzwords, charge you a fortune, and deliver something that barely works. We’re different because we’re engineers first, consultants second.
I once read something that I find to be a core truth:
The most profound technologies are those that disappear.
They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.
-Mark Weiser
I founded Plaintextnerds because I got tired of watching companies struggle with overcomplicated solutions to simple problems. We’re here to simplify, to scale, and secure the world.
The Plaintextnerds Philosophy
We hate unnecessary complexity. If your solution requires a PhD to understand, it’s probably wrong.
We believe in
- D.R.Y, Egoless, Y.A.G.N.I, programming
- Writing code that reads like English (but performs like assembly)
- Questioning everything
- Teaching while we build
Because hoarding knowledge is for people who fear competition.
What We Actually Do
We’re a London-based collective of engineers who’ve been in the trenches. We’ve built everything from the world’s first multi-home 10Gig FTTH networks to blockchain platforms handling billions in assets. We don’t just theorize about scalability, we’ve built solutions that keep humming along at 14ms median response times while handling over 10,000 concurrent requests per second when others get OOM (Out Of Memory) killed handling less than 1/5th of the data.
Our sweet spot? The intersection of “that’s impossible” and “here’s the working proof of concept.”
Our Expertise Includes:
- Performance Engineering: We don’t guess. We measure. Then we make it 1000x faster.
- Network Fundamentals: From optical systems (OTDR, WDM, QAM) to protocol design - we speak packets fluently
- Blockchain & Distributed Systems: Built platforms tracking billions of dollars worth of assets in production
- AI/ML Implementation: Real applications, not vibeware
- Infrastructure at Scale: Handling millions of concurrent connections isn’t theoretical for us
Why We’re Different
Most consultancies are built on information asymmetry; they know something you don’t, and they’ll milk that gap for all it’s worth.
We’re built on the opposite principle: Radical transparency.
We stream our Open Source coding sessions live on Twitch. We publish our findings. We write tutorials that actually teach you how to replicate what we’ve done. Hell, we’ve open-sourced tools like OpenOTDR because the industry’s offerings were genuinely terrible.
This might seem like bad business, but here’s our secret: when you’re genuinely good at solving hard problems, you don’t need to hide behind smoke and mirrors.
Our Track Record Speaks
Working With Us
We don’t do PowerPoints. We don’t do endless strategy meetings. We don’t charge you to tell you what you already know.
We do three things exceptionally well:
- Solve problems others say can’t be solved
- Build systems that are appropriate for your current business objects and foreseeable growth
- Transfer knowledge so you’re only dependent on us if you want to be
If you need someone to maintain your WordPress site, we’re not your team.
If you need to solve real problems, let’s talk.
The Bottom Line
We’re not trying to be the biggest consultancy. We’re not trying to be the most corporate-friendly. We’re trying to be the team you call when everyone else says it can’t be done.
Because while they’re explaining why it’s impossible, we’ll be pushing the working code to production.
Ready to build something that matters?
P.S. - Yes, we know our website is simple. We spent our complexity budget on solving actual problems.