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About

I'm Marcel Scherzer, an AWS Solutions Architect who builds systems that scale and writes about the practical stuff that actually matters.

What I Do​

Senior Solutions Architect designing cloud infrastructure and distributed systems for production environments. I hold the AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional certification and spend my days solving architecture problems that range from "how do we cut this AWS bill in half" to "how do we handle 10M requests without falling over."

Former CTO & Co-founder of a tech startup that we successfully exited. That experience taught me more about pragmatic architecture decisions, cost optimization, and technical leadership than any certification ever could.

Why HerdingBits Exists​

This site started as my personal reference notebook—a place to document configs, scripts, and workflows so I wouldn't have to Google the same Git commands for the hundredth time. Then I started making YouTube videos to get better at explaining technical concepts, and the site became the companion guide.

Turns out other developers find this stuff useful too. Who knew?

What You'll Find Here​

AWS & Architecture - Production-ready patterns, cost optimization strategies, and the kind of infrastructure decisions you make when it's your money on the line.

Developer Workflows - Git workflows, Docker setups, VS Code configs, and automation scripts. The stuff that makes you faster once you stop fighting your tools.

Guides & Configs - Written versions of my YouTube videos with copy-paste commands. Because pausing videos to copy code is annoying.

Outdoor Adventures - Stories from mountainbiking, hiking, and road cycling that somehow connect to better development habits. It makes sense in context, I promise.

The Trail Theme​

I spend a lot of time on trails—mountain biking, hiking, road cycling. There's something about the rhythm of pedaling or hiking that helps me think through architecture problems. Plus, "herding bits up the trail" is a better mental model than "pushing code to production."

The bit herder pup mascot? That's the spirit animal of every developer who's ever tried to wrangle a distributed system into behaving.

What I'm Working On​

  • Growing the YouTube channel with practical AWS and developer content
  • Writing more architecture deep-dives and startup-to-scale guides
  • Building tools and templates that make AWS less painful for developers
  • Exploring consulting and teaching opportunities

Get In Touch​

If you're working on something interesting in the AWS/architecture space, or you just want to talk about trails and code, reach out.