Steve Maguire

Steve Maguire is a software engineer and author known for applying engineering discipline to complex, real-world systems.

He began his career in the early days of personal computing, eventually joining Microsoft when the company was still largely unknown. There, he worked on Macintosh applications and was part of the Excel 1.x development team. After leaving Microsoft, he wrote the award-winning books "Writing Solid Code" and "Debugging the Development Process," both of which became bestsellers and were used in university courses for years.

Steve spent the next 15 years in sales while simultaneously building software to help salespeople do their jobs more effectively. That dual perspective—selling and engineering at the same time—led him to online marketing and web-based tracking.

He later joined ClickMagick, where he spent eight years helping make accurate, real-time tracking accessible to solopreneurs and small business owners. His book, "What the HELL is ROAS?" reflects the through-line of his career: understanding systems well enough to measure what matters—and ignore what doesn’t.