Career Path of a Product Engineer at Graphistry

I dropped out of college when I was 19 and worked in food service for years. At some point, I wanted to make more money and work on more interesting things.

So, I went back to university to study computer engineering. I completed a couple of summer research projects. One was on distributed computing for astrophysics statistics.

The other project involved autonomous vehicles and synthesizing controls for them. I ended up focusing more on simulation and how to match simulation performance with actual vehicle performance.

I also participated in an entrepreneurship program at the U of A called the McGuire program. We developed a business plan and explored possibilities, but we didn't take it further.

Then I applied to grad school, but a Google recruiter reached out. I interviewed with YouTube, which is owned by Google. They extended an offer that was significantly more money than a PhD research program.

Even though I thought I wanted to do research, someone at YouTube presented their work on compilers, which wasn't interesting to me. This proved to be the case; I didn't find the work I did at YouTube super interesting.

Also, as a junior developer, I didn't have input into product design and my tasks were limited by the team's needs. In retrospect, though, that experience has been super valuable.

I worked at YouTube for a couple of years and then left. I thought I was crazy for leaving a high-paying role with many opportunities, but it wasn't working for me. I had some savings, so I explored personal development, growth, introspection, and meditation.

Eventually, I needed money again, so I found a startup called Down Dog, which makes a yoga app. However, it wasn't a good culture fit, which felt bad. So I left and tried starting a startup with a friend.

We were going to be interviewed for Y Combinator, but he didn't want to be in charge of the company. That was fun though; I learned a lot by prototyping. Then I tried another startup with another person.

I was still learning a lot, but I was also just kind of slapping things together outside of my expertise. This was doing video chat during the pandemic. Then I was really out of money again.

I did part-time software engineering, which was nice because I had more free time. I was only working 20-30 hours a week, and it was variable. By then, I had about four years of professional experience, which helped me move to a more senior engineer level.

After that, crypto was getting popular, so I found a DAO to work for. That was fun conceptually, but it became frustrating because it didn't make business sense. That was driving me crazy, as I want to work on things that make sense to me.

I left that job because I was frustrated. I was studying complex systems. Following that, I met someone at a cafe who works for a company called Graphic Street, where I am working now.

It's great because my interests are understood, and I think what we're doing makes sense. We have customers like Blackbird AI, which does social media analytics. We also have customers in supply chain and cybersecurity.

There are multiple verticals where it totally makes sense from a business perspective. The CEO is also a great engineer, so I'm being led by someone I believe in. I feel a lot of alignment with what I'm working on now.