the first time that I ever realized that

I may be interested in just the world of

computer science and engineering was I

had a Playstation that I took apart on

the living-room floor and just wanted to

see what made it tick what how in the

world did like you get these amazing

graphics on a TV screen from this

plastic box my dad walked in and saw

this brand-new PlayStation on the ground

and he he almost lost it but that was

actually that was just kind of like the

way that I always thought through things

was like how does this work like what

makes this tick and so I think that was

kind of the first part where I realized

like oh this is fascinating that there's

there's this whole world's beyond this

plastic box and how it operates so I I

was fascinated by that idea and in

college I pursued that I when I

originally went into that world though

it was in a different subset it was not

software engineering it was as a Systems

Administrator basically managing these

servers making sure that they're always

up making sure that their fault tolerant

and I did that at NYU for NYU's Library

and that was you know you work in a data

center you like work with hardware

you're like lifting up heavy servers

heavy expensive servers and you're

putting them in a rack and pulling them

out and replacing components and that

that really catered to my interest of

like taking apart that original

PlayStation and seeing how it worked

right it was just on a much bigger scale

at this point and so I did that for a

bit this this concept of like systems

engineering and the first time that I

ever really considered software

engineering was on a bus there was this

event it was called startup bus it still

goes on today and the idea is that I

live in New York and there's a variety

of different buses these startup buses

and the idea is you get on the bus with

about 30 people that you don't know

there's about 20 20 technical people

about five designers and five people who

are just experts in business and the

idea is you it's like a hackathon you

form the idea on the bus of hey this is

a startup that I think would be

interesting and you drive to Austin

Texas there's one bus and Mexico City

there's one in San Francisco there's one

in New York they all converge at South

by Southwest and by the time that you

arrived there you have to have built and

launched the startup and you pitch it

and so there's investors there and that

was I was super out of my element I had

no idea how to code outside of just very

simple things that related to my past

career and that was my first kind of

experience with oh my gosh this is

incredible I can make something out of

nothing and I I caught the bug I was

just completely fascinated and so after

the startup bus you know we launched

this this startup we we pitched it and

it was a ton of fun I made lifelong

friends through it but after the fact I

was like I need to find a way into this

new career and I I started applying for

jobs one of them I applied to be an

intern at a company called General

Assembly which teaches folks how to code

and so I I got turned down and I was

like no no I I really want this you

don't understand like I really want to

work here and they were like okay fine

we'll try you out and so I learned an

incredible amount just getting an

opportunity to work with others that

were already immersed in this world of

software engineering and it was over

that period of time where I started to

kind of migrate towards this idea of

api's we were building an application

called hub at the time which showed you

events in your area with all of your

classmates and connections that they may

be attending as well and so it was

during that time period that I was I

became particularly interested in in

api's and getting data from a server

those big boxes in that cold data center

to a cell phone

and so after more and more time I just

grew more and more interested in that

particular focus and in 2016

actually I guess it was in 2015 I

applied for a job at github just out of

the blue thinking there's

away but by just a lot of luck and hard

work I was able to get through the the

interview and then started at github I

kind of took that that knowledge that I

had built over time from working on

api's and got a chance to implement it

here you know

you

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