I like helping people do what they want to do.
A common refrain from middle managers is to help you do “more of what you like and less of what you don’t”.
Most managers don’t know how to do this.
I do.
Do I love the game? No.
But I sure know how to play it. Here's how I got here.
EasyPost
PA→SF
I was going to be a high school Spanish teacher. New York City would be my home, teaching my career, and comedy my passion. Alas, the winds of state certification blew my plane off course.
I found a job as a support engineer at a logistics API company called EasyPost. At this startup, the cliché that “you wear many hats” was true: in name, I was a support engineer, but in practice I was a project, product, and operations manager; I was a sales engineer, onboarding specialist, and technical program manager; and none of this counted what was effectively therapy for clients that emailed in to the support team.
EasyPost
SF → Utah
Five months after starting my career in San Francisco, my manager pitched me on hiring and leading a team in Lehi, Utah.
I accepted and went to Utah.
I did what I went there to do: building out the team to sixteen support engineers and replaced myself with three team leads.
I learned along the way what it means to truly need to delegate; I discovered the power of presence of mind as an indicator in the hiring process; and I established coherent processes in my wake.
EasyPost → Affirm
Utah → SF
When all was said and done, I moved into a technical role at EasyPost back in SF. I was still working at EasyPost at first. In an act of fateful timing, I then joined Affirm as a Sr. Technical Account Manager on September 23, 2019.
I was presenting at PostCon on behalf of EasyPost while weighing Affirm’s job offer.
Through the pandemic, I continued at Affirm. I started managing the Technical Account Management team. I hired, promoted, and coached. I advocated. I consoled. I facilitated. I discovered, scoped, and defined; I encouraged, I refocused, I aligned. I directed and diffused. I reframed. Most importantly: I learned the game, inside and out.
Affirm→Make Work Suck Less
SF→Philadelphia
Then I moved back home. Having completed my journey from coast-to-coast-and-back, I left Affirm to start helping others Make Work Suck Less.