A humanities liberal arts recent grad’s journey to SF’s tech world

5th month in.

Yesterday, 2 roommates and I had a mini-hackathon. My roommate, S, has been especially keen on encouraging me to go forth with creating a startup/product. He himself is working on automating tasks/promises made across all communication tools. What? how did I get here? This time last year I was skipping around Lucerne on a budget and applying to environmental/education/health fellowships such as the Peace Corps and PiA.

On May 27th, 2016, I graduated from a small liberal arts college in your classic upper-middle/upper-class New England suburb. Less than half a day later, I was on a one-way journey to ~Silicon Valley~.

At school I had [officially] studied Environmental Studies and Health & Society. Two very interdisciplinary and new-ish fields to take classes in, the types of studies that typically elicit an “oh” when asked about what you majored in at school. Unofficially, I had studied economics, political science, gender studies, geosciences, psychology, sociology. Somewhere in between, I had also learned about a spectrum of cultural and social nuances that I had never been exposed to before.

Essentially all of my older relatives were in positions straightforward enough to be described in one sentence, most are engineers in tech, or in a business role (still related to tech). In college, I tried to consolidate an explanation about what I was studying and what I wanted to do in the future. When typing, I would simply use slashes- I’m interested in urban planning/environmental health/climate change/energy/community building/public transit/public health. However, I quickly realized that beyond the niche academic bubble, most people don’t have time to listen. What skills have you accumulated? What are you able to contribute now?

Often times, it seemed like what we sought to achieve- saving the world/staying true to what we were passionate about+ living comfortably- were opposing goals. My main concerns I struggled to balance were: 1) staying true to my interests; 2) not worrying my family (+/- making them proud); 3) living comfortably.

Ultimately, I decided to prioritize geography. I wanted to be close to my family and friends. I chose to be in the Bay Area.

Graduation loomed, I still had no prospects and was in many varying stages of interviews and networking. Then, during one random weekday at breakfast in my dorm’s dining hall, I get an email verification from an airline. My dad decided to simply buy me a one way ticket to San Jose. Either way, unemployed or not, I would be in the Bay.

Friends at the dining table gasped. They were appalled by this spontaneity and uncertainty. That’s insane, is your dad messing with you? Wow, I guess decision making processes could be genetic.

Fast forward to the present, I am now dependent on Slack and living in a Victorian in Hayes/Lower Haight with 4 other recent grad roommates and working at a medium size e-commerce startup in SoMA. Classic SF right? One outlier is that one roommate is a city government fellow! ¿Que? (Eyes widen and mouths gape). The rest fit nicely into the mold, 2 in all-encompassing tech firms where 110K+ all of your living basics: meals, gym, laundry, entertainment are covered, and the last one is hustling on VC funding for his 2-person startup. We may joke about how stereotypical our lives sometime seem, however it is pretty remarkable how uncanny this satirical series (particularly installations 1 & 3) and even HBO’s Silicon Valley depicts our day-to-day. Life is inundated with apps, hacks, and hype words (taking advantage of promos, user testings, free swag, happy hours).

My office owns 3 floors in a gentrified warehouse. It used to be a casket factory. It is open floor plan, everyone has an adjustable standing desk equipped with large iMacs, stocked kitchen with all the snacks and drinks you desire. Unlike my roommates who started with an incoming class with 20 other new hires, my office is relatively small and I’m the only recent grad at my office. I learn that 2.5 years tenure at a company equates to “old-timer”/“lifer”. The dress code is comfort casual. Sneakers, jeans, hoodies, plaid are the norm (something I’m very grateful for) and everybody seems very youthful and excited. Coworkers hug, dogs run around and there’s usually some sort of motorized product getting test driven/flown/raced around.

Most coworkers came from a technical or business background but surprisingly a few came from creative industries- musicians, filmmakers, artists. We have monthly family-style company dinners where ex-employees would come back and catch up with everyone. The past one was Octoberfest-themed and we had pretzels, imported beers, and local sausages. We also have a kegerator.

This is my first time working in a private company (previous internships have been in academic/governmental/research institute/non-profit settings). I really have nothing to compare my current experiences to but it seems that work + play is easily achievable and everyone is able to accomplish and roll out a lot while maintaining a lighthearted and playful environment. While I currently work as a fraud analyst and am not doing anything directly correlated with my studies, I’m finding that there have are some overlapping goals. Both strive to democratize the playing fields for people and enhance the quality of life. Now is this really true? One of my college roommates tells me I’ve sold out…but not even properly as I don’t make nearly as much as the other recent grads in tech. One new SF friend informed me “you’re making poverty-level” (verbatim). It is pretty insane how 110K+ could be the typical base salary for 21–23 year olds here. That is more than double the national average household income. Meanwhile, if I had proceeded to go through with the fellowships I had mentioned earlier, I would have been making half my current salary. I would say I have achieved #2 & #3 of my goals and am currently working on #1, so that could be an ongoing OKR goal (omnipresent acronym no recent grad learns until it’s embarrassingly too late to ask, objectives — key results). KR=how we accomplish objectives + measure our results.

Weekends have been filled with scrounging Craigslist and NextDoor posts, Classpass courses, and housewarmings. At housewarmings, conversations inevitably circles to discussions about people’s offices (“oh, so you must know so and so”), different acquisitions, cool off-sites, which language people code in, what do people even do outside of the office? Everyone seems to be 2 degrees apart. There are certain hype words in this industry that are infiltrating casual conversations…

“empower”. Empower is defined as making someone stronger and more confident. Since I’ve in the Bay, I’ve been constantly encouraged to “take ownership” and “feel empowered” to yada yada. In my first sublet out in Oakland, I had confronted my housemate (again 1 of 5) about being unnecessarily billed for his personal collection of hiking trail mix and he simply encouraged me (yes, he said ‘encourage’ verbatim) to “feel empowered” to simply remove myself from said faulty Splitwise charges. When I asked my coworker if she would like her [reusable] Sprig grocery bag back after she had bequeathed me some chocolate bars in it, she Slack-ed back encouraging me to feel empowered to either take ownership of this bag or recycle it as she already had too many of them. After an interaction like this, I have always come away feeling slightly unnerved. This feels like a new trend that could border as a microagression (yes all instances were done by white counterparts as tech is still predominantly white) where a person is simply removing themselves from the situation at hand by passing off responsibility onto you. It feels patronizing. When is it ever necessary to take ownership of a disposable grocery bag?

With that being said, the overall tone of the tech industry is remarkably positive. I thought this scene of Silicon Valley was very apt. Everyone is hustling on products that make the world a better place. We are personalizing, automating, ridding redundancies, and integrating.

This is a nice atmospheric change for someone who was constantly studying/working on more doomsday-like issues: ecosystem extinction, oceans expanding and destroying coastlines, intensifying natural disasters, climate refugees, food desserts, irremediable health consequences of sedentary lifestyles. Indeed, the scale of the issues are arguably on polar extremes. Either way, it is nice to be able to see change/progress/a difference.

“integrate”. Another frequently used word in the tech industry. Integrating new software, functions, teams, and ideas. One personal ongoing task is to keep working on my one-liner/elevator pitch about my interests and goals. Ideally I will soon be able to synthesize my studies, passions and newly attained “practical” skills from the tech world, all into one nice little tagline. It’s all the hype. With that, not only would it appease my relatives knowing that a $60K/yr liberal arts education didn’t go to waste, but I would also finally have something to put on my Twitter/Tumblr/Instagram/LinkedIn Bio.

Making strides (as some youths would say). Stay tuned for updates on my new startup that too, is going to make the world a better place. Meanwhile, we’re going to keep up with the apps and hacks.

Peace for now,

Beck C -more about the stat sig of this name later