About Me — Edgar San Martin, Jr.
Tell me if this sounds familiar
You grew up in a loving family. People always told you how smart and successful you’d be because they saw you mastering multiplication and division while other kids were still stuck on addition. You tried just enough in school, if you aren’t an overachiever, but never failed to impress. Then came college, where the bar rose higher. You studied harder, partied occasionally, but buzzed nights quickly lost their charm. You found friends who made everything fun (except studying). Graduation arrived, and so did the distance. Maybe you see 10% of those lifelong friends once a year, if that. Work takes over. Days blur into years. Maybe you’re married, maybe you’re at a good place in your career. Most likely, you’re still juggling money problems (even with a six-figure salary). And yet, something feels off. Those people who once told you how smart and successful you’d be? They’re quiet now. Maybe you’ve surpassed their expectations or maybe they were wrong all along. But deep down, you wonder:
What would it take to finally feel like you’ve reached your potential?
My story is much like yours. Except I know I haven’t reached my potential.
After graduating with a degree in economics from Fordham University (they didn’t have a statistics major at the time and I’m not checking if they do now), I had no jobs lined up. I survived by taking a labor job in construction.
It felt like an eight-hour workout every weekday, and I might have stayed longer if I were a morning person (work started at 5 AM). Despite being a skill-less laborer, everyone on the site treated me with respect, even reverence, all because I had a degree. A degree I wasn’t even proud of.
It reminded me of all those people who thought so highly of me as a child. Cleaning up debris and moving tons of sheetrock, I reflected on how my missteps along the “college path to success” had still brought me here. Life, I realized, moves quickly if you just let it happen to you. And I thought: I want to be the person who makes all those people - and myself - proud.
When COVID struck, while everyone hunkered down, I took the time to pursue the one skill I had ever been interested in: coding. Coding didn’t come naturally, and weeks would pass where it felt like I was making no progress. But I kept going. I made games, websites, and even bots that texted me jokes in the morning, so I’d have a conversation starter.
Then, I sent a barebones resume with all these little projects I made to Google, expecting nothing. It seemed like a place you ended up at the peak of your career, not as someone like me. But to my surprise, they called me in for an interview.
It was tough. There was one question I got stuck on, and I knew my chance was slipping away. I asked for a moment, put my head down, and fought through the anxiety. I refuse to lose to this question. Somehow, I figured it out.
I accepted a software engineering role at Google and spent three wonderful years on the Maps team. I learned so much, lessons I’ll share another time.
But those thoughts crept in again:
What would it take to finally feel like I’ve reached my potential?
I had what anyone would call a dream job. People told me how proud they were. They also told me I’d be crazy to leave, especially in this job market.
I loved my job, but I wasn’t proud of myself.
So, I made the leap and left.
Since then, I’ve started a horror literary journal, a U.S. immigration law newsletter, a podcast, revitalized my game studio, and taken on a large initiative in my family’s homecare agency.
I’m still not proud of myself.
I still haven’t reached my potential.
Yet.
