Jacob Hurwitz on seeking variety in engineering
Engineer and recent MIT graduate Jacob Hurwitz finds opportunity to work across platforms and languages at Dropbox
After interning for two consecutive summers at Dropbox, Jacob Hurwitz joined as a full-time engineer in February. Here he shares his experience leading the Python Bee at DBX, Dropbox’s first developer conference, as well as tackling a variety of projects across platforms and languages.
How did you first get into engineering?
The first time I programmed was in fourth grade. My older sister needed a graphing calculator for her math class, and I found out that you could program it to play games. I convinced my parents to buy me one, and I used it to code up really simple games.
You interned at Dropbox for two summers in a row before joining full-time in February. How did you decide to come to Dropbox initially, and why did you keep coming back for more?
Dropbox really seemed like the place where I could learn and grow the most because it was full of brilliant engineers who also take the time to mentor interns, new grads, and really everyone at the company.
As a returning intern, Dropbox gave me a chance to tackle new types of projects that I had never worked on before and wouldn’t have had the chance to do at another company.
What sort of projects did you work on as an intern?
Last summer, I managed a small group of people to put together a Python Bee for DBX, Dropbox’s first developer conference. That was a lot of fun and involved everything from formalizing the idea to deciding how we would implement it. We ended up going with an approach that required us to build quite a bit of software.
We made a website, so that attendees could go online throughout the day to qualify for the Bee, and then we would pick the top qualifiers to participate on stage at the end of the day.
The website had to be something anyone could open up and work on from their phone or laptop during the day. There were a lot of challenges there, particularly with keeping it fast on conference WiFi.
Overseeing that project — both the technical and people management side of it — was something I learned a lot from. There were a lot of mistakes I made along the way, but I think mistakes are one of the best ways to learn.
What did you learn from the experience?
I learned a lot about planning a project. One simple lesson was that we underestimated how long everything would take. I didn’t account for the fact that inevitably everything takes longer than you expect it to.
Another thing was that rather than spec-ing out an initial design and sticking to it, there were many points along the road when I kept wanting to add on to it. That led to trying to create something greater and better, rather than finishing and shipping a minimum viable product.
You’ve worked on a number of different projects already at Dropbox. How did you find your way to each of them?
I really enjoy working on a variety of different products and projects. This was something I asked for in my internship last summer. I wanted the freedom to move around and try out lots of different things.
Tido Carriero, who now leads engineering for the Dropbox application, was my mentor last summer. He has an overview of all the different teams that work with him and a good sense of the resources they need. So he was able to place me with a bunch of different projects that needed an engineer for a short period of time.
Now my current lead is Viraj Mody, who leads the Dropbox for Business growth and partnerships teams. He has experience working in so many different languages and on a lot of different products and platforms. He’s a good match for me because he has similar interests but is a lot better at multitasking and switching between different products.
He’s sought out different opportunities for me, allowing me to work on both server code and desktop client code. I’m thinking of trying out something on mobile next — either iOS or Android. I’m not familiar with either platform now, but I might take one of the classes we have at the office to learn a new language.
Viraj is really good at encouraging me to jump around but then giving me the feedback I need on how it’s working out. He’s definitely looking out for me, and I hope to get better at switching contexts over time.
What do you think makes for a great mentor?
I think a great mentor needs to give you space to work but not hesitate to step in and point out when they think you’re not doing something in the best way. I think self-critique is really important, but I’ve found that great mentors always come up with things you never thought of when you were analyzing your own work.
What have been some of the challenges of transitioning from school to full-time engineering at Dropbox?
In school, the path to learning is very clear. You sign up for classes, you take classes, and you do the problem sets. There’s just as much to learn from being in a job as there is from school, but you have to make your own path and really seek out opportunities. They don’t come out of a course catalog.
If you weren’t an engineer, what would you be?
A pastry chef. Baking is very scientific, which is one of the things I like about it.
When I first started baking, I just followed recipes, crossed my fingers, and hoped for the best. But as you bake more, you start to realize patterns where substituting one ingredient for another has a certain effect on the product. When you view it from that perspective, it’s a lot like engineering.
Learn more about opportunities at Dropbox for new graduates in engineering.
