Engineer Side Gig: Rescuing the Western Monarch Population
“Engineer Side Gig” is a blog series about technologists at Intuit and their passion projects outside of work.
I’m a development productivity architect at Intuit and I focus on ways to help our engineers be more productive and engaged in the work they do. Another aspect of my job is working with teams and leaders to develop solutions for engineers to minimize friction points during development and create a high-performing organization.
I started my career at Intuit as an intern at Intuit and graduated from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo where I got my bachelor and master of science in computer science. Since then, I’ve worked in various spaces during my 10 years at the company, including backend Java development, software configuration management and DevOps architecture.
At Intuit, I love the diversity of teams I get to work with because my scope spans across all of our development teams. I’ve learned a lot about what works well for engineers and where they run into problems during development. Everyday is different for me. When I can solve Intuit engineers’ pain points, I can see that it truly delights them. That gives me great satisfaction knowing I’ve made a difference.
In order to have balance and a great quality of life though, I believe it’s important to have something to be passionate about things outside of work.
A few years ago, I started a fruit garden but realized that it wasn’t yielding much fruit. When I mentioned it to my mom, she asked, “Do you see any pollinators?” This prompted me to begin researching the decline of bees and the colony collapse disorder. It’s also then that I remembered butterflies are also pollinators and learned how easy it is to raise them.
In recent years, there has been a big decline in the number of monarch butterflies in the country. I started looking for ways to provide a habitat for monarchs so that they can reproduce and grow. I planted a patch of milkweed (the monarch caterpillars’ only host plant) for about 70 caterpillars in it in hopes of increasing the population. However, only one survived the first year and became a butterfly.
With winter and the monarch butterflies’ offseason soon approaching, I used the time to do some research on where things went wrong. It turns out that parasites known as the Tachinid flies use the monarch caterpillars as hosts for their eggs, and eventually kills the caterpillars.
So the next year, I immediately brought the milkweeds and caterpillars inside my sunroom with a mesh cover once I saw that the Monarchs have laid their eggs. That year, I successfully reared 34 butterflies!
Releasing the monarchs feel very rewarding. They’re extremely docile and gentle, to the point where they will crawl up to your finger. Then, we wait until mid-afternoon to take them outside so they can continue their annual migration. They usually fly to Mexico or the California coast (primarily Monterey) for overwintering.
I’ve been doing this for about four years now and my goal is to continue to do what I can to grow the monarch population. According to The New York Times, the western monarch population has dropped 97% since the 1980s, and it’s a truly depressing reality. The western population continues to drop at a staggering rate (86% from last year) and while I’m sad about that, I’m doing my best to hopefully make a difference.
This passion project has had such a positive impact on my life. I wholeheartedly believe in “work hard, play hard.” You have to find something that will be fun, and also fulfill you in a different way. When I can disconnect from work for a period of time and focus on something beyond my “day job,” I do a better job professionally.
I encourage you to find something that will ignite your passion outside of work! I promise it will improve both your career and personal life tremendously.
