The Ups and Downs (ad infinitum) of My Dreams To Succeed
If you told me 3 years ago that I’d be living in New York City and working at Facebook, I would have laughed in your face. My journey to solutions engineering was… a journey. I want you to know that you should always push for what you want; don’t ever take no for an answer.
High school, huh?
I grew up in Brisbane, Australia. Up until the summer that I graduated high school, I was convinced I would be a fashion designer. I had spent most of my life preparing to study fine arts at uni. My dream was to study at Central Saint Martin’s, move to New York City (the ultimate dream!!!), and create Alexander McQueen-esque avante-garde fashion shows.
In grade 10 my high school guidance counselor, without my knowledge, took me out of science class and put me in a course aimed at getting students entry-level jobs in retail and hospitality. The justification was that the school didn’t think that I would be able to keep up with the science class. My mother — who was one of the earliest female engineers in our state government and dedicates her life to helping young women excel in STEM careers — was pissed.
The ultimate heartbreak
I spent a year creating my portfolio, submitting applications, and going through interviews for the Bachelor of Fine Arts (Fashion). At the final stage, I was rejected. I didn’t have a backup plan. I was one of those nightmare students in high school; I never did my homework, I refused to wear my uniform correctly, I sat on the ground (or desk, or anywhere other than a chair), and I distracted the whole class. Despite this, I had two teachers who I truly felt believed in me.
The first was my art teacher. Not only could she see that I had potential, but she actively celebrated all of my accomplishments (not just art-related) and supported me through all of the ups and downs of being a teenage girl in high school. Her art room was a safe haven for anyone who needed it.
The second was a maths teacher that I had in grade 10. She was the only person who ever made me feel like I was “worthy” of being in STEM classes and worth her time. Without her support, I would never have continued in STEM.
These women had such a powerful impact on my life and I wanted to follow in their footsteps. I wanted to support other underestimated teenage girls to take the leap into STEM. I decided to start my undergrad in mathematics.
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This heading is lame but I think it’s hilarious, so here we are.
I loved logic and number theory and started to realise that if I was going to follow this path, I’d end up desperately wanting to go into research. Although it would’ve been a whole lot of fun, I knew I wouldn’t be truly fulfilled in academia. I took an intro to computer science course and immediately fell in love. When I was 19, I was already studying computer science, managing a coffee shop, and training 10+ times a week for gymnastics and cheerleading. I would wake up at 4am for work and get home at 11pm from training. Even just writing that out I feel drained. It was all too much; something had to give. The clear front-runner for things to give up was the 4am wake ups. I applied to the first job I saw on the uni careers page, which was an ambiguous job posting for a role at Uber.
???
I only found out at the interview that the role was for a sales position in Uber Eats. I got the job and finally felt like I’d found my place. I wanted to move into a tech role, but was told that I couldn’t because I was still at uni… so I started writing scripts to automate as much of everyone’s job as possible. My work was recognised by leadership & I joined the operations team to continue the work.
After I found a bug that was causing issues for my team, I read everything about — and became OBSESSED with — the optimisation problem of matching delivery partners & orders.
I decided that I was going to become a software engineer on that team.
I spent all of my spare time running analyses on the products they owned, how they impacted our market, and communicating with their teams. The tech recruiter told me that it was impossible for me — an entry level engineer in Australia with no internship experience — to get a software engineering job.
Can’t get rid of me that easily…
I cold emailed over 30 of the engineering managers in the US. I was still obsessed with the same optimisation team, so I read every document, product proposal, and code base they touched. After 5 months, one of the managers in that vertical agreed to interview me. I got the job. It was based in New York City.
Unfortunately, my offer was quickly revoked after the recruiter thought that they wouldn’t be able to get me a visa. I was crushed. I spent all of my spare time researching my own ways to get a visa — I crawled embassy websites, called lawyers, and reached out to friends of friends of friends who’d moved to the US. It took an incredible amount of work, but I was able to present a clear outline on how I could get a visa & my offer was reinstated. (Plot twist: getting a visa was incredibly simple all along)
I moved to New York City shortly after.
Triumphs & tragedies
I started in data engineering for Uber Eats and worked my way into the time prediction team. I loved the work & my team became my family. Every single morning I woke up incredibly excited to go to work. Mondays were my favourite day of the week (weird, I know).
For exactly 12 months I had my dream job.
Uber laid off thousands of employees during the pandemic… and I was one of them. I’d lost my source of income, my visa sponsorship, and — worst of all — my health insurance. This was especially devastating for me because I have a severe autoimmune disease that requires tens of thousands of dollars worth of medication a month. I had no confidence left & wasn’t even sure if I could continue living in the US.
My life completely changed when Vishal Sankhla — a director of Solutions Engineering at Facebook — reached out to me on LinkedIn after seeing my experience in sales, operations, analytics, and engineering. He explained to me what solutions engineering is. The way I’ve come to describe it is: if someone sat next to me for my entire life and took notes, then turned it into a job posting, that’s what you’d get. It’s a perfect combination of all of those roles that I’d had and loved before.
After over 7 hours of interviews, I received an offer to become a Solutions Engineer at Facebook!! In true fashion, I immediately ran into another issue. I had to transfer my visa to be sponsored by Facebook; this is usually a 2 week process & you have to travel internationally. I’m severely immunocompromised because of my autoimmune disease, so traveling was not an option. The original estimate for in-country processing was 2–4 months. 5 months later, I got word that it was likely to take another 2–3 months.
There I was, unemployed — and still paying rent in one of the world’s most expensive cities — with no end date in sight. I had no other options. Despite being at high risk for COVID, I had to spend the last of my money on a plane ticket back to Australia to get my visa.
The happy ending
I’m a silver-lining kind of person. After a 6-month journey of being laid off, struggling to pay rent, and risking my health to get a visa, I got to spend Christmas at home; surrounded by my mum, dad, step-dad, and brother. I spent weeks at the beach, journeyed into the country, and visited all of my friends. COVID was virtually non-existent in Australia.
Moving to Facebook I got a promotion, a payrise, and an incredible support system. There were so many moments that I thought I’d never live out my dream; when I was rejected from fashion, when I was told I couldn’t join engineering, when my engineering offer was revoked, when I was laid off, and when I was struggling to pay my bills (just to name a few).
I refused to take no for an answer then, and I never will in the future. In January 2021 I finally started my role as a solutions engineer at Facebook and I haven’t looked back.
