Spotlight: Brian Corbin, MobileCoin Software Engineer
Brian Corbin (He/Him)
Hey Brian! Thanks for joining me for this interview. To start us off, could you tell me what your relationship is with MobileCoin?
I’m a Software Engineer!
How did you find your way into the world of Cryptocurrency?
Haha, actually, I had a friend who mined a bunch of Dogecoin on school computers, and that worked out rather well for him. Other than that, I didn’t really know about cryptocurrency until I started at MobileCoin a little over five months ago.
What’s your background, then? You’re living in New York, and you work on school buses. How’d you get there?
I graduated from RPI with a degree in Computer Science and jumped right into the San Francisco workforce, but something about the 9–5 life really wasn’t working for me. I moved to L.A. and started playing beach volleyball competitively. I eventually got my A rating and began working at a firm down there. It didn’t take long for me to once again get tired of the 9–5 thing, so I started getting involved in the Schoolie community. I knew I didn’t want to get into the world of conventional employment for the third time, so I decided to look into alternatives and bought a school bus with my savings. I renovated it over the course of a year, and once I got it to a point where I was happy with it, I drove it from S.F. to L.A. and began tutoring and mentoring computer science students. The feedback was amazing. I must have a knack for teaching because I had a consistent group of high school students to professionals.
That’s an amazing story! And how did you get involved with MobileCoin?
A mutual friend of Josh messaged me about a developer position, and despite my skepticism about cryptocurrency, I accepted an interview and fell in love with the project.
What do you like most about working at MobileCoin?
That’s a really hard question, but It’s absolutely got to be the people. Every single person that I’ve met here is, in some way, amazing. It’s so nice to be in a community of people where everyone feels like that care about each other. Honestly, it feels like a home or a family. It’s why I wake up every morning feeling like it’s not work.
What are you most excited about for the future of MobileCoin?
I’m really excited to bring these amazing financial tools to people who need them. I’m particularly excited about our mobile projects. I love the IOS ecosystem and that you can build something wonderful and basically immediately share it with the world. You can experiment, iterate and be playful. It’s really fun.
That’s great. You’re making me want to learn how to code.
Haha, yeah, you should!
Are there any other things you enjoy doing outside of work?
Yeah! I’ve recently been getting into skydiving. It’s probably the best decision I’ve ever made in my life. I’ve got about fifteen jumps under my belt, and I’m going for my “A” license and doing my AFF course. It’s incomparable.
That’s awesome. I really want to do this thing.
Maybe we should coordinate a work trip?
Yesss. What cybernetic enhancements are you going to get?
I would love to replace my left eye with one that could zoom in and show me data. I would do that in a heartbeat. I would consider eventually becoming like, a fully robotic cyborg. I’d also be curious about ways to link consciousness with someone else. In a way, we’re already doing this with language. Language is just a way of planting your ideas in someone else and vice versa, and I’d like to see how language evolves beyond verbal communication with the use of technology and direct neural interfacing. It could even integrate other sensory data to communicate.
Woah, that’s amazing. Brian, you’re super cool! Thanks for your time. I look forward to skydiving at some point.
Thank you!
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