Aubree Lawrence

Four years ago I took a leap and joined a startup. It was a culture shock after over a decade in higher education. Learning is like breathing in a startup, and wearing many hats is a given. For me that included contributing directly to our fledgling codebase. It was a small hat, but it was my favorite. It was thrilling bending code to my will (if it wanted to). Bugs were brain teasers, Jenkins was my friend, git blame was the best, and every day I learned a little more. I participated in the dev team’s sprints. On weekends I would scrum to myself. It came naturally to me, and I loved it.

Startups grow and org-charts arrive. I fought the wind to try and keep my little hat on, until one day I realized I didn’t want that little hat. I wanted a bigger hat. Once I knew it, I couldn’t ignore it. I mustered my courage. I let the little one go and followed it through the breeze to the doorstop of General Assembly. There I was introduced to a broad range of full stack technologies, from JavaScript and JSON to Rails, PostgreSQL, and AWS.

Most importantly, I saw how much work it takes to wear a big hat. It takes partnership, resourcefulness, humility, and constant learning. I’m ready to bring everything I’ve learned to a company that honors those values and shares that fashion sense. Somewhere there’s a coat rack with just the right hat for me!