It's the Fall of 2019, Christopher Franco Monterrosa, has just finished leading engineering initiatives at an early stage Y Combinator backed startup as a Full Stack Engineer.
But now he wants to know what it takes to build a company that obtains a Series A.
He joins Pathrise, a Y Combinator (18) backed startup. They are an online mentorship program that helps job seekers in tech find the best job possible through personalized and data-driven support.
He gets hired as a software engineer intern, eventually taking up more responsibility to be the sole Software Engineer on the team towards the end of his tenure.
He's part of an engineering team that mentors him, providing opportunities to grown and learn. He works with a Product Manager who is a PM Paragon — a golden gate bridge of product, design and engineering.
While Christopher Franco Monterrosa gets what he wants, he also unexpectedly gets what he needs — becoming a Series A Engineer.
In the words of his friend — he brings passion, innate leadership abilities, with an understanding of the greater business context and an eternal pursuit for great UX.
Rearchitectures, refactors, devops, features, bugs and all — with ownership and a deep sense of curiosity — it's a memorable first full-time software engineering experience for Christopher Franco Monterrosa.
This story takes place before the company gets their Series A - it focuses on Christopher Franco Monterrosa's journey on becoming a Series A Engineer.
We begin in Downtown San Francisco.
CHRISTOPHER FRANCO MONTERROSA, is wearing his black vmware OSPO (open source program office) sweater, with a denim button up underneath. His ocean of curls have become a frozen whirlpool bun - revealing his turquoise-brown rimmed glasses.
He's sitting at a desk, we see his bright red backpack.
The lead engineer has left comments on his Pull Request. All her comments are on point, he needs to address those to earn his LGTM (looks good to me).
He glances at his monitor, it has a technical design doc he wrote - it shows architecture diagrams, tradeoffs to different approaches.
He switches over to his text-editor.
ANGLE ON KEYBOARD - we hear rapid keystrokes, each with a purpose - no backspace.
He's addressed all the comments on the PR (Pull Request).
He commits and pushes his code
LGTM has arrived. It's time to ship.
With over a month of PRs (Pull Requests) under his belt, he deploys his first big feature.
Franco is sitting on his couch cross-legged, donning his navy blue joggers and vmware OSPO (open source program office) black sweater, with a light blue denim button up - its become his uniform.
His setup is a makeshift workstation, with a monitor stacked up on top of two thick textbooks
DRAWING IDEAS A HAND-DRAWN APPROACH FOR BETTER DESIGN
OPERATING SYSTEMS PRINCIPLES & PRACTICE 2ND EDITION
Directly below the monitor his hands are placed on his laptop with the terminal opened. He's accompanied by a cup containing enough coffee to remind you of the taste but not enough for a jolt.
He deploys another feature
We see Franco's face — he's smiling, his keyboard cadence a little faster than usual.
We zoom out, it’s a full body mirror spanning across the whole room.
Cyber Titan Atlas appears again.
Franco is sitting in a green wooden chair. We see a used surgical mask next to his 1951 coffee mug.
He pushes another feature
Franco is preparing for a big feature.
We see Franco having a meeting through video chat with his Product Manager to go over deliverables, design and timelines
He creates a technical design doc based on the meeting and begins typing.
He opens up his favorite design tool that starts with an F and begins drawing architectural diagrams
We see another meeting over video - he's discussing with the Lead Engineer and CTO to get feedback on the proposed changes. It ends.
He opens the visual guide, the technical design doc, vector and prose. The edits eventually lead to code.
The deadline to ship this new experience is closing in.
franco types "commit -m" in his terminal with a message
he types "git push"
clicks on "Rebase and merge"
we see him join a video call for the daily team sync
he clicks the hang up button, ends call
he types git checkout, git pull, git branch -b franco/
grabs his 1951 coffee mug, sips it, sets it down
franco types "commit -m" in his terminal with a message
he types "git push"
clicks on "Rebase and merge"
we see him join a video call for the daily team sync
he clicks the hang up button, ends call
he types git checkout, git pull, git branch -b franco/
grabs his 1951 coffee mug, sips it, sets it down
franco types "commit -m" in his terminal with a message
he types "git push"
clicks on "Rebase and merge"
we see him join a video call for the daily team sync
he clicks the hang up button, ends call
he types git checkout, git pull, git branch -b franco/
ANGLE ON FRANCO - he grabs his 1951 coffee mug
Franco takes a sip of coffee from his 1951 Coffee Mug and sets it down.
We take a look at the clock.
We hear the second hand echo throughout the room like a heartbeat.
He's stopped typing.
The feature, the new experience that he's been working on with the team is finally complete.
Franco sighs with deep satisfaction after a marathon of work.
He pulls up the prototype one last time. The techinical design doc. The requirements, the list of bugs resolved along the way.
He stares at the screen -- eleven thousand new lines of code. The vision that was only known through prototype was hours away from being experienced by mentors, fellows and all.
Franco goes to the release branch and presses the button to kick off the launch — "Rebase and merge"
He pushes another feature
It's the morning of the launch, we see Franco walking towards his Cyber Titan Atlas — he walks slower and then slower as he notices the red number next to the Pathrise slack workspace icon.
He musters up the courage and clicks on one of the channels and starts reading the first message he sees
Franco is smiling, the type of smile that whispers "thank you".
His eyes show the deepest sense of gratitude to the work he did with the team.
He whispers to himself