Clapperboard
Clapperboard
PATHRISE
SERIES A ENGINEER
Written by
Christopher Franco Monterrosa
21 August 2021

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.

INT. SAN FRANCISCO / MONTGOMERY / PATHRISE HQ - EVENING

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.

WE HEAR A SLACK NOTIFICATION

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

WE HEAR A SLACK NOTIFICATION

LGTM has arrived. It's time to ship.

FRANCO (V.O)
Hey there — have you ever had to completely change the way people access your platform? As of a week ago, I didn't know how I would do it, but with an ounce of curiosity, I got a pound of code ready to ship.

With over a month of PRs (Pull Requests) under his belt, he deploys his first big feature.

INT. DALY CITY / FRANCO’S HOME / LIVING ROOM - EVENING

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

THEY READ

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.

FRANCO (V.O)
Hello again, have you ever launched something on Product Hunt? If not, don't worry, neither have I! But what I'm about to push will be making it's debut on my behalf

He deploys another feature

INT. DALY CITY / FRANCO'S HOME / FRANCO'S ROOM - MORNING

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.

FRANCO (V.O)
You know, the best type of performance optimizations, are the ones that support good design. This refactor shaves off a few seconds, and with a loading indicator to provide some system feedback, the waiting will feel more like progress and less like traffic on the bay bridge. UX driven engineering.

He pushes another feature

INT. DALY CITY / FRANCO'S HOME / FRANCO'S ROOM - DAY

Franco is preparing for a big feature.

FRANCO (V.O)
These are a few of my favorite things. First, this part — as an engineer, you can build anything, but to build something you begin adding the contraints one by one — eventually you're sculpting a solution on the fly during the meeting.

We see Franco having a meeting through video chat with his Product Manager to go over deliverables, design and timelines

FRANCO (V.O)
Then, another favorite — the technical design doc. Not mandatory, but who doesn't love an origin story? A north star that grounds, shapes and helps facilitate present and future technical discussions.

He creates a technical design doc based on the meeting and begins typing.

FRANCO (V.O)
This is also my favorite part, especially for big features, it's providing a visual guide to understanding architectural changes.

He opens up his favorite design tool that starts with an F and begins drawing architectural diagrams

JUMP CUT:

We see another meeting over video - he's discussing with the Lead Engineer and CTO to get feedback on the proposed changes. It ends.

FRANCO (V.O)
I think that meeting went well! Just need to make a few adjustments...

He opens the visual guide, the technical design doc, vector and prose. The edits eventually lead to code.

INT. DALY CITY / FRANCO’S HOME / THE GARAGE - EVENING

The deadline to ship this new experience is closing in.

QUICK SHOTS:

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

QUICK SHOTS:

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

QUICK SHOTS:

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/

JUMP CUT:

ANGLE ON FRANCO - he grabs his 1951 coffee mug

JUMP CUT:
INT. DALY CITY / FRANCO’S HOME / THE GARAGE - EVENING

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.

FRANCO (V.O)
it's done

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
ALRIGHT, IT IS TIME!

Franco goes to the release branch and presses the button to kick off the launch — "Rebase and merge"

He pushes another feature

INT. DALY CITY / FRANCO’S HOME / LAUNCH DAY - MORNING
WE HEAR A SLACK NOTIFICATION

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

"I'm freaking out this is the coolest thing of all time"

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

FRANCO
Series A, here we come.