Episode Transcript: Amelia Padua, Senior Software Engineer at Pixavo (2018)

[00:00:20] Kate Martin: Welcome to the apprenticeship.io podcast, where we gather the courageous leaders, the tech industry needs to talk about education, equity, job hunts, hiring in tech and you guessed it apprenticeships, whether you're considering a career switch to tech currently studying or working and leading in tech, we hope to show you stories, ideas, and tactics to inspire you and equip you to make the tech industry, and our future together, a more equitable place for all of us. Let's get to know today's guest.

[00:00:00] Kamrin Klauschie: Hi Amelia. Welcome to the podcast. I'm excited to record this episode in particular, because we are going to be doing these interviews together.

[00:00:10] Amelia Padua: I'm very excited to start interviewing, getting to know more people in Chicago and launching this. I've been thinking about this for a long time. So super excited.

[00:00:19] Kamrin Klauschie: So let's jump into your story and learning more about you. I start off the podcast with the same question for everybody, because I'm really curious about everyone's educational background.

[00:00:31] So, I'm curious, what's the educational upbringing of your childhood like? And that could be formal education, but also your relationship with learning or people who inspired you.

[00:00:44] Amelia Padua: Well, I grew up in a very academic family. Both of my parents are professors at the University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign. And so I grew up, you know, going to regular public schools, but with also my dad teaching me a lot of things, you know, nights and weekends. He, my dad, is a Professor of Computer Science. I grew up, you know, learning how to code from him and spending all those fun Saturdays learning how to write to my own Quicksort algorithm - the very exciting things every little kid loves to do. Aside from that, I went to the University of Illinois Laboratory High School, which was a school that was basically full of kids that were also very excited about learning. I was always hitting the books. That's how I learn best now. I need to read something in order to actually remember it. That's how I still learn today, actually. So, so yeah, it was a very, academic, very, book-heavy upbringing.

[00:01:43] Kamrin Klauschie: It's amazing. I can't even imagine having two professors [as parents]. What was your mom teaching?

[00:01:47] Amelia Padua: Oh, she teaches food science - so she does research in biodegradable plastics and she teaches about food science, food safety, food - other things that I should know.

[00:02:03] Kamrin Klauschie: Well, you always think you know what your parents do, but you don't really know. Interesting. That's so cool, my mom was my high school health teacher, so I got the whole, like, nutrition and fitness and all of that in my head all the time.

[00:02:20] Amelia Padua: It's so good to learn at such an early age too, because that's the thing I wish I learned more about as a child: nutrition.

[00:02:28] Kamrin Klauschie: Yeah. It always seems to come back to - we don't really know, like everything in moderation - question mark?

[00:02:36] Amelia Padua: Exactly. That's what my mother says all the time. Like to eat whatever you want. Just as long as, you know, in moderation.

[00:02:41] Kamrin Klauschie: Right, right. That's awesome. I'm also curious, if there's anything that you want folks to know about you and your life story, that they might not see online, you know, like on meetup or on LinkedIn or wherever they might find you. Is there something you want folks to know about you?

[00:03:00] Amelia Padua: What you can see online is that I've gone to a couple of different colleges and I've had a couple of different majors. I did originally start out in mechanical engineering, and then ended up with a degree in Economics and Information Systems, and then ended up working as, you know, as a Programmer, as a Developer. I think a lot of people have kind of a winding road to get to where they end up in their career. But I think for me, especially , I like other people to know that even if you start out engineering, and, it doesn't quite work out the first time, it doesn't necessarily mean that engineering isn't your path or you can't do it. It's just, you need a different entry point or just try again at a different time.  There's so many factors that lead into what you end up doing with your life that I feel like one attempt doesn't necessarily mean that it's the end of the road for engineering.

[00:03:52] Kamrin Klauschie: The environment makes such a big difference. So what led you into mechanical engineering? It's interesting now, knowing that your parents are both professors and your dad was a Computer Scientist. I was also curious at what point you learned to program, because I noticed you didn't like officially study it, but then you immediately had a job. You were programming. I was like, how did she do this? But I'm curious, what brought you into mechanical engineering?

[00:04:18] Amelia Padua: My dad always thought that I would end up in Computer Science because, it's how we started. He started teaching me how to program when I was, oh gosh, I mean, I genuinely don't remember, but you know, it was before 10. I think a lot of kids start out with Logo - the little turtle that you can move around. He definitely taught me a lot more in middle school and in high school, and definitely by high school, I was doing the harder algorithms. And I think by then, I always loved taking things apart, building new things. One of my projects in high school, I decided I wanted to build a robot, so I got a kit and got together and I liked the programming part because I kind of knew how to do it, but I found physically putting things together super interesting. Plus, I was like, I'm going to be a rebel and I'm going to not go down the same path as my dad... and I'll be a Mechanical Engineer! Very, very far. I liked it a lot, but, Carnegie Mellon was, it's not a place where you find yourself necessarily. It's a place where you pick something and you go all in, and I think at the time I just wasn't completely convinced of what I was doing. So, that's why it didn't work out at that time. And the skills that my dad taught me growing up definitely stayed with me, so once I ended up going back to programming, it was a lot easier to pick up than I imagine it would be for someone who had never seen any of this stuff before.

[00:05:41] Kamrin Klauschie: I can imagine that must have been a really hard time in your life. Carnegie Mellon's a great school, as you said. I'm sure people are really trying to be successful. And I can't even imagine having a conversation about leaving school with parents who are professors. How were they, how did they handle that? How did that conversation go?

[00:06:01] Amelia Padua: It was definitely not what they expected, what they were hoping for at the time.  It was tough because I didn't have a very good answer as to, you know - of course every parent wants to know: if you don't do this, what are you going to do? And I had no good answer at the time. To step into the unknown and step into like, well, I don't have a path at the moment. Let me take some time to figure it out. So I think it was scary for everybody. But eventually, like, after some space, some time -  I did end up going back and finding my path and at that point, things went back to the normal pace of things. It wasn't super easy at first.

[00:06:36] Kamrin Klauschie: And so, shortly after that you jumped into project management, right?

[00:06:42] Amelia Padua: Yeah, I did. I've got some interesting jobs.

[00:06:44] Kamrin Klauschie: I need work, I need to figure out a path and support myself or were you, like, it's something I'm interested in - I'm going to go into this.

[00:06:54] Amelia Padua: It was definitely more like I need a job. I need to do something, and... project management. When I worked at Wolfram, I was excited about it because it was project management at a company that was building software and I still loved programming. And I thought building software was super interesting. So it was at the time, a great job for me. So, I got to do something that I was able to do and be near something that I still loved.

[00:07:22] Kamrin Klauschie: Great. How did you find that role at Wolfram?

[00:07:27] Amelia Padua: So the guy that I was dating at the time, his mom, worked at Wolfram and convinced me that I should apply at the time. So I did, and they decided to interview me. I didn't know that was an option, and she was very helpful in pointing that out for me.

[00:07:43] Kamrin Klauschie: That's awesome. Working those relationships. So I was looking up Stephen Wolfram online and I realized he's actually a really big deal and you worked closely with him. And as I was reading about it, I was like, "I have no idea how to describe what he does", so I'm curious, for folks that don't know who he is, how, how would you describe him and his work? And then relatedly, also very curious what it's like to work with him?

[00:08:07] Amelia Padua: Stephen Wolfram is a very unique person in that he got, I believe it was like two PhDs before he was in 21 or something. He's very, very hardworking and definitely expects everyone around him to be very hardworking. And he developed Mathematica, which is software that I think, if you grew up doing any kind of programming or engineering stuff that you might recognize, and he also developed Alpha. And so the thing about him is that he loves to do research and he's one of those guys that comes up with new ideas for people to try. It was a great job, a great place to work. And he was a very, interesting person to work closely with because he worked very late, and still got up early. And I mean, I had meetings with him that were 9 or 10 o'clock at night and other people would be on the line too. We would hash out some meetings and get things done, and so there was no, no time that was off limits. Really. You were very, very hardworking.

[00:09:09] Kamrin Klauschie: Yeah. That's awesome. And you got to be back closer to software and programming again.

[00:09:14] Amelia Padua: Yeah. I didn't do any programming myself. There were some times that I got to write some scripts to find out more information for Steve when needed and I got to interact with the developers that were writing the code for Mathematica, so I got to keep close in touch with that lingo, and the people.

[00:09:30] Kamrin Klauschie: And so shortly after you left Wolfram, you went back to school, right?

[00:09:36] I did. I went back to school and decided to try a different path and started out doing Business Administration. I went to community college because I was like, well, let me try to figure something out before I actually go back to a four year university. And then once I finished a couple of years at the local community college, I applied and got into Loyola, University of Chicago. And that's where I started out doing Economics. Maybe get a PhD, go work at a think tank in DC, and work on policy because I developed a passion for politics. And as I was working on my economics degree, there's requirements of different classes obviously that you have to take. And one of them was the entry level Information Systems class, which was about designing databases, basically learning, you know, a database diagram, the ERD graph diagram. From that class,  my teacher convinced me that I should get a double major, and also major information systems because there was something that I was good at and I liked. And, I again, back getting closer to software, which is still a passion of mine. I don't know if I fully realized that at the time, so I was like, okay, let's add this on. I'm sure it'll help my other degree as well. So as I continued down the path of Information Systems, one of the requirements was the CS 101 course, and I had a great teacher, and what he did that was great was let us pick a project and  gave us free range to explore what we're interested in and develop as much as we wanted to with the final projects. And when I was working on that, I got super into what I was doing and would stay up super late at night programming and, you know, Googling things and definitely trying to learn about things that were completely out of the realm of the CS 101 class. And so, as I was doing that, my boyfriend, who's my husband now, he's a software engineer and he's like, "You know, you love doing this so much. Why don't you try to get a job doing this?" Instead it's like, "What? You're crazy. There's no way anybody's going to hire me. I've only had one official course in programming, but he convinced me to try. And when I interviewed for a job, they allowed me to interview for the software engineering role, and that's how I ended up getting it. So that's how I ended up as a software engineer.

[00:11:58] Kamrin Klauschie: That's so interesting. So you had the skills and obviously tons of imposter syndrome and that push from your boyfriend, now husband, is what kind of made it all happen.

[00:12:11] Amelia Padua: Yeah. It was, like:  "Hey, you realize that you like this, right?" And like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you're right."

[00:12:19] Kamrin Klauschie: One thing I hear a lot about these days is recruiting from community colleges. And so, I'm curious what your experience at community college was like?

[00:12:31] Amelia Padua: That's a good question. Gosh, it feels like such a long time ago now. You know, it was interesting because when you go to a four year old university, especially right out of high school, you are surrounded by peers, people your own age, people at the same point in life as you. The cool thing about community college is that you can often run into people who are coming back to school when they're in their forties or fifties and trying out a new career or just learning. Or you know, there's so many different reasons, different levels, different walks of life. My experience was that since I was also going back a little bit later than a lot of kids that are right out of high school,  I was able to connect with different people that I probably wouldn't have the first time around. I was very heads down and trying to get as much done in as short amount of time as possible to kind make up for lost time. I didn't involve myself in too many things other than getting to know the people in my class and getting the work done.

[00:13:27] Kamrin Klauschie: I am starting to really appreciate local community colleges a lot.  I went to a couple of community college classes, while I was in high school, which was kind of like a weird technicality that I figured out because I was obsessed with philosophy. I like drove down to the local community college while I was in high  school and now thinking back in retrospect the value of what you're describing, community that is accepting and local and practical. It's something that at the time I was like: I need to go on and do better things and be in university or whatever, but I think young people who take the time to explore and to figure out their interests, what they want to do - there's a lot of value in that. And not even just young people, I feel like at any age, to have a dream of being able to go back to community college and just, you know, take courses in painting.

[00:14:24] Amelia Padua: Yeah. Just learn to learn.

[00:14:25] Kamrin Klauschie: Exactly.

[00:14:26] Amelia Padua: But also, going to community college set me up for, or at least there's parallels, I feel like between that and apprenticeship programs, because a lot of people that I met going back in going to bootcamps and getting into apprenticeship programs also come from very different walks of life and maybe not down the traditional path. I think embracing that kind of environment and the openness to try something different, something new, that was not necessarily your original idea or your original path, I think is very, very cool. And I hope something more people think about.

[00:15:03] Kamrin Klauschie: And hopefully more employers are recognized too.

[00:15:05] Amelia Padua: Yes.

[00:15:08] Kamrin Klauschie: So now for the part where our stories intersect, how did you hear about Dev Bootcamp? And then why did you end up applying and attending?

[00:15:19]Amelia Padua: So, I mentioned how I got into my first programming job, because my boyfriend at the time convinced me that it was something I should even try to do. He's in the community; he heard about Dev Bootcamp. And when my first job as a Software Engineer wasn't necessarily going the way I hoped it would go, the company I was at just didn't have enough resources to help me develop and learn. I was looking to find a way to grow. And at the time I was actually thinking–do I go back to school? Do I try to get a Master's in Computer Science? I applied and quit my job once they said I was in and I went to the bootcamp and it was great. It was one of the best experiences of my life.

[00:16:01] Kamrin Klauschie: I hope that guys are taking notes.

[00:16:01] Amelia Padua: He's one of those people that will help you drown out the doubts in your head and kind of amplify the "yeah, I can do this. It can be done. Go do it."

[00:16:13] Kamrin Klauschie: That's awesome. So all of this was while you guys are still dating.

[00:16:17] Amelia Padua: Yeah, well, I guess we had gotten engaged by that point. So, marriage was on the horizon. He always likes to joke and say it was an investment in his future too, to have somebody, in programming and someone that he can relate to.

[00:16:33] Kamrin Klauschie: Relationship goals, man. That's so cool.

[00:16:34] Amelia Padua: It was definitely one of the reasons we were dating and decided like, yeah, this is the one.

[00:16:45] Kamrin Klauschie: Cool. And what was the Chicago campus like? What was Chicago like?

[00:16:52]Amelia Padua: I feel like the bootcamp, the culture changed over the years that it was open. While I was there, it was very, gosh, it felt like... I felt like going to college, like kinda like the first semester where you're in the dorms and you are meeting a bunch of  new people and in completely new environments and you're all together all the time, so you very quickly form bonds. And, especially since you are also going through the struggle of how to learn in this new environment. And because it's a very collaborative environment, we had to learn how to work together. I feel like I made such great friends at the time. Because we were all  intensely happy to be there.

[00:17:33] Kamrin Klauschie: One of the things that I think for someone who has heard about a bootcamp, but never seen it in action, it's one of the things that can be overlooked is just how great those bonds are with your cohort and how much time you spend together and with the instructors. It's really a moment in time when you're just in the zone.

[00:17:57] Amelia Padua: Yeah. It's great. And it's hard because you have to be there for many hours during the day and being forced to set everything else aside and focus on this one thing. This group of people in front of you and this one task ahead of you. It was almost liberating because it was just like this is all you need to focus on and you learn a lot that way but it's also very intense, so it might not be for everybody necessarily, but it's definitely great if that's your jam.

[00:18:25] Kamrin Klauschie: Yep. I remember at graduations giving a little pep talk about culture shock and going back to life where you actually have to call your mom and, you know, talk to the outside world. We would give letters to incoming students where they could basically just have a template that said to most of the people in their lives :" I'm going to be transforming myself. I'm very busy right now. I'm going to be back like, you know, X date." And it's funny now I'm in a part-time program online called Bloc, doing web development. I think online learning has its value too, because you're very solitary and independent, I would say, but my experience has been so different from what you're describing. I haven't paired with anyone who's in the Bloc period. There's no sense of cohort - you're basically reading documentation on your own and going through it and it's been really effective also, which is funny, but it's a totally different day to day experience.

[00:19:24] Amelia Padua: It definitely depends on your learning style, what works for you.

[00:19:29] Kamrin Klauschie: You know, costs and things like that. I've always, I still look at the full-time programs and I'm like, "I wish." But I think there's value in different learning styles. It's been really interesting to have witnessed Dev Bootcamp for so many years and then be doing a different path myself now. It's, it's definitely really taught me a lot. Cool. So Dev Bootcamp, amazing - rest in peace.  We love you. How did you find out about apprenticeship and how did you find Trunk Club in particular?

[00:20:04] Amelia Padua: Yeah. At the time, I was actually having a pretty hard time finding apprenticeship programs. There weren't a lot and even fewer advertised, and Dev Bootcamp was very helpful in providing the list of places we could try to apply to, but what they strongly encouraged was to reach out to your network and try to find jobs that way, because, it's definitely one of the strongest ways to find a job is to find something through a referral, basically.

[00:20:34] So my husband works at a company called Braintree and the Director of HR at Braintree left Braintree to go to Trunk Club. So when I looked at the website, this was like early June, they still had an opening for a software engineering internship. So I was like, well, maybe I'll try for an internship. And then if I get enough experience from that, maybe it'll be easier to find an apprenticeship program or something else from there. So I reached out to the Director of HR at Trunk Club at the time and asked, first of all, is this a position that you would open still? Because it was already June and most internships are closed by then. And I told her that this was a long shot. This is not going to happen at all, so I was still trying to find other opportunities, but she got back to me and was like, yeah, we actually ended up opening this late. So we are still looking, let's chat. So I went over to Trunk Club to talk to her, and while I was talking to her, she said, you know, our VP of engineering is here. Do you want to meet him? It's like, yeah, that would, that'd be great. So, I met him, Mike Cruz, we started talking about the role, life as a developer, different working philosophies, and things. And we were talking for a while and by the end he said to me, "So are you looking for an internship for the summer, it has a definitive end date, or are you looking for something more like an apprenticeship that would be longer - like six months with the possibility of staying on afterwards?" I was like, "well, I came in for the first thing, but now that I know of apprenticeship, that would be great. Let's do that." So from there, set up an interview a few days later, I met some other engineers and interviewed for the role that way, and that's how we started.

[00:22:22] Kamrin Klauschie: That is so cool.

[00:22:24] Amelia Padua: It felt so random at the time. Like, is this real? ...I was very excited.

[00:22:29] Kamrin Klauschie: Sometimes, you just create your own luck. So it all started from cold outreach is basically what I heard.

[00:22:35] Amelia Padua: It wasn't completely like I didn't know who she was, but, I hadn't talked to her in a long time and I did not know her very well. So it was definitely, hey, let's talk. If you have time, please.

[00:22:47] Kamrin Klauschie: I'm a job seeker.

[00:22:48] Amelia Padua: Please help

[00:22:51] Kamrin Klauschie: me.

[00:22:52] Amelia Padua: Help me please.

[00:22:53] Kamrin Klauschie: I have imposter syndrome, but I want to be a software engineer. I love it. So it sounds like you, and also the folks at Trunk Club already knew a bit about apprenticeship. Most of the folks that I've coached didn't know to look for an apprenticeship or what that meant. It sounds like the VP of Engineering at Trunk Club was very clear on this is what an internship is for, and this is what an apprenticeship is for. I'm curious, for you, how did you learn that distinction? And do you remember where you learned about apprenticeship?

[00:23:22] Amelia Padua: Yeah, Dev Bootcamp, when I was going through it, talked a lot about apprenticeship programs as a great next step after the bootcamp. So, I remember my cohort, most people were actually looking for apprenticeship programs and it was something that they were pushing for at the time. Not a lot of people got them because they weren't totally available, but it was definitely something that was on the top of mind for most of my cohort. And as far as a program at Trunk Club, Mike had one apprentice before me at Trunk Club, but that was back when there were only a handful of engineers, so the apprenticeship was very, very different. It was more like a very, very junior person getting hired on and just learning. His name was John and he did very well and stayed on and became Engineering Manager went pretty high up and he did really well. But by the time I talked to Mike, it was actually just good timing because they had just been talking about, "Should we start an apprenticeship program?" But when I started, I was definitely the Guinea pig for Trunk Club because the subsequent apprenticeships were slightly different. I mean, literally a little more formalized and more set. It definitely evolved as I went through my apprenticeship program.

[00:24:37] Kamrin Klauschie: Sounds like it was fate, the way that you're telling it.

[00:24:41] Amelia Padua: It was just one of those things, you know, people talk about stars aligning.

[00:24:44] Kamrin Klauschie: I think it's an important message for employers out there. Just the idea that if it's on your mind and you're open to it, that an amazing candidate walks through the door and you're willing to consider a new means of training and onboarding new engineers–it then turns into something bigger. And I know you worked on the apprenticeship after you went through it and you mentioned it got bigger and got more structured. So I'm curious, what you think the apprenticeship you did for Trunk Club–what kind of value did it provide? And then just, if you have anything you'd want to say to other companies that might be considering an apprenticeship–what would you want them to know?

[00:25:27] Amelia Padua: So the great thing about apprenticeship programs is that you do get people of different backgrounds, coming from different industries, oftentimes, which will help with like... You know, I had a friend that was into photography and that helped when she ended up becoming a front end engineer and there was a lot of like visual things that she became very passionate about and became very good at. So I think, the value add is that you get people from different backgrounds with different expertise, different skills that actually really do help on the job. And, I think getting the fresh, energized people, very hardworking, very passionate, very excited about learning. And there's this culture around being an apprentice where you're humble because oftentimes you have to expose what you don't know. And so, in order to learn faster, you have to speak up and say, "I don't know this." So you get a lot of people that are very great to work with because they will say what they don't know when they don't know it and there's not a lot of defensiveness, typically.

[00:26:27] Kamrin Klauschie: The learning culture for me stands out a lot. Just the idea that if you are, for the lack of a better word, stuck up and this is the way that you do something or, if you're kind of rigid and protective of the best features or doing something that's an amazing technical achievement, but no one understands what the hell it  is that kind of culture just gets pushed away or pushed out, and replaced with this idea that we're all people, we're all on a journey and learning and, it ends up making really great products.

[00:27:01]Amelia Padua: You have to explain what you're doing and why you're doing it, and oftentimes those conversations of even trying to teach an apprentice, it exposed a lot of areas where we were probably over-complicating things. It was like, why is it so hard? Maybe this shouldn't be so hard.

[00:27:18] Kamrin Klauschie: That's awesome. Cool. So now I have some questions about your personal life and where you're at now. I'm curious what it's like to be a wife and what it's like to be a mom? And then I know you recently went back to work too, and so I'm curious what it's like to be a working mom as a software engineer? I'm curious about your personal life and how that plays into  this too.

[00:27:42] Amelia Padua: Yeah, I love being a mom, I think, that's what everybody says, but it is so challenging. There's so much to keep in your head that, it's funny when I go back to work, it's such a difference, like a different side of my brain because as a mom, you have to think about, you have to remember, "oh, you know, we need to make sure that our toddler brushes her teeth. We change her diaper, do this, change that". There's this list of things you have to remember and a lot of things you just have to kind of keep in your head at one time. Whereas, when I come to work, it's definitely more of a problem solving. I mean, you still do that with the kids, but it feels very different. I can take my time to problem solve during the day. And then at night it's like: go, go, go, go, go, especially with a toddler who's 18 months now, and she is, oh my goodness, a handful. And there's a reason I only wear active wear when I'm at home.

[00:28:35] But it's great, I have probably a slightly different personal life in that I am married to someone who's also an engineer, but he's so much further in his career than I am. So when we talk about things, it's cool because I get a different perspective from somebody that is much more senior than I am. So I get to learn a lot from him. He also learns new things from me and has to, sometimes, explain things. And again, the same way that it helps employers, he realizes when either he doesn't know something or something just doesn't sound quite right. We learn a lot from each other because he is further in his career and we are at different companies. It's not like it might sound, like it'd be super boring to be married to someone who does the same thing as you, but it's actually super interesting for us. I think the hard part now, as a working mom is being able to be really present while I'm at work. Because before I had my daughter Adelaide, I, like everybody else, would take my laptop home. And sometimes when I didn't finish something during the day, I could keep rolling things over. And then when I would think of the solution, I'd be like, "Oh, let me just open my laptop and keep coding a little bit." I could kind of work whenever, but now with Adelaide, I don't really have that option as much. I mean, I could, I can cope when she goes to sleep, but at that point I am so tired. I am just ready to pass out. So it's very much like I am learning to, be as focused as I can while I'm at work and it's a new way to solve problems for me because I used to just have a problem mull it over and just felt like I had, not like an endless time to solve it, but I felt more freedom to kind of like take the time to figure things out. But now it's like, all right, you just gotta push through. You don't know what you're doing yet, but keep focusing, keep pushing through. Don't think about something else just yet. Just keep going.

[00:30:23] Kamrin Klauschie: Yeah. You mentioned sleep, that's my big fear about having a kid. Does she sleep through the night or are you getting no sleep?

[00:30:35] Amelia Padua: I definitely did

[00:30:36] Kamrin Klauschie: Not get to sleep for a while.

[00:30:37] Amelia Padua: But now she's 18 months. She's been through sleep training. She sleeps through the nights. The only issue is she goes to bed at like seven and then wakes up at like six, which is 11 hours. It's a lot of sleep. It's great, but part of that is that when Tony and I cook, we clean, get things, organized, get things ready for the next day. And then maybe have a few minutes to kind of relax a little bit and then we're ready to pass out. She still sometimes will wake up at 4:00 AM or something random, but that's so rare at this point now. It's more just like there's so much to do during the day that you're just so beat by the time bedtime rolls around.

[00:31:13] Kamrin Klauschie: So do you have any last words of wisdom or advice for any other non-traditional engineers out there who maybe are learning to program right now? Or perhaps are like slogging through the job hunt and trying to make it through–any last advice for the folks out there?

[00:31:30]Amelia Padua: I think the thing that I wished I had kept in mind was to find a job, try to even look at places you might not necessarily think you would be a good fit at or would even have a place for you. If you're just passionate about the product or the company itself then I would say, just try, even if there's no listing that's tailored specifically for you, you might be surprised by what you find. I think companies respond really well to people who just are really excited about them.

[00:31:59] It's nice to know that there are people that are excited about your company, so go for those roles. Even if you don't think you'll get it, you never know what might pop up. And when you get there, you are an apprentice or you're a junior engineer, accept it–don't feel bad about it. I feel like a lot of people, myself and others that I came across, feel bad about asking too many questions or, just felt bad about being so junior and needing so much help. And I just want other people to know: that's where you're expected to be and it's okay. It's great. It's an awesome time to learn, ask as many questions as you can, learn as much as you can, because it's the best time when people are very forgiving and very accepting . I think, if you're in the right culture, at least, so live it up, ask all the questions and then don't feel bad about it because it's great, it's a great time.

[00:32:53] Kamrin Klauschie: Well, thank you so much, Amelia. This has been so inspiring.

[00:32:57]Amelia Padua: It's been so fun to talk to you, Kam.