Note: This post was written in 2024, reflecting on events that occurred in 2018.

It was 2017, and I had just finished my master's in Electrical Engineering. At this point, I knew I had no interest in pursuing an EE related career. I was interested in creating Software products - specifically mobile apps.

I had a couple of options upon graduation:

• A Big Tech job.
• A role at a boutique software consulting firm.
• Work at PwC as a Software Engineer

I chose PwC. It had the lowest pay and there was no official career path for a Software Engineer.

Why then did I choose PwC over to other seemlingly better options? The answer was simple. A Partner in the Mobility team at PwC (a group of a couple hundred) promised me the opportunity to build their entire department's Android app from greenfield to production. I was going to own the product, technical, design and project planning for the entire app. The inferior pay and lack of a career progression clarity was an open dialogue between the two of us, but there was a mutual understanding that I just wanted to build an impactful product.

The reality was both terrifying and exhilarating. Every decision, every mistake (there were plenty), and every success was a lesson learned firsthand.

Looking back now, my technical and product decisions were far from perfect; in fact many comical to me now. But hindsight, it was the best decision I could have made. Despite all of my mistakes and not knowing how to do anything in the beginning, the app made it to the Google Play Store as PwC MyMobility, and it's still alive today as myMobility Vialto, used by all of the Vialto Android users. More importantly, that experience taught me something invaluable about myself: I thrive when pursuing growth over comfort.

Hindight, this was the first of multiple contrarian bets I would make in my professional journey. Reflecting now, I noticed something; I have made this same bet multiple times since in my career; and each time it has felt like a gamble at first, but then had significant pay off over the long term. My later decision to join a pre-ipo Coinbase over established tech companies followed the same philosophy - betting on opportunities for growth over guaranteed comfort.

I started writing this just to reflect on my first app in the Google Play Store. But as I reflected, this idea of contrarian bets and growth over comfort is by far the biggest learning I had from building the PwC MyMobility app. Maybe someday I'll write more about the product itself and my experience building it. But for now this is mostly just a letter to my future self to continue making contrarian, growth focused bets.