In this second part of the conversation, we focus on Kelsey’s retirement - the financial planning that enabled him to retire at 42, how he got started advising startups and his perspectives on compensation, turning down a substantial offer from Microsoft and meeting Satya Nadella in person. And, of course, plans for the future.
In this first part of the conversation, we delve into pivotal moments in Kelsey’s career journey ranging from buying his first car by working at mcdonald’s after school, to starting his own computer store that turned into a music studio after 6pm, to hacking on python infrastructure with the core developers. Through these stories, we learned a ton about how Kelsey thinks about acquiring new skills - getting paid for it, breaking into the world of open source, navigating corporate politics, building trust within a team, and much more.
Julie Amundson is a Sr Staff Software Engineer at Google working on Machine Learning Infrastructure. Prior to Google, she was the Director of Machine Learning Infrastructure at Netflix. Julie decided to take a career break last year when she was affected by mass layoffs. In this conversation, we talk to her about what it was like to find a job during hiring freezes, what it was like to position herself in this market, whether the interviewers cared about the career break she took and how the career break changed her perspective towards work and life.