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Ryan Burgess
Welcome to a new episode of the front end, happy hour. As we've talked about, in maybe a couple episodes already that we've released is this year we're doing a couple episodes here and there, where we're doing interviews with the panelists and getting to know each panelist and knowing their backgrounds. So in this episode, I get to interview Stacy, you've probably heard the interview that Jem did with myself and the one that I interviewed Jem will Stacy's next. So we're going to be diving into Stacy's background and learning more. Stacy, let's start off by where did you grow up? It's probably easy one to start with.

Stacy London
Sure. I grew up in North Dakota, partially until like fifth grade or so. A small town small ish, I guess mine at North Dakota and then moved to Wisconsin, like sixth grade, fifth grade, sixth grade, and then spent most of my rest of my youth in like Wisconsin growing up there, went to college, their high school all that it was Johnson and then moved to England for a year for work stuff and then moved out to California for my my current current job.

Ryan Burgess
That's awesome. And you know what? I knew you were grew up in North Dakota, but I don't think I really thought about it. And then now you saying that you and I live two hours or an hour apart? My knot was like right below. Like it's right below Manitoba. Right, like so yeah, we would cross the border all the time coming from Brandon, which is the city I grew up in, and we'd go to buy things in the US and mine art was always the like, you know, the quickest one closest the border. So that's hilarious. I didn't realize that I didn't I don't think I've made that connection until now. So

Stacy London
yeah, we went What was that water Bossa waterpark that was like, just over the border. I remember that was something that we Yeah,

Ryan Burgess
I don't remember the name of it. But we would go that to like, we would go like I remember even doing like school trips there.

Stacy London
What if we were at the same places at the same time?

Ryan Burgess
Oh, my goodness, this is amazing. See, I'm learning even things during these interviews where I'm like, Yeah, I know everyone. But no, this is this is great. So you, you know grade six or so you're in Wisconsin. What What were some of the things you like to do as a kid?

Stacy London
Um, I was say that growing up in North Dakota as a kid was actually pretty great. Because we lived near a rodeo we lived near a ranch and stuff. So there's just a lot of like, being outdoors, somewhat unsupervised. riding around on these dirt path roads. Very, like kind of rural and free, you know, just very, like, you know, you're in a sort of safe area. You know, it wasn't like grew up in a big city or something where like, you had to worry about things and spend a lot of time on my cousin's farm riding around on three wheelers, which is very dangerous now and I think they're banned.

Ryan Burgess
Or they actually I think you're right, because like, yeah, those are readily available like growing up, but they're like, they are definitely dangerous like the two wheels or quad that's a lot better. Yeah.

Stacy London
So a lot of cool stuff like that. I just I remember like childhood being a lot of fun. So a lot

Ryan Burgess
of like outdoors activities.

Stacy London
Yeah. And my my parents were really into camping and fishing mostly like, like fishing was the the big thing. So we spent a lot of weekends on Lake Sakakawea boating with my parents good friends. And so that got infused I think a lot with me. My parents had a big garden when I was growing up. So like gardening, outdoor stuff that was all kind of a part of part of my childhood.

Ryan Burgess
That's very cool to do you still like fishing and like the outdoors?

Stacy London
I am not a fisher. I know my dad wanted to make me a hunter too. He took me hunting a few times and I did not like it. So I'm not not into killing animals. Really not in not in Retton not a big part of my my life but but it definitely instilled like an appreciation for nature and stuff. So yeah, to this day, like I love hiking and getting out and camping and and being outside.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, and I'm actually not surprised on the fishing and hunting. I'm like yeah, I just don't picture Stacy doing that. So I thought I'd ask. But ya know, like, I mean, you're to this day still still doing a lot of outdoor activities, which is awesome and camping and like spending time with the dogs which is really cool. All right. So North Dakota, lots of outdoors stuff. What was like, what was it like in Wisconsin once you'd moved?

Stacy London
Yeah, we moved to a suburb of Milwaukee, which is a pretty, like decent sized city. A lot more diversity. Like it was very different. Like we lived in an apartment for a little bit. We come from, like, living in a house. And yeah, just adjusting having to make new set of friends. You're like, you know, at that, like, Age of sixth grade, fifth grade was okay, sixth grade gets harder middle school kids can kind of be like, worse. mean? Yeah,

Ryan Burgess
they're mean. Like, they're very mean.

Stacy London
See, I'm just making new friends. But being in the city was a very different. Yeah, a different experience. Like, you're not just meandering around wherever you feel like it. And yeah, just going much bigger schools like mine out when I was there, that was tiny. Like, I had a classroom size of like, 20 people, and then going to Wisconsin, it was like, oh, there's like 300 people in your in your class. You know, it's very big. I felt like in

Ryan Burgess
your clothes, like your legit class size was 300

Stacy London
Well, like the entire you know, all of sixth grade or whatever, you know, like theirs was much bigger.

Ryan Burgess
Okay. The still? Yeah, yeah, that's a huge difference.

Stacy London
Huge difference. And yeah, just like moving to a state that's very different. You know, even though it's Midwest like every state is very unique and has like different characteristics. And Wisconsin just a lot of like, data on German influence you see a lot of of that trying to think the lake was something very, very different and new. Like it's it almost feels like an ocean like Lake Michigan, because it's, it's it's so huge. And it's an entire, like, it's like a coast you know, and you grew up near that that's kind of an like, something very different North Dakota, you know, there's there's lakes and stuff, but there's nothing that gigantic that almost feels kind of like an ocean. It's

Ryan Burgess
also very, very flat in

Stacy London
Yeah, very flat. Yeah. Extremely flat. So you different different topography, more more hills and trees, less more trees, a whole lot more trees,

Ryan Burgess
which is good for that, like, you know, you're liking the outdoors. There's like a little bit more to explore at that point.

Stacy London
Yeah, there was one thing that was very different is the a lot of the lakes in Wisconsin are very surrounded like, everybody owns property around them. And they're very kind of there are public boat launches and ways to get on them. But they're just it's very, like populated, as opposed to some of the lakes. Were just like, vast open spaces, and nobody, nobody around. So that was a big difference to

Ryan Burgess
very cool. And so what are some of the activities that you like to do once you were in Wisconsin,

Stacy London
like outside of school, my parents are really awesome in that. And I suppose it kind of goes to like privilege to like, they didn't have a lot of money, but they also gave us a lot of opportunities. So my parents like, enrolled us in a lot of rec department stuff. So swimming lessons through the rec department or art classes, or gymnastics, and just a lot of different things where you could like try things out and it wasn't a huge amount of of money. So I think that was really cool to see if I liked things like I didn't really like gymnastics at all. So like, that's not something I kept doing. That they gave us a lot of opportunities to like explore stuff. So I thought that was really cool. And I'm trying to think back to like, what was I doing in sixth, seventh and eighth grade. I remember being an art club. I joined like I did I remember joining art club. That was something I did after school was kind of nerdy. I think I liked. I think those that art club really stood out. I remember that was something I really liked a lot and put time and effort in. I tried playing clarinet for a split second. That didn't work. So band was never my thing.

Ryan Burgess
I feel like we would have hung out though in the art class. I'd like yeah, I'd resonate with that.

Stacy London
Yeah. I did start playing sports. I guess that was the thing. What kind of sports did you play? So I started playing basketball that was through like, ever since I was like very little my dad. We'd like play catch together and basketball. He taught me like basketball so that was always kind of a big part of my life and then started playing that in seventh grade for school and then all the way through high school all the way through senior year I was playing basketball which is probably I don't ever talk about sports that much but yeah, I was a point guard and in played on High School. spurts

Ryan Burgess
that's awesome. What, uh, like what else like probably changed like high school changes, lots of things like but you're still playing sports was cool. What are some things that you did for fun like outside of school and basketball for during high school

Stacy London
during high school? Sports was a big thing. I was in some like nerdy clubs, Future Business Leaders of America was one I can remember called FBLA. I went to a lot of like, like, very, I look back and I'm like business camp. What does that even mean? So yeah, some some things like that. What else today? What else was I involved with? I worked volunteered with like, like, sort of self printed magazine thing for where people could submit their artwork and poetry. A friend at the time, like created that. And so I don't remember if that was an official school thing, or if we just did it. It's all very fuzzy.

Ryan Burgess
That's really cool, though. I love that like, it kind of ties in some of like, the art and like that you were doing but then also like, I mean, I think front end happier listeners know that you also love music. So I'm assuming like that, that kind of ties into that world really nicely, too.

Stacy London
Yeah. And definitely in high school. Like once I was able to drive, there's a lot of like concerts. That was huge. I was so excited to start going to shows started. I try to think new rock Fest was I think one of the first music festivals I went to, and that was a marquee. And they had a big area in the lakefront where they would have festivals, and one of them was new rock fest. So it had a lot of like, indie bands that you heard on the radio at the time. That was like quite I think when Stefani performed and Moby and PJ Harvey and a lot of these 90s came out kind of became popular in the 90s. A lot of those bands. So that was really fun. So yeah, a lot a lot of like, any money that I had would go towards like going to shows

Ryan Burgess
that's awesome. Because I mean, you still go to shows like, well, pandemic aside, like you're always been like relatively going to shows. So that's like cool that that kind of just started like even when you just could start driving.

Stacy London
Yeah, it was. I've always enjoyed that. And then computer stuff kind of came into the picture in high school to that. I didn't take any classes in high school related to programming that was I think they had them. I just don't I didn't take them. But I did start getting interested in computer stuff because my parents bought our family like the Family Computer. This was like the early days, right? Like the 90s. So Oh, yeah, it was. Yeah.

Ryan Burgess
Older that you all fought over. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't think I got it even in the 90s. I think well, maybe late 90s is when my parents finally were like, Okay, we'll get a computer.

Stacy London
Yeah, it was like, yeah, they got the Family Computer. It was really expensive. And it was a big deal. And yeah, it was in the family room. It wasn't in like anybody's bedroom or anything. It was like we all shared it. I ended up spending probably the most time on it. Just because I like was fascinated with it. It was like Windows 3.1 was the operating system on it. It's really,

Ryan Burgess
what what were you fascinated about it like because there's so many realms that you could have been like excited about was there like games that you're playing was trying to start up that dial up? Like what what was the things that kind of got you interested in it?

Stacy London
I think my mom at the time, wherever she was working, one of her co workers found out that she had that, like we got a family computer and they were like, Oh, I have this. This game. You should take it home your Kizil you know, like playing it. And it was basically the game civilization. But it was on floppy disks. I think it was a das based version of civilization. And so yeah, she brought those home. And I was like, Oh, fun. Let's play it. And I basically spent a summer doing that because it was it was before I got I could get my license to drive. So it was the summer where I basically was just at home a lot. And I was like, alright, let's figure this game out. And I had to figure it out. I just I remember the mouse wouldn't if the mouse was active, like I couldn't play the game. So I had to figure out how to deactivate it and I couldn't. And I called out like a one 800 Number from the back of the game. Because I had to play it and they talked me through like disabling the mouse driver through like auto editing AUTOEXEC BAT file like it was very revelatory. I was like, Oh, you can like change your computer and it like does things in like Seeing code, you know, not that you would necessarily consider AUTOEXEC BAT file a program. But I mean, there's just there's code in

Ryan Burgess
some ways it is because it's Yeah, exactly like it's it's something behind the scenes that you weren't know, you would be like, I didn't know this existed.

Stacy London
So yeah, modify that. And it worked. And I was like, it just felt you felt so powerful. I was like, Oh, look like we got this working. And I played a, I played a lot of civilization.

Ryan Burgess
Nice. And so is that maybe some of that was that what sparked you wanting to move into programming,

Stacy London
I think planted seeds. Like at the time, I didn't even know that that was a thing that I could do. Like, as a career, because I wasn't exposed to, I guess, really knowing what software was or software development would be. But then once I got to college, and started thinking through it more, I was like, Well, I really like computers, and then mucking around with things like the early like, was at geo cities and creating websites on there, started doing that kind of stuff. And I was like, Oh, this is a really cool intersection of like art, and, and logic, you know, something because I really enjoyed. I was like, pretty decent at math, and took a lot of advanced math courses in high school and all but I also really liked art. And so like those two, came together and sort of intersected really nicely for building for the web. And I was like, this is cool. I'm like, Can this be a career? And it turned out that Yeah, could

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, and I love the like taking math, like logic and art and putting together like, that's, that's so cool, taking two loves and just like throwing them together, and also being able to make a career out of it. That's awesome. And you did go to school for like, for some sort of computer work, correct?

Stacy London
Yeah. And originally thought, I was like, Oh, is that computer science? Is that what I do? Or is it at the time that the college that I went to was, was well known for kind of a mixture of like a business, and computer like programming program that was like a combined thing called management computer systems. Computer Science at the time, at least at that, at that school was like, hardware related. And I was like, wasn't into hardware. And so I was like, well, maybe that's the thing I want to go towards. I think I ended up like, first declaring finances a major because I wasn't entirely sure what path I wanted to do. That was a mistake. I was like, I don't want to do finance.

Ryan Burgess
I don't picture you doing that either.

Stacy London
Yeah, I took a bunch of accounting and finance classes. But then there was a new major that came out that was a mixture. So So management computer systems was a lot of like, like program, you know, basic programming skills and things, but it was wasn't really web focused. And so then they had a new program come out that was called Computer and user technologies, which is a very weird degree name, but that's what my degree actually is, is a Bachelor's of a BA with that as the name and that was a combination of pro programming stuff, but also included like JavaScript, so I took like add a JavaScript course. And so we I think I even did like Flash for like a project and one of my classes for that so anyway, that combined more of what I was like hoping for so I ended up majoring in that

Ryan Burgess
that's really cool. You're doing flash JavaScript, it was like that was the web like you were definitely down the right track for web which is really cool. Yeah, all right. Well, school then you know, get out in the real world like what happened how did like what was the first job like how did you first get the job?

Stacy London
Yeah, well and also f1 from our story from college that I wanted to share just because I think maybe it's helpful for people to I the first course I took in programming I did not like it and I did not do that great. At first I like had to work really really hard to get my head around some of these like the core like programming principles of like, how how if statements work and all of that like it did not come naturally to me. I was not like a little natural computer hacker at all. I it took a lot of practice and actually a lot of office hours me going to see the professor tears like feeling like I was going to fail and maybe this isn't for me, maybe I'm not good enough. So like it was really hard. I ended up turning that course around and I did get like a good grade in it. But like, it challenged me and I was like did I pick the right thing? So but once I started doing JavaScript and Flash I was like If, for some reason that was more inspiring and fun, like the, the was Pascal was the language that I was learning. And so you're doing things like processing a text file, and, you know, a blue, whatever, like the screen was, you know, not very advanced. There's the IDS at the time, were not not very sophisticated. So it didn't spark anything in me. But like, once I saw, like, the web, and JavaScript and Flash and all that stuff, it was kind of like, more visual, and it was more exciting and meaningful, like, Oh, I'm looping because of this purpose. And it just sort of clicked.

Ryan Burgess
I gotta echo the same feeling. And Stacey, I'd very much similar experience for just like, it was hard, like, I had to really work at it. But it was flash that really connected the dots. For me, it was like, Cool. Like, I'm actually like, I can see the, you know, the reason for this, and I'm seeing it actually something move on the screen. And like even some of the math and coordinates that you're figuring out. It just made more sense to me than something like dotnet or PHP, or who knows what languages at the time. Yeah, I can resonate with that a lot. Yeah. So you, you know, you finished up school, you did figure out the programming, clearly, you did well in the course. And now, you know, moved on. Now you're in the real world. What is the first job look like? How did you get the first job? And what was it?

Stacy London
Yeah, first job was, so I graduated in 2000. So it was right when the.com Boom, bust happened? Or law right in the midst of it. And so like I graduated, right, as everything was kept, like crashing down. Not that I had that I didn't really have like, Oh, I'm the dream to go work for a startup out in California. Like that wasn't really a thing that I was thinking about. But it was concerning, because a lot of people that I was graduating with, it was actually hard to find a job because a lot of the tech jobs at that moment in time they were being cut like companies were letting lots of people go. And so there was it was a little bit unnerving. I think I got lucky because I got an internship at a company that took the sister sibling company of SC Johnson. Wax, so you might be familiar with that from raid off Windex. So it's like, the professional division of that that worked with like professional cleaning products, but they had an internship working on their e commerce team like that, like. So when he was it was popular for me to be in front of everything. And so I got lucky because I it was like something it was, I got to work with the web. And I think a few people that I graduated with, like the careers were kind of all over the place, like some people started working on like in like help desks, because that was considered, you know, sort of like tech tech related. Some people went off to work in networking, like network engineering stuff. So it was very wide gamut of like what people ended up doing with that same degree. But yeah, the internship was great. I learned a ton. And then that turned into a full time job offer. And it just I really liked the people I was working with and the stuff that I was working on. So I was like, Yeah, that sounds good. So that was where I was where I started.

Ryan Burgess
Nice. And then what did you learn mostly in that first job, like what was kind of something that helped you in your career?

Stacy London
I think one thing I think back on and realize how lucky I was, is that I had a really good mentor. It wasn't like official or anything. It wasn't like this is officially a mentor for you. But it was just someone that Jeff Wagner's his name, he really helped me learn a lot. He was very patient and good at teaching. He would, you know, we'd get projects to work on and he would kind of be the lead on that. And then like, and I would help out where I could and he'd kind of define things that I could work on that made sense. And he did a really good job of that. And I think having that as like a really positive experience as you're just getting into the industry. I think that was huge. And so yeah, that sits with me quite a bit. I think that whenever I see new people joining that are like just out of school or just graduating I think I think a lot about that. And like how much just that first year can mean to like whether you have a good experience or, you know, a bad one.

Ryan Burgess
Yeah, like it's you learn so much like because you're just taking it all in. And if you have some good guidance that can go a really long way or else you're just stuck trying to figure it out yourself. So that's awesome that you actually had someone even not even in the official mentor Kip capacity, but just someone's like, yeah, we'll help you and like showing you some of those things that It, you know, now when you're later in your career each kind of just take for granted that like those things you just know. But like, early in the career, it's really difficult to just how do you just figure that out?

Stacy London
Yeah, exactly. Like, there's a lot of stuff in tech, too, you know, you aren't taught in school. So I had to learn a lot on the job. Like, one of the first things that we worked with was a lotus script. Yeah, Lotus script. It was, it was related to like IBM's, Lotus Notes and Domino. I don't even know if that's like a platform that's around anymore. But that was something that we built intranet and internet, like, we built sites based with that with those tools. And so I had to learn like, a little bit of load of scripts, because he had to manipulate things. It's kind of like JavaScript, but you know, like, ECMAScript variant. But I didn't learn that in school. So you had to, like, figure it out. And it was nice to just be I have someone that was patient enough to, it'd be willing to they're, like, answer a lot of questions.

Ryan Burgess
That's awesome. No, I think that that's so important. And it's like, I like the call that out, too. Because I think it's also good for us to remember, as engineers is like, when you're working with someone who's new to the industry, it's like, there's, there's just so much to learn. And like, you can just give giving a little bit of your time goes such a long way. So that's really cool. So then yeah, like, you know, you've definitely worked in other companies before, you know, joining the Atlassian, which we all know that you're at now. But like, what are some things that you, you know, some different companies you worked at, or things you learned along the way? Yeah,

Stacy London
I think having a bunch of like, varied experiences was pretty helpful. Like, I didn't just build, like work not working for like one type of company. So this, this first company was like, you know, they produce physical products, they produce like physical, like the cleaning solutions, stuff to like, floor strippers and stuff. So the web part of it was, you know, building their external website, building the internal website for the intranet that everybody was using at work. It was like building, you know, apps to manage cleaning machines, locations and things. So it was, it was kind of, you know, those kinds of applications. And then after that, I went to Kohl's. And I worked on kohls.com. So another E commerce team. But this was even bigger, right? Like, that was a little bit of selling stuff online. But this was, you know, they're a lot of their business was kohls.com. And selling tons of products online. So that was quite an experience to like, go from, like lower, like websites that didn't have a lot of scale, like not like you're not having like millions of visitors kinds of kind of website to something that was much bigger scale. So that was interesting, different stack. I didn't know Java. Before going there, that was something that was part of their stack. JSPs in Java. And it's also where I learned a lot about Unix and Korn shell and maneuvering around on servers via the command line. That was not something I'd done much of prior. So yeah, a lot of leg learn by a fire kind of stuff that the on calls were pretty intense. Yeah, that was quite an experience. And after coals, I wanted something a little bit less chaotic. It was really a lot of on call stress there. So I wanted to move, I kind of wanted to try and, like at least, but build more web applications, not just, you know, the E commerce selling shopping cart site, I wanted to do something more app based. So then I went to Northwestern Mutual, which is a big investment insurance company. And so worked on that kind of stuff. For many years. I think I was there almost seven years, working on various teams like moving, starting off just working on like app development, but then moved into like an architecture role and was doing studying like strategy and design direction for how we build web apps at Nn. And worked on their external sites worked on a bunch of internal apps, a lot of apps like financial reps used to like do financial assessments. I worked on my first hybrid mobile app there that was fun, like in those like the early days of like, phone gap and trying to think of the tech stack PhoneGap Cordova Yeah, just that hybrid model of like building a little hybrid mobile app. That was fun. That was

Ryan Burgess
exciting. I remember doing the same thing is like building mobile apps, PhoneGap and Cordova, like both of them. Leveraging is pretty cool. You're like, wow, I can just write same like HTML JavaScript as I do on the web, but now it's a mobile application. You know, it was okay. It wasn't the best, like, end result wise, but I enjoyed it, as you know, as a developer.

Stacy London
Yeah, totally. Yeah. And that was, like, a, it's a pretty big company. So all these are pretty big companies so far. They're, you know, hundreds and hundreds of employees, maybe 1000s. Like, they're really pretty big. I hadn't done any, like small startup stuff, not that startups really that big of a thing, especially like, you know, the Midwest, there wasn't at the time, that wasn't, there weren't a ton of those. That's where you went out, out west, if you wanted to do that. But eventually, I was like, I think I would, I was kind of getting worried about getting too high up in the weeds with like, application architecture, software, spending more time like writing papers than maybe building apps. And I was just because how fast front end changes, I was like, I feel like I'm almost gonna get out of touch if I don't try and spend more of my time building. And that was not necessarily what that role was supposed to be. So I'm like, well, maybe I don't anyway, a small startup in marquee, like, some friends, I knew that work there. They had an opening for like, a front end position. And I was like, alright, it's kind of risky. But you know, startups, you never know. But leave my comfort zone. Let's do it. I want to like build again. And that's where I went back to being just more of an engineer and not so much at that, like architect level.

Ryan Burgess
Do you regret that jump? Like, because that is scary, right? Like anytime going from like a large company where, you know, things are a little more stable typically, like that's, you know, or the notion of it is usually that what were your thoughts? Like, after diving into the startup world?

Stacy London
Very different? For sure. Right? Like so much, not very much process or procedure, kind of more autonomy, faster pace, sometimes in a way that maybe it was sometimes not great. Maybe too fast? Yeah, not a lot of like layers of things. You don't have to like, go get, you know, 20 approvals, and try and sell ideas. It was sort of like, have a conversation with a few people and make a decision and keep moving. So it was very different that way. There were no, no one was writing papers. There was no time for writing papers.

Ryan Burgess
I liked that. I liked that difference, though. Like really? Yeah, like a big difference in the way you operate.

Stacy London
Yeah, I like to I just got to like, build stuff. And the people that I was working with, were all like, really smart, and fun and nice. And it was. Yeah, I'm really grateful for that experience. I'm glad I made the jump even though it was yeah, like scary, because it's like, who knows. And I mean, in the end, it did like, kind of fall apart because it got acquired, and then it got acquired again. And there's, there's a whole lot of drama that happened with that. And but if I hadn't gone there, I never would have met a tj and tj who had had left that startup to go work at Atlassian. And a year later was like, hey, they're looking for front end engineers, or would you be interested in so like, all these doors keep opening, you know, like, if you, if you never move, you'll never know about these doors like this would never would have happened. It's so

Ryan Burgess
true. And it's also like, I mean, I also its connections to right, like the people you work with, you just never know, like, you end up I mean, I want to keep working with great people and I meet someone that I really enjoy working with, it's like, there's going to be an opening, I want to tell them about it. So it's kind of cool that that's like an important factor there to just, you know, brings you all the way to Atlassian. Which gets back to that, like it's all on the West Coast now. Like you've actually, you know, it's a big move too. What were your feelings on that? So you're like, Alright, I've, you know, interviewed with Atlassian what was that? Like? And you know, what, what made you make the jump to the Bay Area?

Stacy London
Yeah, big decision. Yeah, because my husband Josh, and I, like we had, you know, pretty established, like, most of our lives have been, you know, spent in Wisconsin, we had, you know, our friend group there and our families and we had bought a house so we had, you know, pretty pretty established in many ways. So, it was a big deal. We had though for years when talking about like, would it be like, you know, shouldn't Should we try to find jobs where the car Funny is like, their main purpose as a company is making software versus a lot of the companies in that area were like, their main purpose as a business was something else. But like they had technology jobs, but they were. They weren't software companies per se, there that existed, but it just wasn't like as many. And we kind of we talked about, like, Oh, do we move somewhere more like tech hobby, where the that those jobs are more plentiful, like, you know, go to Austin, or we to go to like, Boulder, or there's like a bunch of different places, you know, that had more of that kind of thing. So we had talked about it for years, we just never really went for it. And then when the Atlassian opportunity came through, and it was like, it worked out and the offer was there. It was like, All right, should we do it? Alright, let's do it. We rented our house out just because we weren't sure like, oh, maybe it won't work out. And we'll just you know, we'll move back. And eventually, that we got rid of the house as well, because it was annoying to have to worry about that. But yeah, it was Yeah, I mean, it's just a really huge change. It's really far moving across the country. Going back to apartment life, all of it, but no regrets. So it was like, obviously, it's it's nice to live somewhere where you can see a lot of really close friends more easily. But that's really beautiful out here. And that's one thing I love a lot is just the ability to get to the ocean. The hiking here is very epic, like the outdoors in California is Grant it's very grand and an epic and very appreciative of that. So yeah, no regrets.

Ryan Burgess
You can go like an hour one way and it's like ocean an hour another, like straight up forest. Like you just get a balance, which is really cool.

Stacy London
Yeah, yeah, very, like the landscape can change pretty dramatically to go from like desert to mountains to ocean, all of that. So

Ryan Burgess
yeah, in hours to like in driving hours. Like it's, it's kind of wild that you can do that. So I've always appreciated that too. And then even being in somewhere like San Francisco being in a city, but you still have these, like all these amazing things just around it that are like outdoorsy. So it's kind of a good mix. Yeah, I am curious. So like, you know, we've talked a lot about, you know, your career and all the things that you know, different jobs. What keeps you motivated to stay working in tech?

Stacy London
Yeah, I've I get this question quite a bit, because it's now coming in 21 Yeah, 21 years, because I graduated in 2000. So it's a long time to be in tech, there's, there's like so many stories on the Internet, you can if you do some searching of people like burning out and quitting and being harassed or, you know, a million awful stories and leaving leaving tech. I was pretty aware of that stuff, too. And I moved out to Cal like, you know, San Francisco Silicon Valley, I was like, there's a lot of bad stories of bad companies out here. Like I don't, you know, want to, I don't want to subject myself to that if I don't have to. So definitely did a lot of research before deciding that this was something that I wanted to do. But what's kept me I just love it. I just I like, since I was back in the early days of building simple little dumb web pages. Like, it's just so fun to me. It's making and building. And there's so much like satisfaction in that and even more satisfaction when you're like building something that helps someone else. And so like working on Trello right now as an example, for me is hugely rewarding, because it's used by so many people to help them you know, run their small business or I don't just it's, you're building a thing that enables somebody else to to get things done. And that's incredibly rewarding. And yeah, I just am intrinsically motivated. I still love the building in the making. It's still fun. It changes so much, though, that 20 years. It's not like I'm doing the same thing I did 20 years ago at all. Like in the end, yes. It's HTML and JavaScript and CSS. But the way you go about it has changed dramatically over those over those 20 years. And so I feel like I'm always learning

Ryan Burgess
that's always good is like the constant learning which is it's probably that's a motivator in itself to like the building and the learner. I mean,

Stacy London
yeah. And I suppose the other reason that I'm still doing is just over those 20 years, the people that I've met along the way, like some people in that I've mean, the work, you'll forget about, you'll forget the projects and stuff, but you won't forget the people that you worked with. And you will remember, who was kind to who helps you. Who made you laugh, like, all of those things. keep you going, if you don't have like, if you're on a team, and there's nobody who's kind, and there's nobody who makes you laugh, like, it's not going to be fun. And I want I want the work to, you know, to have some element of fun to it. And I think that's a privilege to there's so many shitty jobs that are that are awful, that are not fun, that are demoralizing, and whatever. So I feel very lucky and privileged that I found this and I liked it, and I kept with it, and I can keep doing it.

Ryan Burgess
I love that. No, I love it so much. And to your right, like finding something that you enjoy doing. And just keep doing that is so it's not Oh, yeah, I didn't say it's so rare, but it can be rare. And so that that's great. Maybe on the flip side, if you were like had to leave tech, what would you do instead?

Stacy London
Oh, if I had to leave something with art or music, you know, like some making, but it's hard to it's hard to make a living making art. But I something related to those things I think would be would be ideal.

Ryan Burgess
I could see your answer being that and actually mine in when I was jemat asked me something similar. And I was like, yeah, something art related, like and you're and you're right, it's harder to make maybe a living off of it. But there's there's definitely ways to do it. And I think it's just something completely different, which would be kind of cool, too. What about future future goals, like stays, you've that you've done a lot in your career, like definitely gone through a lot of various engineering roles, worked at different sizes of company, large, small, like at the startup size, and then even something again, a bit larger, like Atlassian? You know, what are some goals that you have for the future?

Stacy London
The dreaded like, where do you see yourself in five years or 10 years? Question? Oh,

Ryan Burgess
that's a word. That's a terrible one. Maybe it's like, it's tough.

Stacy London
It is hard. Um, because if you had asked me, you know, 15 years ago, like, do you think you'll still be, you know, doing this in 15 years? I don't know, this job didn't exist when I started high school, like, I don't know. So in some ways, I'm impressed that I've, you know, it's still relatively the same job, like still a web developer, you know, 20 years, 20 years later, future. I'll say, I'll keep doing it. As long as I'm excited about it. Like, I still, I still want to keep making and building it's, it's super fun. There. There's some concern I have, just because of ageism, and things out in the west coast, like, if that's ever going to be a factor or not, I don't know. Like, I haven't felt it yet. Which is nice. And like, when I was in the Midwest, I had a lot of co workers who were, you know, engineers, or architects still like doing the the individual contributor thing that we're, you know, near retirement age. So I, there was a lot that was like, not something you really thought about when I was in the Midwest, because there were a lot of examples of people, very all sorts of age groups that were still doing, you know, technical work, so I'm only aware of it just because of some of the stuff that you see out here. So I don't know what that's gonna mean, for me, like, will it ever be a thing or a problem? I don't know. Will I go for an interview? And someone won't hire me? Because I think that I'm, you know, not young enough? I don't know. So there's, there's some of that in my brain. And I'm like, Well, does that mean that I need to be a manager? Do I need to like move into management? You know, is that like, the right right thing to do? I don't know. I did. I was a manager for a split second. And it was, like, interesting and rewarding and challenging. But I don't love it more than I love making things still. So

Ryan Burgess
yeah, I actually really love that you went to management, but then also realize like, hey, maybe this isn't the type of role for me and went back. Like, I think that sometimes people people ask me about going into management. Sometimes they're worried that like, once they go down that track that they can't go back. And I don't think that that's shouldn't be a thing because you actually just built up new skill sets that actually help you still in your day to day as an engineer that you probably learned from being a manager that just helps you as a as an engineer again,

Stacy London
yeah, I don't think I hopefully don't be afraid if don't stick with something even if you think that you're that's what you're supposed to be doing. But if you don't like it, life is too short.

Ryan Burgess
It's It's so true. How does like, you know, we spoke a bit about music and I mean, everyone on the podcast, loves a lot of your picks, like they're always really, really great to listen to, especially when coding like you have great mixes for that. How does like music play into your life? Like how do you you know, this is something that's just always been there, since you could first start driving and go and see in shows, like house music really showing up for you? In your life? Oh,

Stacy London
yeah. It's always I guess it's always been there. It's always been a bit of an obsession, I guess, like, making mixtapes way back when when you could like, maybe only hear a song on the radio. So you were like, we'd sit there waiting for that song to come on, and then record it and your mixtape and, yeah, just the personal, like, how personal that was, and how much it felt like you were making something really special mix CDs, those are you know, and that was the thing to it, it just was like, very fun to craft and curate, like an experience and share that experience with someone else. I loved everything about it. In the don't know, the emotive, the, like, music itself is just, you know, expression of emotions and feelings and, and there's patheticness to that. And dancing was a huge thing, like going to a lot of electronic music events. For me, that's like, pure living in the moment, expression. I think that people do that with a lot of things, right? Like, we're all trying to not think about the past, not think about the future and try and not be stressed and be present. Music does that for me very deeply. I think that's why, you know, I love it. So that's why it's also the pandemics been really hard because I haven't been able to do this thing that helps. That helps, you know, keep me you know, centered and and it's something that you do with like, friends who have shared experiences, going to events and things. So there's there's a whole lot to it. And it's definitely I spent way too much time curating music and making mixes lists and going exploring, like I had some time off recently, and I spent, you know, entire days just like following music recommendations and listening and and curating which you can do when you when you don't have kids and

Ryan Burgess
a lot of us do you just might get some like interruptions and things like that. It's still figuring it out.

Stacy London
Yeah, yes. It's just a big part. Yeah.

Ryan Burgess
What are some parting words that you could share with our listeners?

Stacy London
Oh, parting words. Um, one thing I did, throughout my career was at least trying to always pay attention to, if you can, this is, you know, again, these are privileged things to say, but, you know, if you're not happy what you're doing or you don't like what you're doing, or you found something else that you do, like, try to make changes so that you can spend your spending like a huge amount of your life doing work. So try and make it something that brings you a little bit of joy. Like I would, if someone was like, pushing me towards do any more back end development, I'd be like, No, I don't want it. I don't like it. And then if it got pushed too hard, I'd be like, Oh, then I'm going to find a different team or do a different thing. So that was just very clear to me. Like what I what what I like doing and what's fun for me. So protect that if you if you can find that to protect it and the only person really managing your careers you so peopled