Computer Science major Laura Bright was drawn to the more technical sides of her field but never considered herself a programmer. She thought she wanted to teach and make computer science come alive for other learners so pursued the PhD. She realized, though, that she wanted more hands on opportunities. Going into industry, she did more applied work and ultimately made a discovery about herself. Find out how taking the opportunity just outside your comfort zone often leads to insights about who you are.
Entering college, Laura Bright was drawn to both French and math, two subjects she exceled in in high school. French remained something that came easily and she took for fun. But the math she took in college didn’t look like high school math and she wondered if that was the right path. As the department was combined with computer science, she took the advice of a female researcher and tried her hand at computer science.
She was drawn the more technical sides of her field but never considered herself a programmer. She thought she wanted to teach and make computer science come alive for other learners so pursued the PhD. She realized, though, that she wanted more hands on opportunities. Going into industry, she did more applied work and ultimately made a discovery about herself.
In this episode, find out from Laura how taking the opportunity just outside your comfort zone often leads to insights about who you are… on ROADS TAKEN...with Leslie Jennings Rowley.
About This Episode’s Guest
Laura Bright is a software engineer who has spent time in academia and industry and who currently serves as a Senior Software Engineer at Finastra, a fintech company based in Portland, Oregon.
For another story about graduate school leading to personal insights, listen to our episode with Oliver Will.
Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com
Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley
Music: Brian Burrows
Email the show at RoadsTakenShow@gmail.com
Laura Bright: They were making some cuts and my position was eliminated. If you're in tech, there's a good chance that happens to you at some point in your career. You know, I really wasn't sad about it for that long cause I realized I had been kind of ready to start the next chapter. So I looked at it as an opportunity to look for something new.
Leslie Jennings Rowley: Computer Science major Laura Bright was drawn to the more technical sides of her field but never considered herself a programmer. She thought she wanted to teach and make computer science come alive for other learners, so she pursued the PhD. She realized, though, that she wanted more hands on opportunities. Going into industry, she did more applied work and ultimately made a discovery about herself. Find out how taking the opportunity just outside your comfort zone often leads to insights about who you are on today's Roads Taken, with me, Leslie Jennings Rowley.
Today I'm here with Laura Bright and we are going to talk about finding the code or cracking the code or what even was code back in the day. So Laura, thanks so much for being here.
LB: Great thing. Thanks. It's great to be here.
LJR: Okay, so you may know that I begin this the same way with all of our guests and I asked two questions and they're these: When we were in college, who were you? And when we were getting ready to leave, who did you think you would become?
LB: So the first one, who was I? I was a computer science and French double major, which it came about cuz when I was in high school my two strongest and favorite subjects were math and French. So I knew I was interested in continuing with both of those in college. And when I started at Dartmouth, my first math class was just very different from what I had experienced in high school.
LJR: You and me both.
LB: Yeah. I felt like it, in high school, it came naturally and it just, I really got into it and I just was struggling through my first math class at Dartmouth. So that made me rethink things a little. And around that time I was also looking at women in science internships, and at the time the computer science and math departments were together. So they listed all the math internships and computer science internships were on the same list. And I contacted all of the professors and I interviewed with a computer science professor who was talking about this really exciting multimedia internship she was offering, which was pretty new and cutting edge at the time. And I came outta this interview like, wow, that sounds so cool. You know, I wanna be a computer science major. And I think I told her, I was, I said I was interested in math and she's like, oh, you should major in computer science. It's way more interesting. So that kind of planted the seed and got me all excited about being a computer science major.
LJR: Wow. Did you get that internship?
LB: Yes I did. Oh, good, good. So that's what I did through my freshman year. My first computer science class was also challenging for me. That was kind of new for me, but at that point I kind of, I decided to stick with it cuz I felt like on some level I knew it was what I wanted. So even though it was hard at the beginning, I was still gonna try to get through that.
LJR: Yeah. And a lot of people have talked about coming in with some language ability or love and that of course is a big strength of our college experience. Did you take advantage of any of the foreign study programs or language study abroad?
LB: Yes. Cause that was the, the French side of that. I did the foreign study program in France, but my sophomore fall and I took a lot of French classes. I got to the point where I just had so many French credits that it made sense to also be a French major. [LJR: Yeah.] And it was, it was actually really nice having the two sides of the coin cuz the French classes were kind of something I could do for fun when I needed a break from computer science. So it was a good combination for me. I, I wasn't expecting to continue with the French professionally, but on a personal level it's been, it's great when I travel, try to read books in French when I can. So the French major for fun and the computer science major for. You know, my career path.
LJR: Yeah. But a career path that, I mean, that was a little cutting edge at the time, and certainly for women. Yeah, we, we didn't really get told everyone should learn how to code. They're getting that now, but that was not a thing. So did you have mentors? It sounds like you had one in the early stage there, or did you just think, this seems like it's gonna be really applicable in our world as where it's going?
LB: Yeah, I don't even know if I was thinking about it that much at the time. I mean, it was a few years later when it started to become a much more popular major on all campuses. But I just had a lot of, you know, all my professors were very supportive and provided advice outside of the classroom when I needed it. So getting to the second part of your question, who [LJR: Yeah.] did I think I was gonna become? My junior year I took a class which was actually taught by a, a computer science grad student who, but he was almost, he was about to graduate and had accepted a faculty job at another school. So he was very enthusiastic about teaching. So he was teaching this class at Dartmouth and I just totally loved his class and just thought he was so cool and I'm like, I wanna, now this is what I wanna do. I wanna be a professor. [LJR: Oh.] So that's, that's what I thought I was gonna become, and that inspired me to start applying to computer science PhD programs when I was getting ready to graduate.
LJR: Yeah. And you did pursue that. I'm just wondering if you found anyone who was as enthusiastic as he in your programs?
LB: Yeah. All, all of the, all the other professors were, yeah. Several of them gave me advice when I asked for recommendation, you know, which, what university should I apply to? And when I, you know, later when I was trying to choose…so I sent applications to several places and had a few acceptances. And when trying to decide between them several professors had recommended that if I wasn't, if I wasn't sure where I wanted to go or if I wanted to have options, a larger program would be a better fit.
LJR: So where did you end up?
LB: So, so I ended up at University of Maryland in College Park. Yeah, it's a huge university. It's kind of a culture shock from Dartmouth, but you know, it has a top ranked computer science department and it, I think it was definitely the right place to continue my education. But certainly when I started out there, I knew I wasn't at Dartmouth anymore. [LJR: Yeah.] It was very different feel.
LJR: Yeah. Now many fields. I would say when you're thinking of pursuing a PhD, they're pretty tracked toward the lifelong academic, I don't know, about 25 years ago. I think that PhDs in computer science have a broader range of kind of remaining in academia or going to industry, a whole bunch of industries. Was that true for you at that time?
LB: Yeah. Yes, that was true. I think there's definitely a lot of other options. You can get a PhD and find jobs in industry. I mean, there's a lot of demand for that. So if, for those who don't choose the academic world, it's not like, you know, it's not like there's no other options. I think many major companies have research labs and there's other government labs, there's…so there is a lot of options and we'll kind of get to get to that when I talk a little more.
LJR: Right. But you had gone in thinking, I wanna be like that guy that I had junior year. [LB: Yeah.] Enthusiastic and kind of sharing with the other students. And so you're doing your coursework, but thinking this is where I wanna be. How long did that kind of you, you follow that path?
LB: So the summer after my first year of grad school, I had an internship with IBM Research and that was really cool. That was a lot. It was much more hands on, even though it's research, you know, they're a company so they want marketable stuff to come out of their research labs. So we were really working on a prototype for a multimedia conferencing tool, which again, was very cutting edge at the time.
LJR: Yeah. Yeah.
LB: And I just really, I loved working there. It just was fun to feel like I was producing something useful that might turn into a product someday. So I think that kind of shifted me away from do I really wanna be a professor? I'm having much more fun doing this hands-on work and building something. So that kind of got me thinking at that point. I was like, okay, I wanna go to a research lab after I graduate. You know, and grad school was certainly not easy. You know, I mean, the path to the PhD, it took me about seven years to graduate, which is a little bit longer than the average. People won't tell you what you should be working, you know, I had an advisor who was working on some projects who could give me some guidance or suggestions. But it took a while to figure out what I was actually working on for my dissertation. So that process was a lot of the seven years.
But I wanted to go to a research lab. That was my plan. And when I finally got close to graduating, I graduated in ‘03. And the, the market was a little tighter that year. There was still a lot of demand at universities for academic jobs. A lot of the research labs just weren't hiring as many people. Even though there's options in computer science, you don't have to go into academia, a lot of my professors at Maryland encouraged it, which is, you know, it's a good thing. I want, you know, I wanna have options. So with some encouragement from my advisor and also knowing that. There's a lot of different things out there, I applied for jobs at universities and research labs and interviewed all over the place. Yeah. From one point I was like on a different campus every week, but even then I kind of felt like, like some of the places seemed like great departments and great schools, but there was this feeling do, is this really what I wanna be doing? And for a number of reasons, the stars just didn't align and I didn't end up getting offers from the places I applied.
That was a blessing in disguise cuz I didn't really wanna go down that path. [LJR: Yeah.] But then I was in a spot where it's like, I'm graduating in a few months and I've worked really hard for this. This was my goal and I don't know what I'm gonna do next.
LJR: Right. Well luckily there's a thing called a postdoctoral fellowship.
LB: Yes.
LJR: That's kind of the consultant world of when you don't know what to do after a PhD. It's a postdoc, right?
LB: Yes. So luckily there was a professor in, in my area who I didn't know him personally, but I knew of his, he was, had a good reputation and I knew his work. And he advertised that he was looking for a postdoc and he was in, in Oregon at the time, it was at Oregon Health and Science University. So I sent my CV off to him and he invited me to fly out there for an interview, and this was in in August, which is a great time of year to visit Portland. So my first time in Portland, beautiful sunny day and just immediately felt like home. I was like, oh, this is great. So I interviewed for that job and ended up getting the offer. So decided just to go for it, move across country, try something new. You know, we had agreed on a two to three year contract, so I knew after that I would need to be considering something else. But I was like, I can do this for two or three years while I figure out what I wanna do next. And it was also, it was a project working on data management, which was broadly what my thesis was on, and this was data management for the environmental science department. It was a professor who was doing research on oceans and did a lot of data modeling and stuff that I know nothing about that. But I can help manage their data though. And it seemed like there were a lot of cool, interesting projects there. And just that more practical like, like that again, it was like hands on work, getting my hands dirty and doing something that would have an immediate impact.
LJR: Yeah. So kind of the, the hybrid actually of being in an academic institution, but getting that kind of industry feel of the work that you were doing.
LB: Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, so that was a great way to just have, you know, have a change of pace from grad school. You know, I was done with being a student. I was ready to do something different. And so that, yeah, so that was a great place to be for the, I ended up staying for three years and, but when my contract was up, I knew it was gonna be time to take the next step. And by then I had decided that I liked Portland and if I could stay there, that's where I wanted to stay. And as part of my postdoc work I had done a collaboration with a local startup company. They had reached out to my boss and said they were interested in, they didn't wanna sell us our product cuz academics don't have money for that. They gave us a free trial of their product in exchange for feedback and, you know, giving them the publicity. I ended up, I actually published a couple papers with stuff that I built using their software. So it was a very fruitful collaboration. I had built up a good relationship with them and also kind of got a glimpse of the startup culture. They had, at the time, I wanna say they were around 25 employees and they had this big open office in downtown Portland, and it just, it seemed very appealing. I'm like, oh yeah, this is where I wanna work. So when my contract was winding down and I had a few months left, I told them I was gonna be looking for a new opportunity and I'd be interested in working with them. And they were very receptive to that. So that's how I ended up finding my next move after the postdoc.
LJR: That's so great. It's kind of like, I don't even know, I feel like there might be some metaphor that works in computer science with this, but kind of having constraints sometimes like helps because when before you were like, oh, I could go anywhere, I could do anything, then it's scary and you have to be like weighing all these options. But when you decided, okay, I wanna be in Portland and I have this experience that was really good that. Like it all kind of falls into place a little more easily, so…
LB: Exactly.
LJR: Yeah.
LB: So I spent about two years there. It had its ups and downs. I mean, it was a really great team to work with and I learned a lot while I was there. There's also challenges in a startup and things like you have to, it's do-it-yourself IT, which is not my, you know, I like to call the help desk and get someone to take care of my problems. And at a startup, you're probably gonna do it yourself or bug one of your coworkers to help you. I was in charge of, performance testing their software cuz as they were growing and adding, you know, it was a knowledge management software, which is kind of difficult, even today it's a little difficult to explain what they did, but trying to handle larger volumes of data. So it's sort of somewhat related, you know, it was data management, so somewhat related to my previous role. And the fun part of that was almost trying to break their software instead, like trying to see what it could handle. How much data can I throw at this thing? And what kind of problems do we see? And I really, I enjoyed that part of it, I think. I was really good at kind of digging in and figuring out what the problems were. So that definitely gave me some, some skills and some ideas of what, what the next chapter would look like.
And after about two years there, I had been thinking that maybe it was time to move on. And around that same time they were making some cuts and my position was eliminated. If you're in tech, there's a good chance that happens to you at some point in your career. But it wasn't, you know, I really wasn't sad about it for that long cause I realized I had been kind of ready to start the next chapter. So I looked at it as an opportunity to look for something new.
LJR: Another one of those blessings in disguise. Yeah.
LB: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And Portland, I think it's overshadowed by Seattle and Silicon Valley. We're kind of right in the middle there. But there's still a pretty big tech industry. So there were a lot of local companies that I could look to. So I just started sending out resumes. One thing that I had gotten from, since I was in charge of the performance testing that I had learned that I liked testing, that it was kind of fun to see what the software could handle. And there were a lot of companies with QA roles, quality assurance. But I was looking at some of those roles and some development more like straight up writing code. So I had applied for both, like, just anything that looked like it might be a good fit. And the place I ended up next was doing was a QA role at McAfee, which you may have heard the [LJR: Yes, security.] the security company. Everyone and that, so, and that was my, I I was with them for 12 years or that was a really great company. Like I, and when I got there, I was just like, oh, wow, this is, so, you know, kind of realized what I had been missing at the startup, like having a, being at a smaller company versus going to a much larger company in terms of all the different opportunities that were available.
LJR: Yeah. And got to call the help desk again.
LB: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was super exciting and I could do that.
LJR: You weren't the help desk.
LB: So I did several different roles during my 12 years there. I started out, it was QA, but with a particular focus on automation. So there's different kinds. There's software testing, like, let's click on this button and see if it works, which is, It sounds kind of boring and not, you know, not all that technical. But there's actually a much more technical side of testing. Automation's a big area where you, you're basically writing code that tests the software. So I was doing, doing a lot of that in the new role. So kind of taking advantage of my more technical background and also having opportunities to try to break the software. But at some point I was getting, like, I enjoyed it and I think people at the company probably thought I could do that forever. But my boss at the time had been kind of pushing me a little to take on something a little more technical, a little closer to a coding role. And he was starting up a new team that was responding to critical customer escalations. So you know, large companies who are writing big checks and had run into some huge problems, which dealing with angry customers is kind of a thankless job and most engineers don't wanna do that. We have tech support for that reason, so that we don't have to talk to them. But sometimes they need to talk to an engineer to figure out what's going on underneath. So he, my boss put me on that team and that was kind of a way to leave. It was a little scary cuz I was, it had been in the automation role for so long that I was very comfortable with it. And was good at it. But also I was getting a little restless. So I think it was a good thing. I needed that push to challenge myself a little more and try something a little different.
LJR: Yeah. And I would say takes all of the skillsets that you've been developing, but I mean, if only if we were in French, then it would be like everything that you have.
LB: Yeah.
LJR: But also developing these new kind of, not soft skills, but the, the customer relational, really getting in there and thinking…problem solving on a different level. Right?
LB: Yeah, because sometimes you don't have a full picture. You know, the customer might tell you, oh, this isn't working. But when you look at what they're actually seeing the problem, the underlying issue is actually totally different from what they're describing. So there's that part kind of, and also the, the ability to reassure them or to tell them, you know, that you're working on their problem or to, when you find out a cause, explain it to them. You know, there's, I think, a belief that software engineers don't need people skills, but that's really not true. You need to, you know, in almost any job you need to be able to communicate with other people.
LJR: Right, exactly. So it was good that your boss kind of pushed you into that a little, outta your comfort zone. And so how long did you stay in that role?
LB: A few more years. Around 2019, you know, right before Covid hit, for a number of reasons I was ready to consider what else was out there during my time at McAfee. I was there 12 years total, but the company went through three different incarnations during that time of being bought and sold. And every time that happens, you know, there may be changes in, what are their priorities? What does the structure of the company look like? And I think around that time, I'd mentioned this role was kind of hybrid. There was some coding and technical stuff, but also the soft side versus working closely with tech support and helping out customers. And I think I was ready to get even more technical, become and become a full-time developer, which I never, you know, if you had told my younger self at Dartmouth that that's what I was end gonna end up doing, I would've said no way. Cuz that's what I was trying to get away from when I was applying to grad schools.
LJR: Funny.
LB: Yeah, but I realized that I, you know, I liked kind of that challenging problem solving aspect of it, and I wanted to focus on that more. And I had talked to another manager who I worked with, kind of a career counseling type of discussion where she asked me questions about what was I good at and what was I interested in. And in the middle of it, she was kind of like, you know, maybe you should be a developer. You're answering the questions the way a developer would answer them. And at the time, I was like, no way. That's crazy. I'm not a developer. But she was onto something before I saw it myself.
LJR: Yeah. Yeah. So, but then you used that opportunity of self-reflection and other people giving you those clues at the same time as knowing that maybe this company itself wasn't the right thing for you. So you were morphing both of those things at the same time?
LB: Yeah. I was still, I still liked my team. I was still enjoying the work. But kind of ready to move into a new role. And it wasn't clear because of the changes at the company, whether or not that type of role would be available. So it just seemed like a good opportunity to start thinking about what comes next? Well, and then Covid hit. So the, for the first few months, I think all of us were just adjusting, you know, we all started working from home full-time and it wasn't really clear where things were going. So I think I was just focused on the day-to-day work. So I put aside thoughts of looking at something else for a few months. That wasn't a top priority.
And then I noticed there were colleagues or other people I knew were, were still moving on to new jobs if something came along, and this maybe was kind of the, the start of the great resignation before, you know, before that was an official term. I realized that, you know, there shouldn't be anything holding me back. Companies still needed to hire people during the pandemic, and if there's something out there, I shouldn't be afraid to, you know, to go for that. So I started around late 2020, early 2021. I started thinking about that more seriously and sending out resumes just to see what else was available. And I interviewed at a couple places and one, you know, it was very early on in the search. I had sent a resume to a FinTech company, which I don't know anything about. You know, I know nothing about banking or finance. But it sounded kind of like an interesting field to get into, and they wanted to interview me, so I did a virtual interview with them. I guess that's not unheard of, but the team, most of the team was based in Portland, so it was kind of funny that we had to do virtual interviews cuz of Covid. But the interview went pretty well and I'm left thinking, okay, this, this sounds like kind of an interesting opportunity. Like it might be a good company to work for. But I wasn't expecting an offer. It was very early on and I was just testing the waters and then they made an offer and I started thinking about it more seriously, like they were offering me a senior development role, which was what I had been looking for, and it just seemed like it would be the right fit.
So I kind of took another leap there and decided to move on. And that was, so that was like early in 2021. So I was part of the, part of the Great Resignation.
LJR: Right. Well, but not the one that that stayed resigned. Yeah.
LB: Yeah.
LJR: But that's great. And so you kind of were able to make that move and kind of shift your identity all at once too, which is nice. And did the operations and the everything, since it was a Portland based thing, did it all come back and you're seeing people now in the flesh, or are you still?
LB: Some, sometimes, yeah. People, people get comfortable working from home. But we have an office in Portland and I go there once a week, most of the time. Yeah. So it's, yeah, it's been like, like many companies, I think there's the struggle trying to get people out of their houses, but again, exactly. It's nice to have a little human interaction. And I've actually found that working from home is way more productive than I ever thought it would be.
LJR: I know, I know. Okay, so it's great. So you find this new kind of identity and even new industry. But you're this developer which you swore you would never be. So you said that if I asked that early, young, younger, Laura, what she would think of this, you'd say absolutely no way. If you, if you gave her more than five minutes and kind of walked her through everything, I'm sure she could kind of see where it came from. Are there shades now of the you-Laura, looking back at that one saying, oh, actually she always had it in her and maybe with just different guidance she would've gotten there faster?
LB: Maybe. I think I was, I think I was intimidated, you know, as a student, first of all, being a college student is stressful and taking a class and something that you don't know a lot about is stressful. So I think maybe I let that scare me and you know, I kind of developed this fear of coding and maybe if I had stepped back a little and said, no, you, you can do this. You know, you just have to apply yourself and cause…Yeah, I think I, you know, I definitely had the, there were things I liked about it when I, you know, if I wrote a program for a class and it worked, I was like, yay, this is so exciting. So I think there were definitely signs that it could be a good fit. I think it was just maybe a too much of a fear of trying new things at the time, and maybe as I've had more of a lifetime to try a bunch of new things that's not as intimidating as it used to be.
LJR: Yeah, and there are more models out there for you to kind of know that this is a thing and this is the thing people do and this is a thing women do and this is, you know, a thing that you can come back to after having all of these other experiences. So…
LB: Yeah. Well, I will say I, like, I, I could have, I. I could have applied directly to software engineering jobs at graduation, like many, you know, many of my classmates did. And there's part of me that's like, did I just spend all these years doing other things just to land back at square one? Did I just waste all this time doing something when I could have just gone directly into that right after I graduated? But I think if I had done that, I don't think, I don't think I would've appreciated as much. I don't think I would've gotten as much out of it. I feel like I kind of needed to take this weird, windy career path to land in that place, even if it, in some ways, it kind of feels like I landed where I started. But I really needed to take that path to get there.
LJR: Yeah, exactly. And to taste all the other things and know this one really tastes sweeter, at least now. And I'm sure that all of the other experiences kind of gave you an extra level, an extra lens for the stuff that you're doing that you certainly wouldn't have had early on. So it does seem like it's the right place at the right time but it probably won't be the last, and we'll see where the, where it goes in the future. So all the best for you.
LB: Great. Thanks, Leslie.
LJR: That was Laura Bright, a software engineer who has spent time in academia and industry and who currently serves as a Senior Software Engineer at Finastra, a fintech company based in Portland, Oregon.
Just as we're glad Laura finally found out who she is, we're kind of dying to find out who you are. We know we have big listenership in Chicago, Dallas, and Vermont and we think we know who you are. But who is our power listener in Cornate d'Adda, Italy? We're getting lots of downloads from that corner of paradise. We'd love to hear from you and all of our listeners about who you are and what you're up to. Please consider reaching out at roadstakenshow@gmail.com or the contact us link at RoadsTakenShow.com or just stay as you are and keep tuning in with me, Leslie Jennings Rowley, on Roads Taken.