August 2021 Summaries

Grace Baelen-King reflects on her journey as the first hire and a backend software engineer at Stytch, a company that quickly grew to around 25 employees within a year. She discusses the excitement and challenges of building the foundational elements of Stytch's products, such as the email magic links, and how the company rapidly developed a sense of being a "real company" through expanding team dynamics and infrastructure. Grace shares insights into her transition from a potential HR career to engineering, influenced by her father's profession and her college experience with a computer science course. She enjoys the process of setting up codebases and learning from decisions that impact the scalability of the company's operations. Grace finds satisfaction in the collaborative culture and values at Stytch, emphasizing the company's forward-thinking approach and the continuous evolution of both her role and the company.