This was my first experience with SingleStore, a one-year-old YC alum aiming to build the world's fastest database. I was thrown into the fire pit from day one and had to finish a developer tool, the Workload Simulator, before launch. After completing it, I worked on code generation and data compression, successfully compressing 10 TB of random strings down to at most 5 TB. I then joined the team working on sharding, an important feature for scalable databases, and quickly became a full-time engineer. The company has a great culture of ridiculous engineering and chill free time, which is maintained even as it grows. I'm grateful for my experience with SingleStore and wish the team all the best in building a company 300x better than the rest!