What Do Dr Pepper, Freedom Trail and Machine Learning Have in Common?
“Where are you from?” It’s a question that every immigrant gets. The well-practiced answer rolls off my tongue effortlessly: “Ukraine!”. It sounds deceptively simple, as if two decades of my life have been suddenly reduced to a single red pin on the map of Europe. The question that follows is much harder: “Why did you move to the US?”. It makes me pause, as there is no simple answer. To explore it, we need to travel back in time together.
In Search of Dr Pepper
It all started a little over 10 years ago when it was fashionable among my friends in college to go abroad for the summer. An especially hot thing at the time was the Work & Travel program: you would pick a location in the US, choose from the (usually quite short) list of available jobs, and then patiently sit on your bags till the next summer. My best friend from high school and I decided to embark on this adventure, and settled on a tiny beach town called Old Orchard Beach, just an hour south of Portland, Maine.
Little did I know that this trip will change the trajectory of my life.
I vividly remember the day we landed at the Logan International Airport in Boston. It might as well have been a different planet — everything felt surreal. The air smelled of the Atlantic Ocean, the concrete of the airport buildings looked solemn in the evening lights, and the blur of the unfamiliar New England landscapes sped past us on our bus ride to Portland. But even more memorable was the first morning after we had arrived at Old Orchard Beach.
We did the first thing any rational 18-year olds would — ran to the closest grocery store to stock up on… Dr Pepper and Pringles. To this day I remember that those Dr Peppers were a special Avengers edition (the first movie had just come out then). What might have seemed trivial to a casual observer, was a very special moment for us. We savored every sip of that sugary tartness as the measured rhythm of the crunch gently flooded our ears. It wasn’t just about cans of soda or potato chips. To us, this was a little part of America that we grew up with, that we saw in the movies and TV shows that we loved and cherished.
As a part of the program, we ended up with jobs that were rather dull: working in a store that you’d likely find in every beach town in the US. You would never guess how many ways Old Orchard Beach can be printed on towels, flip flops and tie-dye hoodies. But we did spend a lot of time on the beach and we had some hard-earned cash to spend. We would also take an occasional trip down to Boston. During those trips somewhere deep inside I made a decision: I will come back to this city.
One such trip is particularly dear to my heart. I was going to a rock music festival — the Vans Warped Tour — an hour away from Boston. To get there I had to first switch from one train station to another across the city. Back then I didn’t have a cell phone with Google Maps on it, and I was pretty bad at navigating the Boston subway. As I stood outside the station, surrounded by swarms of overcaffeinated rush hour commuters, and tried to ask for directions, one man noticed that and offered to help. Turned out that he worked near the second train station, so we just walked there together.
After he learned that I was in the US only for the summer, and it was one of my first visits to Boston, he decided to give me a mini-tour of the city. We ended up walking along what I now realize was the Freedom Trail, past a bunch of “firsts” in America: first public park, first subway station and one of the oldest cobblestone streets. There was something special about seeing all of these landmarks through the eyes of a local: to him the city was first and foremost home, not a tourist destination. He didn’t have to do any of that. He could have just given me directions or pointed to the right subway track, and he surely didn’t have to give me a tour. Instead, he chose to make me feel at home.
Back to the Freedom Trail
Fast forward two years, I was finishing college back home and decided to go to grad school in the US. After thorough research, my final shortlist had one school in Philadelphia and two in Boston. You can probably guess which city I chose.
So there I was, back at the Logan International Airport, breathing in the same air as 2 years ago — filled with the seaweed-and-salt smell of the nearby Boston Harbor.
A few months into my studies, I had a quite serendipitous encounter. I met this guy from Moldova at a local restaurant. As two fellow Eastern Europeans, we started talking, and it turned out that his son was working as a software engineer at what he called “this large bank Goldman Sachs”. I was looking for an internship at that time, and he promised to introduce us. Needless to say, I was thrilled — I had known the big name even before coming to the US — and, so I grabbed the opportunity.
His son was not in fact working for Goldman, but for a small fintech company backed by them. The encounter proved very timely: the startup was just finalizing the list of interns for the following summer, and I got an interview.
Full of hope and dreadful anticipation, I emerged into the open office wearing a 2-piece. Boy, was I surprised to find a bunch of engineers in T-shirts, shorts and flip flops. Despite the suit fiasco, I successfully jumped through all of the interview hoops and was selected.
Learning with the Machines
It was only after I had been hired and started interning that summer that I realized that most of my colleagues (and fellow interns) had a degree from an Ivy League school, a ton of industry experience, or both. It was easy to feel intimidated — I didn’t know a single thing about finance, and I could barely write code (great combination for a fintech company!). But I had determination, deep passion for data, and a ton of support from everyone at the company. I just had to put my head down, and learn a lot.
It’s been a wild ride since. I made my first code contribution a few months later, and over time learned the best software engineering practices from the all-star team around me. I was offered a full-time job and joined a machine learning team that has since grown 10x. I ended up working on cutting-edge research and built products used by thousands. And eventually I got to lead teams of incredibly smart and talented engineers.
Just as my dietary preferences have significantly changed over the last 10 years — I can’t recall the last time I had a soda — so has my understanding of what America and its values are about. They're about freedom to be who you are, to express what you think and feel, to pursue anything that your heart desires. And they’re about the never-dying aspiration for everyone to have equality of opportunity.
For me, America is a stranger willing to give a tour of Boston in the rush hour. It’s a chance encounter that leads to the start of an amazing career. I love its values, its people and its opportunities. And while I might not have realized these things when I first came to the US, they are the reasons I am planning to build my life here.