About six weeks ago, after interviewing for almost two months with over twenty companies, I decided to take a position as a product designer at Pinterest in sunny Palo Alto, California. For those who don't know, Pinterest is a virtual pinboard where you can collect all the things that you like and showcase your tastes to the world. I spent several months stressing about where I'd be and how that would affect my trajectory, and while that's another story for another day, I can safely say that this was the best decision that I could have made. So six weeks ago, I packed the most essential 10% of my belongings and shipped out.

I have to admit that it's been rough. I still don't have a place to live. It's a huge hassle and it's preventing me from really being able to wind down and really adjust to my surroundings, but I don't think there's anywhere else in the world I'd rather be than in the Bay Area right now.

That being said, working at Pinterest is fantastic. I'm number eight of our team of nine people. We have three co-founders, four engineers, and a community manager. Especially after experiencing Facebook, a company relatively small for its status as a tech giant, it's really nice knowing everyone on the team. We all live and breathe the site, and like at school, it is the source of many sleepless nights, but that kind of atmosphere is okay, and as we grow it will probably go away, so I'd rather be around to experience it while I can.

One of the great things about joining Pinterest so early is that I can really be there to influence what becomes our company culture. In fact, that was probably one of the most compelling things about the opportunity for me. Being able to shape culture, be it physical or digital, is one of my favorite things about being a designer. It's also something that I always consciously try to address in any project that I do. At Pinterest, we're just settling in to our first real office after being in an apartment for a very long time. It's going to be weird at first, but I'm excited that I get to be a part of the team that makes our new place feel like home.

Lastly, the design problems are challenging and new enough to be exciting, but familiar enough for me to make informed decisions without a long warm-up phase. When I went to Facebook last summer, I had never designed anything in a professional environment, nor had I designed something at that scale. A large majority of my summer was spent getting to know the intricacies of Facebook as a design problem and the internal goals of the team. Especially without another designer in the same mental place as me and many of the other designers way too busy for me to feel comfortable interrupting, it was tough getting used to. It wasn't until my last few weeks that I really understood what I was working with. I feel like that's why that internship didn't go nearly as well as I'd hoped it would. Granted, I learned more than I did in any year of CMU during that summer.

That being said, Pinterest is very similar to visually—a large part of why Pinterest chose me and I them. Although nowhere as feature complete as Foundation in my mind, visually was a thought-through product with goals that stretched out at least a couple of years. Being able to bring some of those ideas and that insight back to a product with an engaged and supportive userbase is extremely valuable to me. It's actually irreplaceable. That's what Pinterest had that no one else did.

All in all, I'm really glad that I have this opportunity. I wouldn't trade it for the world.

By the way, we're hiring, so if you're a talented engineer or designer looking to join an awesome team, be sure to get in touch!