We have an awesome community of remote workers at Groover Labs. When someone working remotely from Wichita emails us about membership, they almost always include the comment that they “need to get out of the house.” So we think of ourselves as a refuge with a community where remote workers can gather, catch some of that big office feel, and get some work done.
Earlier this week, we sat down with Seth Duncan, one of our studio members. Seth has been on an exciting journey over the past two years. Read more below.
You work for Lattice, a people management platform that's seen rapid scale over the past few years. Here's what we know about Lattice: they raised $175 million in Series F funding in 2022, which placed the company's value at $3 billion. That's unicorn status. What do you do at Lattice?
I've been at Lattice a little over two years. I started as a Senior Software Engineer, and I'm currently the Engineering Manager for the AI team. My team is chartered with exploring, discovering, and shipping new AI-driven products to the Lattice suite of HR software.
It's abundantly clear, as an observer, that you really enjoy your job. Does that have more to do with the Lattice's culture, the type of work you're doing for them, or the excitement that comes with working for a unicorn? Please elaborate.
I do really enjoy my job. The short answer is "all of the above," but I can give some more detail. Lattice's culture was a huge draw for me initially and has continued to be a major contributor to my appreciation for the company overall.
That said, the work I've done at Lattice has always been rewarding because of the way we run our projects. We get a lot of say on our own roadmap and execution, and we get to see a lot of first-hand feedback from our end-users when we ship new products.
It is very cool to be working for a company at this stage. You feel you have a real chance at making an impact across the whole company, regardless of your position. Everyone is committed, collaborative, friendly, and honestly everyone is just great at their jobs.
You've had a rather circuitous career path. How have your previous jobs prepared you for this one?
Yeah, so I've been a Software Engineer, Web Developer, Engineering Manager, and Product Owner in the last ten years. Every one of these things has contributed something that has prepared me for what I do today.
The UI/UX planning and server management from the Web Developer role helped me to be a better SWE (Software Engineer). The infrastructure and architecture chops I picked up in the SWE role have helped me to understand the scope of our work and build credibility with my team as an Engineering Manager. The Product work I've done has also helped give me a strong sense of customer empathy and convictions around planning and roadmapping that make me a good partner to our Product teams.
It's all one big experience stew.
You were recently promoted to a manager position. Tell us about the transition. How has Lattice as an organization supported your new position?
I was an Engineering Manager before, so I was not coming into the role blindly, but I started out at Lattice as a Software Engineer with the goal to someday get back to Engineering Management.
My manager was very supportive of the idea and helped design our roadmap in a way that gave me opportunities to lead small efforts and prove out some experience. Lattice also offers regular Mentor/Mentee programs through torch.io and I've signed up as a mentee for the last several rounds, each time being partnered with an EM at the company. Through these mentorships and manager support, I felt confident about applying for an internal EM role when one came available and found out later that my manager and mentors all contributed feedback that resulted in being offered the position.
We see a lot of recent college grads who want to work for tech startups. As someone who's in the midst of the scaling startup ride, what advice would you give them?
Breadth of experience is key here. With the market being constrained right now, companies are looking to get as much bang-for-their-buck as they can. To me, this means that someone with broad experience and a few specialties is likely to have an easier time finding work than someone with a single expertise.
One of the best ways to get this exposure, in my opinion, is to try to start something up yourself. Whether you try to ship an app to an app store or build your own niche SaaS product, the experience you get from trying to build something from nothing is a huge benefit when looking for work at other startups or tech companies.
You're a studio member at Groover Labs. And in your studio, there's a picture of an F-14 Tomcat and a SpaceX rocket. Tell us more.
I'm a huge aerospace nerd. The SpaceX rocket represents my interest in humanity exploring the stars. One of my life missions is "to contribute meaningfully to space exploration” so I use this model rocket as a daily reminder of that goal.
The reason I have the F-14 is actually really much simpler though. It's objectively the coolest-looking aircraft ever built. I will take no questions.
You've been a member of Groover Labs for more than two years. How would you compare your membership experience to, say, winning the lottery or uncovering a yet undiscovered ancient civilization?
Groover Labs has felt a lot like winning the lottery. When you take the jump to work at a new space, whether a company or a coworking environment, you always feel the risk of working alongside people you don't know. The people at Groover Labs are unequivocally some of the best people I've shared a space with. The community culture is outstanding, the people are caring and respectful, and the caliber of work going through that building is outstanding.
In some ways it has felt like discovering an ancient civilization in the sense that there are new, exciting ideas emerging regularly while state-of-the-art tools are being used to put new things in the world and the excitement around the innovation is palpable.