Michael Litchev

Unloop was (is?) a non-profit coding bootcamp for people who are incarcerated, or formerly incarcerated, and I was hired as the Lead Instructor for their in-person cohort at their Seattle headquarters. At the time, I was running a business selling some innovative (in my opinion) learning materials for learning programming, and the executive director recruited me to work there full-time & licensed my IP to white-label it for the students. Working with that population, while also contributing code to dev projects that the non-profit secured as part of its funding source, was a classic example of taking on more than I could chew. The pandemic blowing up in everyones faces, forcing us to adapt to a digital-only reality, was difficult to say the least, especially working with people who were incarcerated, in work-release, attending rehab or otherwise not the standard California techie. It was a very valuable experience.

After my misadventures in politics, I realized I had to make money. Onvia seemed like a great fit - I had a degree in Political Science, and they were a tech company selling access to a comprehensive database of government contracting data. Working within a sort of skunkworks, I worked on a new team of three on a new product and was blessed with autonomy, varied duties, direct communication with customers, a supportive and helpful manager and the opportunity to learn from every part of the company. I was effectively a junior product manager that also owned customer support for 500 customers, gathered requirements from them & contributed to product marketing. Among other things, I started and hosted the company podcast, before moving on to the next step in my career. I grew frustrated with the glacial pace of software development, and my customers unceasing torrent of complaints about the same bugs over and over again, and I decided to learn how to write some code myself to better contribute across an organization.

Ah, the humble intern. I was a fresh graduate, armed with the highly profitable and respected BA in Political Science, and thought it made some sense to get a job in my chosen field. I walked into California's 17th district, then run by Mike Honda, what was a complete tirefire that was mercifully put out the following election cycle by Ro Khanna. In the 6 short months that I was there, the honorable Congressman fell asleep in front of a CSPAN camera during a hearing on the war in Afghanistan & was formally brought under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for his District Office staff breaking rules regarding acceptable political activity involving his campaign. All the while, constituents called into the office to complain about the VA losing their files, USCIS statuses remaining unchanged over the years, or simply calling to talk to someone because they were just lonely. I saw a vision of what the future could be, and decided to move in another direction. I was time to get a real job.