6 Years at JPMorgan Chase: The Things That Last

After a little over six years, I am closing an important chapter of my career.

The Journey

When I joined (Nutmeg) now JPMorgan Personal Investing, I had no idea how much I would learn, grow, and experience over the years. It was a place where I had the opportunity to work on complex systems in a highly regulated environment, collaborate with very capable engineers, and contribute to products used by hundreds of thousands of people. Many of the problems were challenging, sometimes ambiguous, and often required careful thinking around reliability, accessibility, and long-term maintainability.

The Things That Last

Looking back, the lessons learned are clear.

• Most of the code we write will eventually be rewritten.
• Some projects will be replaced.
• Certain technical decisions will be revisited as context changes.
• At some point, many of the contributions we make will quietly disappear as systems evolve.

That is the nature of software and it’s a bit sad to be honest.

What tends to last much longer are the lessons we learn along the way and the people we learn them with.

• The conversations that changed how we think about problems, that little detail that you discuss with teammates for hours is often what shapes our understanding.
• The moments when someone challenged our assumptions and made our work better.
• The shared effort to improve quality, simplify complexity, and raise standards incrementally.
• The trust built between engineers working towards the same goal.

Over time, these experiences shape how we approach engineering far more than any individual implementation.

Engineering is often discussed in terms of technologies, frameworks, and architectures. But the longer I work in this field, the more I appreciate that the most meaningful and durable impact often comes from something less tangible: helping shape a culture where people care about doing thoughtful work, communicate clearly, support each other, and continuously improve.

Codebases will evolve.

Teams will change.

Priorities will shift.

But the influence we have on people and engineering culture tends to compound over time.

Moving Forward

I am grateful for the trust I was given, the people I had the opportunity to work with, and the environment that helped shape many of the principles I value today.

As I move into the next chapter, I carry forward those lessons, experiences, and connections.

At the end, these are the things that actually last.

My Next Chapter

I am excited to share that I will be joining ATG Entertainment as a Senior Frontend Engineer. I look forward to learning from new colleagues, contributing to impactful products, and continuing to grow as an engineer in a new environment.

Recap

• Build connections with colleagues and strive to learn from them.
• Focus on positive engineering culture and the impact you can have on it.
• Don’t get attached to code or projects, they will change and evolve, focus on the lessons and people instead.