The Many Hats of Startup Life

If someone would have told me a year ago I’d be working with PCBs I would have asked them “What in the world is a PCB?” That’s just the tip of the uncharted iceberg of knowledge that I began to navigate. In the short year, I’ve learned so much about hardware, software, and tech in general. Can you smell the liberal arts degree on me?!

Now, a year later, I’m coordinating the High Volume Production Department at MacroFab and all of our respective customers in their PCB product manufacturing. This means I tackle tasks from generating quotes for production orders to creating department workflow processes.

I host frequent check-ins with our customers, guiding them through their timeline and managing their goals. I also oversee production milestones for various departments at MacroFab too. It’s truly a team effort to make a high volume project happen and requires work from our finance to software development teams.

The wearing of multiple hats is one of the many benefits and challenges of working at a startup and it’s exactly what drew me to MacroFab.

Prior to joining the Fab, my professional background was in the world of nonprofit and political campaign organizing. I worked for a nonpartisan voting group during the 2016 presidential election, and afterwards realized I needed a major career shift for my own sanity. I’m also the loudest and proudest member of the fighting Texas Aggie class of 2016, so all my close friends were engineers of some sort and with that, I knew tech was the field I wanted to dive into. The skill set I had was intense organization and planning, and it matched perfectly with the needs of a tech program management role.

Since I work in multiple areas of customer development, I’ve had the awesome privilege of seeing our customers grow from their first prototypes to full product launches. For example, Specdrums was one of MacroFab’s first high volume customers, and a project I dedicated a lot of time to. We just wrapped up their first production run and got the awesome chance to meet their team at SXSW! It’s been amazing to have contributed to their success and see all of their hard work materialize. It’s my favorite part about the job, in addition to the other great impacts I’ve had from the work.

In my opinion, MacroFab is changing the landscape of electronics manufacturing from the inside out. Coming from a background totally outside of tech, I was seeking a company that recognized hardwork and provided their employees with exciting challenges to conquer. It’s been such an inspiring experience to work for a startup that’s helping their customers grow their own businesses.

From my personal experience, I highly encourage anyone who is thinking of going into an unknown job territory to just do it. If you feel excited about it, give yourself the opportunity to work hard and get something really incredible back. The same can be applied for anyone wanting to leave the 9-5 routine and start their own business!

So, obviously I mainly work with spreadsheets more than printed circuit boards- but hey, I can explain to you what a blind via is now and I’m pretty stoked about knowing that, and what else I’ll learn here.

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Taylor Smith