Finding Your Pete: A Story of Mentorship

Having recently fielded numerous questions about when to introduce programming to children, I’ve been reflecting on my own journey into computing - a story that highlights how sometimes the most important factor isn’t when you start, but whom you meet along the way.

Despite being a strong student in high school, I never took a single computer class, so it’s a bit of a wonder that I ended up majoring in Computer Science. I’d be remiss if I didn’t admit that the first few years were daunting - wrestling with “recursion” in Scheme while surrounded by graduates from IMSA - Illinois’ premier math and science academy - who were all seemingly born with a TI-82 in their hand was quite the challenge.

Co-workers

Everything changed during my junior year when I landed a part-time programming job in the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences’ graduate lab - special thanks to Dan Zink for taking a chance on me – a chance I absolutely didn’t deserve at the time.

It was there that I met Peter.

Given that my only programming experiences were in CS classes, I struggled at work; often contemplating if this was right for me. Peter, on the other hand, was a computing demigod. Even though it’s been more than 25 years, I still vividly remember Pete staying with me really late one night explaining how simulated annealing and force-directed graphs worked in the Java application we were working on. He had no obligation to spend his evening teaching a struggling colleague, but he did. Walking home across the Quad late that night, I remember thinking to myself something finally clicked - I understood programming in a way that had eluded me throughout the previous 2+ years.

Our friendship grew beyond that pivotal moment. For the next year or so that we worked together, we played pool, he introduced this un-adventurous, island kid to shawarma, and he opened my eyes to new computing ideas like running your own Linux box (which I’ve sadly continued to torture myself do for over two decades now). When Pete graduated and moved to Austin, Texas, we stayed loosely connected, eventually reuniting at SXSW about a decade ago. He is still the same fun-loving person I remembered from college – and he’ll probably hate me for writing this.

My Career

That mentorship moment with Pete opened doors that shaped my entire career. While I might have eventually found my way without him, his influence was catalytic.

Since then, my journey has taken me through different countries and industries: from defense research to helping startups create products including a newsroom, from kickstarting a makerspace to managing a technology team / platform at a NYC investment bank, and ultimately building a small technology company where I work today. Along the way, I pursued two advanced degrees – one directly inspired by my recognition of the vast ocean between people like Pete and myself.

Finding your Pete (or being a Pete!)

The impact of mentorship can be profound and far-reaching. As I look back on my journey, I realize that these pivotal moments – these opportunities to open doors for others – are what truly shaped my technical journey.

And so, while I encourage people to teach their children the ideas underlying programming (i.e. logic, abstraction, algorithmic thinking, etc), I don’t fundamentally believe that it’s something your child has to do at such an early age. What matters more is creating an environment where learning can flourish naturally. Give them opportunities to explore, to struggle, to grow – and most importantly, to connect with others; there’s a chance that they’ll meet their Pete Taylor along the way.

You never know what possibilities you might unleash into the world.