The night shift

Calling all builders. This is a job opportunity post.

This year I started a design team at Block Inc (Square, Cash App, Afterpay, Tidal) that’s mission is to re-design the way we design. We recently launched an amazing new program giving undiscovered talent the chance to come work with us on this mission. Taking part in designing this program made me want to share the unconventional story of how I ended up here, in hopes that it may just be the slight nudge a builder on the fence needs to take their shot and apply.

Like many in the design industry, my story started with tinkering on the internet trying to do something related to another hobby of mine. I wanted to share clips of my friends and I skating. Getting into rollerblading was the most transformative experience of my childhood, and if I wasn’t out skating, I was looking for any way to express my passion for skating.

I downloaded and cracked creative tools, learned to import and edit video, created an identity for my skate crew, and shipped a pretty bad website. I wasn’t alone; friends helped me figure it out by solving problems together, celebrating breakthroughs, and helping each other make ideas a reality. I made friends going through the same processes for their punk bands, car crews, and other creative cliques. The drive to create broke boundaries and brought people together—if you were a misfit, you fit in.

The blend of creativity, technology, and experimentation hit me like getting on skates for the first time. I had a new superpower: think of an idea and make it real. Like blading, there was no rulebook, and I recognized this was more than a hobby for me almost instantaneously. It was self-expression, identity, community, culture, and a glimpse of a lifestyle that felt very me.

There was one big problem though: none of this took place in a classroom—and it nearly broke everything else for me that did. I was building after my parents and sisters went to bed, and I had the family computer for hours uninterrupted. Headphones on, breaking things until they worked, and learning by doing. I’m a kinesthetic learner, and it’s core to my being that you learn more from taking a punch than being told it hurts and avoiding it for life. This emerging platform, good music, breaking the rules, and time to tinker was a direct hit.

I scraped by middle school, and slept through half of high school because of the night shift I spent tinkering most days of the week. I started getting paying design jobs in eighth grade, when most conversations with adults started centering on how you were going to get into university. I hated the idea of choosing a job title from a predefined list, picking a university based on that, and committing to giving all the money I didn’t have away in hopes it all worked out. I longed for the boundless exploration I had at night, not a one-way street I was pressed on during the day. The good news? I kept finding other builder types. They were on the internet, inventing and learning, helping one another out, for free. The focus was on the work, certificates didn’t matter, and talent was recognized regardless of life stage or background. It was an energy I’d never experienced in any educational setting.

By the time I entered college I continued burning the candle at both ends, and got a job as I started my first semester. I was working at a design agency anytime I was not in class, leaning into the work in both environments. It took half a semester for the fog to start lifting. My front-end 101 class was teaching brink of extinction table-based layouts while, at work, I was learning how to build more fluidly with CSS. I took a class learning how to author DVD menus while freelancing for a teacher’s video‑streaming startup. The signals were in the details you only catch when you’re deeply immersed in the craft. It got more obvious that I had to make a choice: get certified in yesterday’s skills, or accept my path as an unproven misfit.

At one point something magical happened. It stopped feeling like a choice, and started feeling more like FOMO. It felt like the moment you commit to jumping a gap bigger than you’ve ever done before. The risk started to feel provocative, calculated, and motivating. The risk of missing out on defining the future outweighed the fear of what could happen if that future wasn’t what I thought it would become. I knew I was more cut out to define boxes rather than check them off. I made the leap at 19, and never looked back. Builders continued taking me under wing, and since then I’ve designed experiences for culture defining brands like Nike, Chanel, New Balance, and Red Bull. I’ve helped friends take ideas from napkin sketch to acquisition, co-founded a business of my own, and worked on core design teams for companies like Netflix, and Cash App.

I wondered for years why people gave me a shot. Cheap labor is nice, but I knew early on that wasn’t what it was about. Builders have the ability to make the future, not accept it. They’re people that need other builders to learn and create with, regardless of who they are, and where they come from. The more different, the more weird, the better. Giving undiscovered talent a shot isn’t philanthropy, it’s a requirement for the builder community to thrive, and innovation to take place. The machine needs fresh, untarnished, perspectives for it to work. Especially during times of major leaps in innovation.

To my fellow misfits, I couldn’t be happier to share The Builder Fellowship at Block at a moment that feels shockingly similar to my teenage years on the cusp of another giant leap in design and technology. This is a 6-month paid program for rising talent experimenting with AI and the way we make things. There are no education requirements. Remote first. No job titles, no path to choose. To apply we care about your work, and what makes you tick. All are welcome.

If this sounds like you, your kid, a sister, cousin, or friend, please come work with some of the warmest, most talented, builders on the planet.