PickTrace is proud to be a team of diverse backgrounds, skill sets, and interests. Each month we highlight members of our team to learn about what makes them, and PickTrace, unique.
Get to know our awesome Software Engineer, Gavin Lee. Gavin joined PickTrace in January of 2018, when PickTrace was still based out of a small office in Emeryville, CA, and has seen the company grow immensely in the time since. He is a rock-star engineer, a solid ping-pong competitor, and a hugely important part of our team!
Write your biography as a tweet (140 characters or less):
Typical SoCal Asian upbringing. Atypical church experience and postgrad life.
Where did you grow up and what is your favorite memory of that place?
I grew up in West Covina, CA but went to school in a neighboring city, Walnut. My favorite memory is taking walks around the neighborhood with my family and dog in the nice, warm weather of SoCal around sunset time.
In school, what was your preferred subject and why?
I’m lucky and actually enjoyed my computer science courses. They were stimulating and the knowledge and skills gained from them were directly applicable to real world scenarios.
How do you like to spend your free time? Any hobbies of note?
I spent a lot of my undergrad years with a Christian fellowship named Klesis (which means “divine invitation” in Greek), and I decided to stay with this fellowship after graduating, serving as one of the mentors. A lot of my free time is spent with this fellowship and other church related activities. Otherwise, I brew my own kombucha and enjoy cooking and playing spikeball, tennis, ping pong and volleyball.
What’s something most people don’t know about you?
I live in a house with 15 other guys. We’re all from the same church and have known each other since our college days. We each experienced having older brothers guide us in pretty much every aspect of life, going through the Bible with us, helping us out with academics and job searching, teaching us how to cook, clean and deal with relational conflict, etc. And we caught on to that way of life and are in their shoes now, serving as mentors for the Berkeley undergrads.
Before PickTrace, what was your most interesting or unusual job?
Back when I was an undergrad, I used to work for the campus libraries as a paper boy. I was in charge of half the libraries on campus (there’s surprisingly a lot of libraries, almost one per building) and would refill the printer paper for each printer. I did this for a year and a half and ended up with an almost optimal route through the different libraries.
How would you describe your current role to a child?
The food that we buy at the supermarkets don’t just appear at the supermarkets! There’s actually a lot of work that goes into growing all that food we eat and I help make sure that the people working hard to make that food for us get paid correctly.
What has been your proudest moment since joining the PT team?
When Harrison, Kelsey and I were clearing out the Emeryville office early 2019, because it actually registered to me that PickTrace was growing and we were making big strides to reach our goals.
What is your favorite part of working for PickTrace?
The company culture is a big part of why I enjoy working for PickTrace. People here get work done but it doesn’t feel like we’re just some factory churning out software. I can send random gifs on Slack and shoot the COO in the head with a nerf gun and laugh it off.
Finally, and most importantly, if you were a piece of produce what would you be and why?
I’d be a cool cucumber because I don’t get too worked up about many things.
Interested in working with awesome people like Gavin? Check out our open positions here!
