Essay that got me into

Maryland

Michigan

Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others.

Whether I'm in the office or on a company-wide Zoom call, some older coworker will shower me with praise for being CTO at such a young age. But those praising me are unaware that I'm often barely holding on, because behind my fancy title is just an immature high schooler who can code.

In 2020 I was hired as the Chief Technology Officer of Lumière Shorts--a startup short film streaming service--after impressing the company's founders with my multiple self-built iOS and Android apps and familiarity with everything from machine learning to databases. I enthusiastically accepted the CTO role, assuming it mainly involved me building the streaming app in solitude--something that even 15 year-old me could've masterfully done.

To my unpleasant surprise, being Lumiere Shorts's CTO required far more of me than coding. I had to learn soft skills like how to collaborate harmoniously with others, make nerve-wracking decisions, and table my ego before I could become a remotely competent teen-aged tech executive.

As a highschooler, I was always that overbearing guy commandeering every group project because I had an elaborate vision and zero faith in my groupmates. But as a CTO, I finally had to confront how my tendency to steamroll over others harmed the projects I worked on after I ignored my experienced coworker's estimated timeline for App Store publication, and wound up missing a deadline by 3 weeks.

To avoid missing out on more of my team members' wisdom, I made the executive decision to invite my whole team to our company's weekly big-picture meetings--meetings previously open only to upper-management. I was soon awash in great ideas from coworkers that I never could've had, like highlighting directors on our platform to attract more inbound content. Slowly, I stopped being married to ideas just because I came up with them, and acknowledged that my team members--all hailing from different walks of life--could offer creative input better than mine.

As a highschooler, even the toughest decisions I had to make were relatively inconsequential--usually about which courses to take or how to balance my time between robotics and sports. But as a CTO, I had to make decisions that were far-reaching, and bore ethical and logistical dilemmas.

When seeking VC funding for Lumiere Shorts, I could have cherry-picked metrics from the app that were impressive-but-misleading, but resisted the temptation for my integrity's sake. As CTO I also had to make tough next-step decisions without "correct" answers--like whether to remove a paywall to increase user count. I learned to navigate challenging ethical dilemmas by prioritizing my morals above finances, and I learned to navigate challenging logistical dilemmas by thinking far ahead and preemptively assuming responsibility for any backfiring decisions of mine.

As a highschooler I'm encouraged to focus only on my own advancement, be it improving my grades or amassing extracurriculars. But as a CTO, I had to understand that the department I oversaw wasn't the whole company, but rather one piece of a bigger puzzle.

When the company finished app development and shifted its focus onto marketing, I tried to wrest the spotlight back onto my department, by building a bunch of new features as busywork. When metrics showed that all my new features went unused, I realized it was time to be a team player, and began assisting the marketing team. Once I humbled myself, and started viewing all of Lumiere's departments as one big community, my work felt more fulfilling.

While still a high school sophomore, I was hired by Lumière Shorts to be its Chief Technology Officer due to my technical expertise. But despite being a great programmer, I had so much maturity left to gain before I could become an effective CTO. It wasn't until I learned how to trust in my team's talent, pull the trigger on tough decisions, and serve initiatives bigger than my own that I finally felt worthy of my executive role.