SCOTT BIDDLE
THETA, CLASS OF 2013
What you were involved in while at Penn?
Theta Tau was half of what I got involved in at Penn, and the other half was the Penn Running Club, where I was on the board in 2010 and 2011 as webmaster and 2012 as president.
What have you been up to since graduating?
About 3 weeks after graduation, I moved to California to work for a startup in Palo Alto called Blink (http://www.blinkapp.co/). I was the company's only full time engineer for most of my time there, and built the company's iOS and Android clients as well as feature development and maintenance of the server infrastructure. After a year there, we were acquired by Yahoo, where I worked on some Android partner products, the redesigned Messenger application, and the redesigned Yahoo mail. (Believe it or not, some of the code I wrote is still in Mail, and after 3.5 years they still haven't fixed the bugs I told them to fix when I left!)
After two years, I jumped ship to Google, where I worked on Google+ for a while before landing on my current team, Google Pay.
What was the biggest change, going from college to career?
Well, I went from college to a stressful startup experience, so my experience was probably atypical, but it was a rough transition. I was working as much or more as the busiest parts of college, but without any of the support network of friends/Bros/family that made it bearable. It took me a solid year or more (and a company change) to really get my feet under me.
What was/is your favorite thing about Theta Tau? Favorite OT events/memories?
Oh man, where do I begin? The people are definitely the best part of OT-- I forged lifelong friendships... Hell, I've lived with fellow bro and former VR Allison Pearce for 3 years and counting. As for memories, some highlights include our marathon election meetings followed by very lovely holiday parties, a spring break trip to Atlantic City (we were a little lower rent back then, we could only really get together a night down the shore in March instead of the international trips I see you all doing now), the creation of chill time (does that still happen?) And fling parties, including Kegs and Eggs my senior year where my dad and brother inexplicably showed up, and were... Let's say, shocked.
Do you have any advice for us still here at Penn? OR: What would you do differently in college if you had to do it all over again?
Advice: remember not to take yourself too seriously. Stuff that seems super important now, I promise you will seem like the dumbest fucking bullshit in 5 years. That includes academic stuff, but also OT and personal things. I promise, it's probably not that big of a deal, and it'll probably be there tomorrow. Go do something fun!
What I'd do differently: I'd get more involved with service projects and organizations (including OT'S own service committee!) We're all incredibly lucky to be where we are, and I wish I'd gotten better at giving back as a habit. College probably would have been a good time to form that habit.