Title: Designing Safe, All-Electric, Emission-Free Vehicles: Caitlin Stanton ‘20, ‘21

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[00:00:05,120] CHRISTA DOWNEY: Welcome to the Engineering Career Conversations. I'm Christa Downey, director of the Engineering Career Center at Cornell University.

[00:00:13,125] TRACI NATHANS-KELLY: And I'm Traci Nathans-Kelly, director of the Engineering Communications Program. We are excited to bring you this forum where we will host lively conversations that we hope will inspire you.

[00:00:26,240] CHRISTA DOWNEY: Welcome. Today we have with us Caitlin Stanton, a computer science graduate. Welcome, Caitlyn.

[00:00:33,149] CAITLYN STANTON: Hello. It's great to be here.

[00:00:35,400] CHRISTA DOWNEY: Excellent. It's great to have you. And this week is a special week I found on social media that you just got promoted this week.

[00:00:43,580] CAITLYN STANTON: I did. Actually happened yesterday. It was when I got the news. So moving up in the world.

[00:00:50,855] CHRISTA DOWNEY: Excellent. Congratulations. Well-deserved, I'm sure. Yeah. So can you just start by just telling us a bit about your current work?

[00:01:01,385] CAITLYN STANTON: Yeah. So I work at Cruise. I used to be an associate software engineer. Now I'm a software engineer, really exciting. And I specifically work in our Embedded Systems Department on the kernel frameworks and accelerators team. Lots of words. But the summary of what I specifically do is each person on my team owns a component within the car. Because Cruise is a self-driving car company, meaning that if you ever go to San Francisco, which is where I'm located or I believe somewhere in Phoenix or Scottsdale, Arizona. And then we just started in Austin. You'll see these cars, these orange and white cars, driving with no driver behind the wheel and that's us. We do it for ride hail, so like Lyft and Uber, but then we also do grocery delivery and there are various components in the board or in the car to make everything run. And I specifically own the soundboard, meaning that all of the like random tones that the car emits. Because e.g. where an electric car, so we have to emit a sound so people can actually hear us and so the engine is silent. So responsible for that, for being able to call customer support if you're in the car and something goes wrong to be able to hear an emergency vehicles so that the car knows when to pull over to the side of the road like if the emergency vehicles coming towards it or an opposite direction. And I've been working at Cruise for a little over a year-and-a-half and I onboarded to own the soundboard and now I actually fully own the soundboard since I'm not senior, but like senior enough to be given all the responsibilities for that. And I spend my days coding, testing hardware, and making sure that my soundboard fits within the entire system of the car, which as you can imagine, a lot of moving parts.

[00:03:05,104] CHRISTA DOWNEY: Yes, yes, that's really innovative work. And I know a lot of our students are interested in this type of work and in this field. And so I'm curious to hear a little bit more about your path and what you think was most significant in helping you to get to this place?

[00:03:21,214] CAITLYN STANTON: For sure. So when I first got involved in coding, I first loved the fact that you could write a single line of code and something could change, right? Whether it's like a website or an app. But I remember when I first joined the CS world through Girls Who Code one of our projects involved in moving a robot around. For me, working on something that was tangible, something that you can physically pick up and touch was really exciting because it seemed very weird to me that you can write a single line of like basically English and a robot can go and find something. And so because of that, I did that back in high school. When I went to Cornell, I studied Electrical and Computer Engineering, meaning that I was learning about coding principles, but also learning about the hardware that runs those coding principles. Because you can't just write code. You have to be able to write code on like a computer chip to be able to actually run it. And I think I gained an appreciation for all the different levels of what we call the stack. So different types of technology, whether it's very high-level meeting that it's writing apps or websites or level. Meaning that it's like dealing with circuits and the actual physics of running a computer. And once I got those fundamentals, I think some of the most impactful work I did was in my junior and senior years of college because when I moved up to the upper class and status, you're able to take project-based courses, meaning that you get hands-on. You're not just memorizing equations, which are definitely very useful. But I was able to take a couple of classes where I was working with Arduinos, Raspberry Pi's, other FPGA boards and plug-in circuits and make things light up. And there are a couple of classes where we got to come up with our own project. And it was really cool for me to do embedded systems work, which is what I do now, basically working at the interface between software and hardware. And I think as soon as I got more familiar with that, even though obviously the products I was making in class a little wonkier than the stuff I'm working on today. It gave me, it just really piqued my curiosity even more. And I really wanted to have that kind of hands-on working at different levels of the stack perspective. When I graduated and I continued college into my master's; focused a lot more than that, made sure to refine my skills. And then when I was looking for jobs, I was like self-driving cars. I feel like that's a really interesting problem that no one knows how to solve yet. And I wanted to get involved and Cruise found me, I found Cruise, and the rest is history. I love it. I love it. It's so exciting.

[00:06:14,539] CHRISTA DOWNEY: So what's been the most significant challenge you faced in your work and how did you overcome it?

[00:06:21,010] CAITLYN STANTON: Yeah, that's a really great question. So I’d say the challenge that I faced at work is one that I'm actually still overcoming and I think I'll constantly overcome is imposter syndrome. I think specifically at my job, I love my team. First of all, the team is so good, "A plus." I love my manager, my colleagues, but I'm their first and only junior higher for my team specifically, because if anybody else studied Electrical and Computer Engineering, I code verilog and C, two languages that people my age tend to not like that, but because they're a little bit slower paced in terms of shipping your changes. And it's a little bit, it's an industry that's a little bit older. And so I was their first junior hire, which is very exciting. But it also means that whenever I am working towards the project or recently working towards promotion, it's very hard for me to compare myself to the rest of my colleagues because I literally can't. A lot of them are senior engineers. So the output that they're putting out or the topics that they're tackling are at a level that I'm not out yet, which is fine. And it's one of those things that in my brain, I think to myself, Caitlin, you can't really compare ourselves to these people. They have been working in the industry for a decade. You were in middle school and some of these people got into the industry. And in my conscious brain, I'm thinking that but in the back of my head I'm like, Are you sure? Are you sure you shouldn't be getting the same level of work is they're doing. And it's something I have to keep reminding myself about. And it definitely has gotten a little bit better because I've been in a year, I got promoted, I've gotten good performance evaluations and I feel more comfortable in the work that I'm doing, but it definitely is hard to be a new grad or like a newer hire when you're surrounded by people who have a lot more experience. But on the flip side, obviously with that experience comes mentorship. And I think that's also helped me towards figuring out my imposter syndrome. And another facet of the imposter syndrome, and again, I love my team is tech is not very much dominated by women. It's not dominated by underrepresented minorities and technology, unfortunately, they're underrepresented for a reason. And I'm one of two women on my team.And I think there's around 15 people. And again, love my team. I have no qualms. It is something that I struggled with because it means that not only do I not have a role model who's like my age that I can focus my junior hire perspectives on. There's very few role models who identify with in terms of my gender to be able to show like what I can aspire to if I want to go down a manager route or I want to go towards an engineering route. There are other women within Cruise at different teams and in different departments who I've been able to use as mentors, but no one directly that I interface with daily. So that's also been a little bit difficult. But again, the more that I work here, the more that I built up my career, I have felt more comfortable. It's just something that's like always in the back of my head. But I will occasionally think about yes, you're one of those first, yeah. You're finding mentors. Mentors. You just have to look a little harder for them. It sounds like it also, mentorship does not necessarily always have to be at your place of work. I mean, like when you're in college, you're not necessarily working anywhere, right? And so that's also something that done throughout my career is find mentors at every stage of my life. So there are a few professors at Cornell that I know if I ever have a question, I can reach out to them. I remember reaching out to a couple of professors when I was thinking about internships. And I reach out to them, they gave you their opinion, and that was super helpful. I've gained in mentors through my internships and other summer experiences so that I get, if I ever have a question, I know I can reach out to a former manager or mentor and talk to them. And then I also, I think you don't always have to have a mentor who's older than you. Honestly rely on my friends as mentors as well because they're in different industries. Or maybe they started working in a year before me because they didn't do a masters. And so they have a little bit more perspective. And I think it is something that you have to seek out a little bit more, but also you have to broaden your definition of a mentor in that it's not necessarily someone who's going to teach you constantly. They're not going to show up with like a lesson every day and be like, this is what you have to learn this week. But instead it's a two-way relationship where you ask for advice and they give you advice or you asked for their opinion and they give you their opinion. And you're learning from them, but they also can learn from you because you naturally, even if you identified exactly the same, have the exact same resume, you're going to have a different perspective. So I think finding mentorship has really been something that I've gotten a lot better up because I realized that I need to broaden my definition of what a mentor is. And then once you've broaden that definition, it's a lot easier to find people because you realize like I can learn from anybody. And that's totally fine.

[00:12:14,839] CHRISTA DOWNEY: Yes, I love the concept of knowing you can learn from anybody. And I love that concept of mentorship being a symbiotic relationship where everybody has something to give. Excellent. And Caitlin, you've made a habit of giving back and mentoring others just beyond those that you seek mentorship from. Can you tell us more about this?

[00:12:39,845] CAITLYN STANTON: So I got my start in tech through Girls Who Code. I mentioned it briefly before. I did Build by Girls after that. So a lot of women and under- represented minorities in tech programs, and this was back in high school. So before college, even for me starting my journey and technology within those communities of people who were similarly identifying as I was, was really helpful because it meant that even though I was taking computer science classes in high school and eventually taking like computer science and hardware courses in college. I had already like a community behind me. And I think had I not have that community, I would have been a lot harder for me to pursue a STEM career because kinda similar to what I was saying about my work, there aren't that many role models, right? So like there, we have definitely gotten better at Cornell and other colleges. But like the gender parity is not perfect per major. Like I think we could definitely, could definitely have more women faculty and more people of color on faculty. And also just like students as well. And obviously it's gotten better from decades past, but it's definitely a room for improvement. And so for me, knowing that I had that community and that was a very strong resource for me. I wanted to give people the same kind of resource because there are so many students out there from various backgrounds who don't think that they can do tech, who don't even know that tech is an option. Who want to try out technology, maybe will eventually not like it, but that's totally fine. I believe that everybody should have the option to at least test it out and I would figure out if they want to do it. So I did, especially in high school and college and I'm trying to pick it up again now. I did a lot of mentorship programs for underrepresented minorities and technology. So there are a few that I did in high school that were like women focus, but then there are a couple of in college I did that were people from low privileged backgrounds or who were doing, I believe like an associate's degree at a community college and they wanted to transfer to a four-year university. So I did mentorship programs like that. I used to do a lot of public speaking. And I want to get back into that because I do love sharing by love sharing my thoughts with you. And that was super fun. I did like a TedTalk when I was in college and I would talk at hackathons and judge hackathons. So for me, I think I don't have that role model for myself right now, but I do have the ability to be a role model for other people or not even a role model like a reference of- Okay, Caitlin did this. It seems possible, like it's not gonna be easy, but at least someone who I can relate to is able to do this. And it's just really special to me to be able to interact with people. Whether it's in a group setting or a one-on-one setting and be able to give them at least one tidbit of information about myself, one lesson that I've learned, and have them take that away and be like, Okay, yeah, I can do this whether they apply it to a tech career or something else. So yeah, I do I do really love giving back to the community in that sense. And I'm really hoping to, now that I'm settled into my career, settled into moving to San Francisco and everything. I'm hoping to kick-start back up again.

[00:16:13,250] CHRISTA DOWNEY: Excellent. What's one of the most important messages you've been sharing lately?

[00:16:18,155] CAITLYN STANTON: I am a big proponent that imposter syndrome is normal. Is it fun? No, it really does. It really does say, walk into a room and be like, Wow, I don't belong here. It's not fun, but it is to an extent something that is shared by the majority of people. I think I used to have this perspective of if someone is super successful on paper, perfect resume, gets all the big jobs straight A's, then nothing is wrong in their life. And sometimes that's true, but sometimes it's not. And I think the people who appear really cool, calm, collected on the surface, can just be really frantic and questioning themselves inside. It's possible two things can be true at the same time. So what I say to people is, feeling out of place is a normal feeling. Should you feel uncomfortable? Absolutely not. What you should do with that feeling of I'm out of place or I feel like a step behind is, it's an opportunity for growth. And that's a place where you can try to find a mentor. You can try to take a class or do a job in that field. Or you can talk to a friend and see if you can have someone like along for the ride with you. It's certainly easier said than done. And depending on your amount of privilege, it's also easier said than done. Like for myself, I identify as a white, Cis woman. So I have already have some semblance of privilege, relatively confident. So most rooms I walk into, I'm like, It doesn't matter. I'm coming in. But for someone who might be quieter or identify with another group, it might be a lot harder for them to shake off that imposter syndrome essentially. So I always look at it in a way like you might fail. And that's fine. Don't look at failure as a negative consequence. Look at it as an opportunity for growth and learning. And the more that you do that, the better you will get at rebounding and recovering and moving forward and growing from those places where you feel like an imposter or you feel like a failure. That's the general message. I try to share it because I feel like it's reasonable enough.

[00:18:47,869] CHRISTA DOWNEY: In most cases, that's such an important message for young people to hear. It's an important message for all of us here in fact. And I will always remember that a few years ago you wrote a blog post about not getting a return offer from an internship and it went viral as you started your senior year. Can you share a bit about this with the audience?

[00:19:09,935] CAITLYN STANTON: Yeah. I used to write a blog and I would include all my text if I were talking about internships. And there's a common thing within internships, especially tech ones that you kinda like 90% of the time have the return on offer like sealed, it's in the bag as long as you'd like do your work, right? They're not just going to hand them out. But I remember that in previous internships, as long as I met my quota, had good conversations with my manager and I was getting good feedback, I would get a return offer. And I remember at this internship I was getting good feedback. I was progressing. There were some roadblocks and I wasn't able to do 100% of the project that I intended to do, but I had that line of communication up. So then at the end of the summer when I was supposed to hear back about whether or not I got a return offer, I was expecting we would love you back next summer and I did not get that. And I remember I went back to the parking lot and sat in my car and I was like, am I going to cry in this parking lot? And I was like, No, I'm not going to cry this parking lot. I'm going to cry at home. And for a couple of days it was like absolutely crushed. Because I was like, I really thought I didn't have to worry about this because it would have thought I would have to worry about if someone had told me Caitlin, you need to step up, you're slacking. But I never heard that. And it also was crushing because I thought I had it in the bag and because when you don't get a return offer for a thing that you've done already. You're like, oh, was I not good in the first place? So yeah, I definitely had moments of like crushing defeat. But then I was like, I'm going to write a blog post about it because I'm someone who I like to journal. I love to talk for me to get my feelings out. I was like, ok I'm going to write about it. And especially since I wanted to write a summary post about my summer, I was like, I'm just going to include this in my blog posts, whatever. It's not a fun topic, but it happened to me. And if someone came up to me on the street and was like, Hey, how did this internship go? I probably wouldn't mentioned like, Oh, I didn't get a return offer. So I felt very comfortable being like whatever. And yeah, it went viral. I was in my era of blogging a lot at the time and I had posted on LinkedIn and I remember I opened my LinkedIn. I think this was during the school year, so I remember opening my LinkedIn probably like in Duffield or something and seeing like several thousand reactions to my post and I was like, that's not normal. Because my blog is not very big. I think maybe out a couple of hundred people, if I'm lucky. Look at a post like within the month. And yeah, it went viral LinkedIn and then I think someone else posted it in a Reddit forum as well. And for me, obviously there were critics. There's never going to be 100% of people supporting you unfortunately, but a lot of people were responding in that LinkedIn posts and on Reddit and being like, oh wow, I'm glad she shared this. Like I had a similar experience. And I realized that not a lot of people talk about getting rejected from an internship or from an opportunity. It happens all the time. Like I get automatic, rejected, rejection constantly or at least when I was looking for a job. But no one really talks about it except for with their close friends. And so for me to write that blog posts, even though it was very innocuous and a very one-off, like it's just happening. It's just me talking to you about my internship experience. The fact that other people were able to relate and get some semblance of comfort from that was very nice because I think at that point I was a person who was really living by my resume, if that makes sense. Like I really focused on having the best resume possible. Now like you shouldn't do that, but I really was putting a lot of stock and the names that I was working for, the classes I was taking, the grades I was getting, a little bit too much stock. And so for me, someone who looked successful on paper saying like, Oh, this didn't work out for me. I think was it was useful for me because I was allowed me to take a step back and say like, Okay, it's all about what you think is important and what you think is good for your growth. Not necessarily what's good on paper. But then also for other people, look at me and say, this is someone who looks successful. She's also able to have a moment of failure and grow from that and yeah, it was it was very weird experience, but I'm glad that it happened and I'm glad that I was able to share it. Yes. Yeah, so much good came out of that in that you had this opportunity for reflection and learning and growth. You've had an opportunity to share and mentor others from afar by role-modeling. Sharing a story that like you said, is rarely shared publicly is such a gift to many other people who read your post. And now what else has done? It's opened up the space for you to be in this very exciting job that you seem to love and you just got promoted. Yeah, exactly. It's like it was one of those things are like I have the same perspective when I was applying to college. When one door opens or when one door closes, another door opens, right? Like you're not gonna get everything. But sometimes things might not have been meant to be. And maybe I wasn't meant to get a return offer up that internship. Maybe even though I enjoyed my summer there, I wouldn't have loved the work again. And I think now, like I my job a Cruise, I really loved the work I'm doing, but I loved the work that I would have done if I had done this internship again. Maybe. But now I know I found work that I really enjoy. And I was able to do an internship, at a different company the next summer, and the summer after that, since I had it since I was here, doing a masters. So I did another internship. And actually along the way, I did go back to that company for interviewing and they gave me an offer for a different team and I was like, okay, so it wasn't me. It probably was just the place in time. The team didn't have enough space. I think they were looking for a new grad and since I was doing an extra year of school, they were like, Oh, sorry. Obviously. Do I wish they had communicated that earlier. Yeah. But it works out for you.

[00:25:53,254] CHRISTA DOWNEY: It worked out really well. And speaking of where you are now, I wanted to circle back to your work and can you talk a bit about how it contributes to a healthier, more equitable, and more sustainable world.

[00:26:07,580] CAITLYN STANTON: For sure. So Cruise, again, self-driving car company, one of the biggest things that we focused on is the safety that this can provide. Because our accidents happen daily. I think they happen like once every 10 min I feel like it's a stat that exists. Either way. A lot of car accidents happen. The severity varies, but car crashes can deaths and injuries caused by car crashes or car accidents is a leading cause of death or injury in America, potentially also the world, but it's like a huge issue, right? And there are so many drivers on the road. Or you live in a rural area, suburban area, urban area. And it's scary, scary as a driver. I'm a person who grew up in New York City, so I was afraid of cars for a long time. So every time I drive, I'm like, This is scary. But that's also scary as a pedestrian because you're like, even if I cross the street at the right time, could someone barrel through a red light or there have been times where I've crossed the street and like a car is turning and didn't see me and I almost got hit. So like everybody is in a precarious situation when there are cars on the road and sometimes it's not even the fault of the driver. There are just a lot of distractions. So there's people walking, There's people biking, scooters, things can fall into the street. I was driving, or my mom was driving the other day in a tree fell on our car. Like things happen all the time that can cause accidents along the road. With self-driving cars. We're hoping that with ARAI, with all of our sensors that we will be the like ultimate focus driving machine essentially because as a human, you have to blink, you have to sneeze. You are talking to someone in the car or it's dark out and your light, your headlights are not working properly. Whereas for our car we use cameras, radar and lidar, which are all various sensors that combine all their data, go through machine-learning to be able to identify like in any environment. Yeah, that's a stop sign or that’s child walking into the road or there's someone coming into wrong way, we have to move to the side. And that's one aspect is we're trying to make the world safer in terms of driving, both for pedestrians, drivers and any other living creature that exists near road. But then in terms of environmental sustainability, our fleet is all electric. So I mentioned that like they are engines don't make any sound because they're all electric. But we are trying to replace cars on the road with our electric fleet. Because not only will they not be utilizing gas and so like the emissions will not be toxic or as toxic. We also are because we're doing a ride hail service, the potential for carpooling is higher. So instead of having individual people commuting to work all in their separate cars, you can potentially have a group of people in our ride hail in our electric fleet. They're able to have no emissions and then also have like six people in a car. So that's another aspect of it. And then also based on the fact that like our cars are driverless, right? We do not need a steering wheel. We don't need a driver's seat. We were working on a car called the Origin, which is basically it looks like a pod. If you look it up on Google. And that introduces the ability to have community spaces within the cars. So whether that's like a group of friends traveling across a city or a couple of people just like sitting, taking a scenic relaxing car ride or like for me sometimes when I use the self-driving cars, I just sit in the back and I read because I don't have to pay attention because I'm not driving. And it really allows the people within the car to not just be focused on driving, but instead of being focused on the surrounding environment or people in the car within them or with them. And it's honestly really cool. And the fact that it's also technically a very interesting problem to solve because again, the road can be very unpredictable place there's a non-zero chance that a plane can land on your road. Are you did you learn that in a driving test? No. But could it happen? Yeah. Will it happened probably not. But like our cars have to learn for those kinds of very slim chance but still non-zero possibility scenarios like you as a human might not be able to react to because you're like, Oh my God, I did not expect a herd of cows to run onto this road, but the car anticipated them driving or riding onto the road. So it's able to react in a better way. And it really does show more about like. Everybody has been talking about AI, but it shows more about what we can do in the world of artificial intelligence and making sure that we're making human-like decisions. Because we don't want the car to be driving really jerky. But we're also able to make those human-like decisions faster than a human and more consistently correct than a human. And it's a really cool job if you're ever in San Francisco or Arizona. Austin. You'll see these cars. And it's just really fun to even just like walking past and seeing no one behind the wheel and you're like, huh, that's not supposed to happen.

[00:32:01,295] CHRISTA DOWNEY: I can't wait. I am excited about the future of self-driving cars and cannot wait until I can go someplace without driving myself. And so I yeah, I'm very eager to get inside of one of these cars and I might, Oh yeah, really actively seek that out sometime in the near future. So I also know there are many young people who are interested that I work with, who are interested in getting into this type of work. You have a coveted position, right? And so I think about for people who are interested in exploring what are the different ways they can be involved? What would you say are some of the people and organizations that are important collaborators toward this brighter future?

[00:32:47,899] CAITLYN STANTON: Yeah, so I'd say the very fun thing about Cruise is that there are so many different fields all intersecting towards this one goal of self-driving cars. So you can be someone who is interested in UI UX design. That's great. We have our app to call the cars. We have dashboards for developers to look at when debugging stuff. That could be your thing. If you're like me and you work at the interface between hardware and software, you can join because there's low level code to write their drivers, to interact with the different boards and their various sensors that we need to make sure we get data from. If you're an electrical engineer or a mechanical engineer, you can work on the actual physical forms, the actual physical sensors are like the car itself to make sure that everything is working properly and that we have this huge compute system working flawlessly. And then we also have CPI like technical product managers and project managers, sourcing people who do more of the soft skill organizing coordination that is imperative for everything to run because we have milestones to hit. We have car's manufacturer, we have factory deadlines. And there's a lot of people running around making sure that things get done. So I think for people who are interested in doing self-driving cars and joining, whether it's Cruise, hopefully it's Cruise, or any other company who's doing similar work. It's one of those things where as long as you find projects and other experiences within the niche that you're interested in. That's something that you can utilize at our company. So for me, like, I did have an internship at Lyft when it did have a rideshare division that was self-driving. But I wasn't necessarily working on the self-driving car is directly. I was doing research for them and that was useful. But then also had I not done that internship, I had other internships where I was working on diagnostics tools for internal products or making sure that like visualizations made sense to people in different teams. And that's something that I also brought to the table when I was being recruited for Cruise. So it's definitely something where as long as you're able to find class projects or internship projects or research, that piques your interest and puts you in a place where able to learn something technically or soft skills was that puts you in a place where you're collaborating with a lot of people. You're learning about new technologies. And you're able to kind of spearhead something to the end. That's kind of like the basis for what equal to what will help you be able to recruit at Cruise. And honestly most other tech companies as well, because especially for something like self-driving cars, there's only so many self-driving car companies or research labs you can work for. So if we restricted our recruiting to just people who did that, we would not have the like almost three thousand employees that we have today. We'd be very restricted and everybody would be a lot older than I am. But yeah, that's what I really love about tech, is that it is once you have a focus, you can go wherever you want. If I wanted to leave Cruise, I could go to a financial tech firm that works on that training and needs really fast forward to be able to make quantitative trading deals. Or I can go to a health care company that's working on health care devices for reading, diagnostics for people's health stats. Like I can kind of go anywhere I want. I won't now. I like my job. But the possibilities are endless.

[00:36:50,259] CHRISTA DOWNEY: They absolutely are. And you are an ambitious and curious person and we look forward to following you, seeing where you go. So curious though, to hear about what do you do to relax, have fun, re-energize.

[00:37:06,324] CAITLYN STANTON: Yeah, that's definitely very important thing. I think anybody who's listening, who's a Cornell student, can empathize with the need to recharge. Because if you don't recharge, you burnout and it can go very fast, very bad, very hard. It's not fun. So for me, I have made sure that especially now that I have like a working nine to five job, but I have a regular cadence to my life. So that involves running in the morning because I really enjoy running. And that helps me feel energized for the rest of the day, even though I'm putting in physical effort to run, it warms my mind up and it releases endorphins. So I feel like the days I don't run, I honestly feel more tired sometimes. I make sure that like, I have a standing desk. I like to walk when I'm doing or I stand up when I'm doing work, I like, I'll go walk my dog. I tried to get outside as much as I can during breaks or at least standing in the sunshine whenever it's sunny in San Francisco. Because I think being cooped up in a room or a space is very draining. I think everybody can relate to that after COVID and being in quarantine for a long time, like not being able to leave your house or apartment was very stifling. So I tried to take little opportunities to believe. I also really enjoy making sure that I have time, friends and volunteering opportunities and hobbies. But I make sure I have a balance because if I'm scheduling every second of my day, being like 5-6 you're doing ceramics, 6-7 you're reading a book, 7-730 you're cooking like I know myself, I'm not going to follow that. If you follow a time block method for the rest of your life, that's totally fine. You do you. But for me, like, I need to have time where I am time-blocked and then also recognize the fact that I will need time where I'm sitting and just enjoying time and space, watching a movie and not doing anything at the same time. Making sure that like I'm trying to multitask less so that I'm focusing more on the task at hand. And actually, if it's something that I'd meant to be enjoying, that I'm enjoying it to my fullest capabilities. And with that, it does require cutting down or being intentional about the things that I say yes to you, which can be hard because I am a person who loves saying yes if I'm interested in, but I make sure to regularly go through my schedule, whether it's on a weekly or monthly basis or even semi-annually. And just say like, is this bringing me joy? Am I and growing from this? Or is it stressing me out more than it's worth? Am I putting in a ton of hours and not getting anything out of it? Am I constantly feeling frustrated if I generally feel negative towards something, even if it is useful to myself for the world or my community, it's always worth continuing to do that thing, whether it's taking a step back completely or bringing back the number of hours you're spending doing it or trying to set boundaries. I think that's really important. Like I have, I do volunteering opportunities where often it feels like a second job that I'm not getting paid for. And even though I do love volunteering, like I learned, that I need to set boundaries because if I don't, I'm going to hate it. And then I’m going to quit. And then I'm going to hate that I quit and it's just like a bad cycle. So I try to do I know that's a lot, but like for me, I try to have generally a balance of going outside, enjoying myself, enjoying time with my friends, and also having time where like, I'm doing fun tasks and working on spreadsheets and maybe like going to a workshop or something. Because for me I'm like, staying busy sometimes my form of staying busy is going to the library, but sometimes my form of staying busy is balancing a budget for my international sorority. They can, again, two things can be true at the same time. Okay.

[00:41:31,565] CHRISTA DOWNEY: So when you're trying to relax, you might go for a run, you might work on a spreadsheet, it really kinda depends. Okay.

[00:41:37,574] CAITLIN STANTON: Okay. Exactly. What we've all been there. Yes. Yes. It's okay.

[00:41:40,610] CHRISTA DOWNEY: Yes, yes. Well, what's one place you go for information to stay current in your work.

[00:41:54] CAITLIN STANTON: I love newsletters. I try to read them as often as possible, but within my job, we do send newsletters. These are other companies and government rulings about self-driving so I'll like to take a look, look at news articles about like Waymo or Zooks or Tesla or other research labs and see what's going on. But I think I also really enjoy reading newsletters about just like tech in general. So there's, I think it's like Tech Brew is it's like a subset of the Morning Brew. It was letter and I think it might be Emerging Tech Brew. But either way, I like reading that because it'll summarize stuff about potentially my industry, but also other industries. Because sometimes kinda what I was saying before, you can take one aspect of tech and introduce to another. And even though it can be used in a different way, it might still be really useful if I notice that this framework is being used for advertising. But it's really, really strong in machine learning area. Like maybe it's useful for us in terms of like generating data or actually accumulating like yeah, accumulating data in some way. I like reading that, but then I also really love just talking to people. I think people are our greatest resource where especially because again, I'm surrounded by senior engineers. They're all experts in something, whether it's a large depth in one specific field or a large breadth for like owning a specific board or component. And I will often see something in like our, our organization slack, which is like our messaging platform. And I'll be like, Oh, that's interesting. I want to learn more about kernel drivers, or I want to learn more about user space applications, or I want to learn more about how cameras work. And either I'll reach out to that person and try to talk to them or their various tech talks within our organization, then I'll attend. And it's just really fun to hear people talk about something that they're like passionate about, that they spent a lot of time on that. Introduce to our fleet of cars or to our app, or to our testing framework. And I think relying on other people to share their knowledge with you is really great. I think it's something that you could do is simply as a 15-minute conversation with someone or a few messages and you would just have them point you to a book or a news article. And then you have like another industry to look into or another tech framework to look into and it's just really fun. And also you form new connections with people when you do that. It's like a fun way of like networking at the same time as you're learning. Yes. So that's that's how I accumulate a lot of my my knowledge, my ever-growing knowledge.

[00:44:57,304] CHRISTA DOWNEY: I love it. Excellent. Okay. One last question. If you were not doing this work right now, what would you be doing and which is closest to what you dreamed up when you were a child?

[00:45:07,624] CAITLYN STANTON: I would if I was not doing tech at all, I'll give myself that caveat because I feel like if I am not working at Cruise, I'll work somewhere else. But if I wasn't doing tech at all, I think I would really want to be doing something in advocacy and giving in like community building and supporting underrepresented communities. Because I feel like or I don't feel like. I know that in our current society, whether if you come from an underprivileged background or an underrepresented identity, or have any sort of bias against you, microaggressions against you, oppressions. Your life is way more difficult and there are various degrees of difficulty. But for me it's very frustrating to see people tried to break into a space and not being able to have the tools to do so or not even being allowed near the space, e.g. so I would really want to do advocacy work for uplifting those communities. Does sound very vague because there are so many problems. But I feel like it'd be interesting for me to learn more about like education, making sure that everybody has education from New York City has universal pre-K. So like making sure everybody has universal pre-K up until college because I think college is something that more people should have access to without breaking the bank. Or I could do that kind of work or I can work on like making housing more affordable for people so that they don't have to worry about where are they going to live. And so then they can focus on like education or other pursuits. There's so many different intertwined ways to bring justice to the various communities that have been under privileged, under served for so long. And I think I tried to do that in my own life. Obviously not as like a full-time job, unfortunately. But I think if I didn't do tech, I would want to do something in that in that realm. Yeah.


[00:47:18,995] CHRISTA DOWNEY: Yeah. Well, with all of your enthusiasm and capabilities, I can see you tackling any number of those challenges. Yes, there's so much possibility ahead.Well, thank you so much. I always enjoy talking to you. And I know Traci said she couldn't be here. She's going to love listening to this conversation. And it's really been wonderful. Thank you.


[00:47:43,684] CAITLYN STANTON: Yeah, it's been great, honestly. Shout out to the Engineering Career Center. I was a peer advisor back when I was a master's student and I got a lot of help there when I was an undergrad. And so being able to come and do this podcast is awesome because it's like the same community that I was able to join when I was at Cornell and then I get to get back a little.

[00:48:06,320] CHRISTA DOWNEY: Thank you, Caitlin. We appreciate you. It was so great to have you on the show.

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[00:48:17,950] CHRISTA DOWNEY: Join us for the next episode where we'll be celebrating excellence and innovation among engineers whose impact contributes to a healthier, more equitable and more sustainable world.

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