Fiveable
- Aaron Levin
Aaron Levin (He/Him)
Head of Engineering at Fiveable
Hi! I'm Aaron— Head of Engineering here at Fiveable, working out of Denver Colorado.
Before joining Fiveable, I was on track to pursue a masters in Machine Learning and Signal Processing, but learned that I didn't have the patience for training models. I spent most of undergrad leading business & engineering clubs, pitching startups, and raising money to host hackathons. Afterwards, I spent about a year building products for companies in my area, tutored AP computer science, moved to DC to teach robotics, and worked on my own edtech product. In 2019, I met Amanda and Tán, moved to Milwaukee, joined Fiveable, and never looked back 😎
What I love most about working at Fiveable has to be my colleagues. The level of passion they show for the students we serve, for starters. But I especially admire the fact that they're so well rounded— brilliant, hilarious, _and_ empathetic. It's such a joy being able to wake up every morning and look forward to my meetings with them.
Org chart
Work style
How I prefer to work
Remote
Morning
Mostly in a team
Qualities I value in my colleagues
- Efficiency
- integrity
- bias toward action
- empathy
- reliability
So hard to only pick 5! But, these are the 5 I picked. Integrity is my #1 value. In startup-land, there are many instances where we have to take calculated risks with uncertainty. Throughout history, there have been instances of engineers compromising their public duties by disproportionately prioritizing business outcomes (Boeing is an example). It's up to engineers to make sure security standards and user privacy are reasonably upheld and these need to be factored into our timelines. Empathy is my next most valued quality. If people don't understand each other, they won't hear each other. Communication is harder, and that makes it harder to work as a team. Moreover, we need to have constant empathy for the students we serve. With greater empathy for our users, we can think & create better solutions for their problems. In general, the world would be a better place with more empathy. Reliability and efficiency are tied as my next favorite values. When people are reliable, especially with communication & execution, we can trust each others' timelines, plan, and execute better as a team. When we're all able to rely on each other, we can take on bigger & more impactful initiatives. My last value, which in many ways still feels like my #1 value... is bias towards action. I call this the "go-getter" value. Complacency will be the death of many high-potential companies and teams. Taking action instead of waiting can be contagious, and helps us push the limits of what we know to be possible. By acting on things we know in our hearts to be possible while others may not realize, we can prove points & create momentum that moves the whole team forward.
My communication style
- Casual
- genuine
- positive
- proactive
- transparent
My pet peeves
- Pessimism
- selfishness
- arrogance
- secrecy
- dishonesty
Fun fact
I've been learning Hindi for almost one year, and hope to become fluent in it one day!
Personal Q&A
How do you like to receive feedback?
Literally however is easiest for you to present it. Asynchronously in a Slack DM, on a video call, audio-only huddle. Heck, if you want to fax it to me— that can be arranged. Knowing that I can trust my peers to give me feedback when it's on their minds helps me sleep at night because I don't have to hypothesize about what they think I can improve upon. One of my favorite phrases, applied to engineering or life itself, is "you can't fix what you can't see."
Timeline
Head of Engineering
Current role