Simon
Ayzman
hackNY class of 2015
Simon Ayzman is an alum from the class of 2015, who initially contemplated a career in law, but pivoted to technology after discovering a passion for computer science. With a robust career that includes roles at Foursquare, Bloomberg, and Google, he furthered his education with a dual MBA and MSA in Computer Science from the University of Chicago.
Currently, Simon serves as a principal software engineer at Monarch Money, There, he leads full-stack product innovation where he enjoys the dynamics of a small, close-knit team.
Simon’s Favorite Projects
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Icebreaker
Icebreaker facilitates deeper IRL connections by guiding conversations around preferred topics, inspired by multiplayer experiences like Jackbox Games and Spyfall. It offers an easy way to make personal connections, overcoming the impersonal nature of traditional icebreakers in large group settings.
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SWE Compensation Negotiator
This project examines granular Software Engineer compensation data from Levels.fyi using regression analysis techniques – accurately predicting salary, stock, and bonus information given specific user parameters.
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Toneduino Matrix
The popular online Tone Matrix now exists in physical form, pushing a little Arduino to its limits! Conceptually, it's a grid of musical squares that play on loop, using an LED matrix to keep track of the notes. The contraption opens / closes like a laptop and is operated via a touch screen with optional speed / volume control dials.
Origins
Simon started writing code in high school AP computer science. Heading into college at Hunter, he fell out of love with coding was convinced to pursue law instead. However while starting to study for the LSAT, he decided to take a Computer Science class for a potential minor on top of his Political Science major.
Junior year, Simon’s future during and after law school started coming into focus. He felt like reading case law wouldn’t keep him excited in the same way that problem solving with code did.
Looking for tech jobs, Simon felt like he didn’t have a community supporting him to know when to apply or that Leetcode practice was so important. He got a single full-time offer at Bloomberg and accepted it on the spot to start after his hackNY fellowship.
hackNY
Senior year, Simon applied to hackNY and felt lucky to get in; the program seemed like a great way to get a pulse on the NYC startup scene. He viewed his hackNY cohort as a close-knit class of smart people. Given his participation in hackNY’s spring 2014 hackathon building on the Foursquare API, the company ended up as a natural match for his summer internship.
Throughout the summer, Simon learned a lot about how startups work and really enjoyed the weekly Speaker Series. Being his first experience working in industry, he had some growing pains learning best practices, but already having a full-time gig at Bloomberg lined up after hackNY took some of the pressure off.
Bloomberg
After hackNY, Simon joined the mobile apps team at Bloomberg. During his 4 years at the company, Simon learned a lot and moved past his doubts about being able to work in tech. He picked up how to research, plan projects, parse technical documentation, and write code in a large codebase. Simon learned the value of code review and how to ask the right questions to resolve ambiguities.
At the end of the third year at Bloomberg, Simon applied for a master’s degree in Computer Science and moved onto the Bloomberg Innovation team. And in his fourth year at Bloomberg, he built fun experiments for Bloomberg Media where he felt like he finally found his confidence as an engineer.
Teaching
Simon started teaching Computer Science at Hunter, a few blocks north of Bloomberg. At the time, Hunter didn’t have a strong culture of CS, and Simon wanted to contribute to creating that culture. Simon also mentored for the hackNY summer fellowships in 2016 and 2017, which let him continue to teach and share skills while getting to know the fellows in those classes.
In 2017, Simon also met his now-wife!
Grad
School
In 2019, Simon moved to Chicago to pursue a master’s at the University of Chicago with a dual MBA and MSA in CS. Simon felt like he had a knowledge gap about business, and wanted to learn to develop a breadth of skills. He knew plenty of Computer Science folks, but wanted to meet people from government, finance, and other backgrounds.
At the same time, Simon deepened his roots by diving into new disciplines with CS. He used his MSA to learn frontend, distributed systems, ML and more.
Postgrad
After graduating, Simon got engaged and moved to Virginia to be with his fiancée. He landed a remote role at Spotify for 6 months until being recruited by Google, where he worked for 2 years.
Currently, Simon works at Monarch Money as principal software engineer leading the full-stack product team. The role is the smallest org he’s worked at, and he’s really enjoying the size of the team.