Meet the Mentor: Joe LaChance

Meet Joe LaChance

Software engineer turned entrepreneur, Joe LaChance, is building his own company after 10+ years working with a combination of scrappy startups and large companies, like Best Buy.

In his Meet the Mentor interview, he shares how a lifelong passion for problem-solving and creativity led him to pursue entrepreneurship, despite early challenges in college and career transitions. From learning sales to exploring AI, his story highlights resilience, the importance of mentorship, and the value of building a strong network. With a focus on helping others break into tech and a dream of creating an impactful company, this conversation is packed with insights and encouragement for aspiring technologists and founders alike.

Snapshot

Current Job Title: Founder, Software Engineer, and Flatiron Mentor

Current Employer: Deep Space

Past Employers: Bold Metrics, Best Buy

Experience: 10+ years in Software Engineering

GitHub: https://github.com/joelachance

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jlachance1/

X: https://x.com/jlchnc

Technical/Professional Skills: “I've managed developers for 4 years on data analysis, data science, and software development initiatives. I've been writing Python and Javascript for a decade.”

Teaching/Mentoring Experience: “I've mentored junior developers at Best Buy and Bold Metrics, as well as co-led a mentorship through Bletchley Institute.”

Words of Wisdom: “Meet as many developers as you can, learn from them, and never stop improving your skills. It's not 'if', but 'when' you land a job — stay persistent!”

Favorite Part of Your Job: “Getting creative in solving new coding challenges. There's nothing like turning on some good tunes and getting in the flow.”

Q&A Transcript

Introduction: Who are you and what do you do now?

• Can you tell us a bit about yourself and what you’re working on these days?
  • I'm a Software Engineer. I'm starting my own company and that’s what I'm currently working on. Previously, I was at a startup for eight years and then Best Buy corporate before that.
• What made you decide to start your own company?
  • It's something I've always wanted to do. I wanted to do that in college, but I didn't realize how hard it was going to be. I picked a problem that I think was outside of what I was capable of doing, and it was just really, really difficult. So, I ultimately didn't move forward with that because there were a million other problems, and I didn't have enough money. I probably had that problem so it's just something I've always wanted to do, and even as a kid, I wanted to go invent stuff. It's just something that I've always been looking towards, and I think even working at a startup has been great. Just kind of having my own thing is something I've been after.
• What’s your primary role at your company?
  • This is a very new company, so I'm doing everything. I'm pretty close to finding a cofounder. I'm looking at accelerators. So, it's much different than just like a typical software engineering job. I'm having to learn sales, which is painful. But, it's okay. So, it's different in the sense, like, I'm probably doing software engineering.
• What excites you most about what you’re working on?
  • It's a problem that we had at the startup I was at for a long time. I'm a little bit like OCD in some respects where it's like, “I've got to fix this. This is such a pain. I have to fix it.” But, I'm trying to think where else to go with that. It's just been something I've really, really wanted to work on for a long time. And I think just having the ability to take a problem, and with software, the sky's really the limit—you can do pretty much anything you want. So I think being able to just take a problem and then get creative with it, the creativity piece of it for me is really exciting and fun.

Career Journey: How did you get here?

• Can you walk us through your career journey? Where you started, how did you end up in Software Engineering, and how did you end up at Flatiron School?
  • I think the story starts with me being a musician since very early, maybe four or five years old when my parents got me started with music. They were musicians, so they were like, “You're doing this.” That led me to always have an interest in science too, growing up. So kind of between music and science, those were the two things I gravitated towards. In college, my first semester, I was a good student in high school. I got good grades and showed up to college. My first semester, I had two music classes, a programming class, and a math class. Throughout high school, I was good at math. I show up to this math class and I got an F. So I was like, “Why?”  Then I got a D in the programming course. I have excuses for that, but that was something I felt like I had a handle on, and it just didn't go well. With the two music classes, I got A’s and was killing it. So, at that point, I was like, “I'm gonna just be a musician. I don't want to get any more F’s. That was not fun,” and programming was super intense. It was in Java, which it was so focused on object-oriented programming and the concepts of it more than actually writing anything, so it was very abstract. But at the time, I thought, “I'll just do music.” So I went down that path. One of my friends was a PhD in math, and I had other friends who were just very focused on that. It was something I was always kind of just looking over at and thinking, “I think I could do that. I really want to do that. I really want to be a programmer. That just seems fun. You get to hang out, you get to work wherever you want. I think I could go do that.” So, as my career progressed, I toured for a long time, left that, and did some other jobs. All the while, I was kind of like, “I think I could be a programmer,” and things just kind of fell into place. I ended up with a job where I was making enough money. I was able to save some and then go to Flatiron. At the time, I had met my wife as well. So the stars just kind of aligned: I married my wife and started Flatiron. So, a lot of changes were happening.
• Did you go to Best Buy right after Flatiron School? What was your role at Best Buy?
  • I was on two different teams there. The first team I was on was the A/B testing team. So there were three business people who were stakeholders, and they were talking to a bunch of different groups to bring in the A/B tests, build those, and manage them. Then it was me and one other developer, and we were developing those tests. That was fun just because we got to touch a bunch of different parts of that website—it was on bestbuy.com, and it was always features. So they would come to us and say, “Okay, this part of the business wants to test if we…”—this is a silly example—“Change the color of this button.” It was more often like “We want to add this button” or “We want to do this to the homepage. We're going to test it for a bit.” Fifty percent of the people show up to the site, the other fifty don't. And then they measure. So that was the first team I was on. Then, there was a reorg, as there tends to be at big corporations, and I got put on dotcom team, as they called it. I was just straight up on bestbuy.com, and I got to write a couple of features for the homepage—like the carousel that was just showing ads, basically. I think it's called store locator, but it's part of your profile, and it basically says, “You're in [wherever]—you're in New York city. Here's the closest Best Buy to you. Here's the hours.” So those were probably the two most visible features I wrote among other things.
• From Best Buy, did you go straight from Best Buy to Bold Metrics next?
  • Yeah, I had a connection there. The founders of that company were my roommates in college, and they had started that company before I even started Flatiron. I kind of always kept in touch with them and was always like, ”That'd be cool to work with those guys. I should become a developer to go do that.” So I kept talking to them. The growth was slow but gradual. They had teams before I joined, but when I joined, there were four people there. It was me and another developer who ended up being my mentor. He had previously worked at Amazon and NASA and had been writing Python since the nineties. And then there were the two founders that were my roommates in high school. I think another reorg was coming at Best Buy, maybe, if I remember correctly—it's been a long time. But it was kind of like, “I don't want to go. I don't want to switch teams again. I want to try something else.” And I had worked in corporations before, so it felt like the right time to make that jump.

Lessons Learned: What have you learned along the way?

• What’s one lesson or insight from your career that’s stuck with you and continues to guide you?
  • I wasn't very good at this at the beginning because I'm an introvert, which is part of the reason I like programming. I get to just turn everything off and just go write code. Building my network, I think, was invaluable and continues to be invaluable because even people I didn't think I would be contacting or have kept in touch with over the years—I find myself reaching out to those people to ask them questions either because it's in an area I don't know much about, or just to get their opinion because they work at places that I've never worked. And so, maybe they've seen this problem differently than I have. So I think just having a really strong network is something that I learned the hard way and continue to build to this day.
• Was there a moment where you faced a major challenge or failure, and how did you grow from it?
  • I've suffered from burnout several times. I'd say that's probably the biggest one. It is so easy. I am like such a sucker for just being like, “Yeah, I got it. I can do that.” And then it's like too much stuff. So that was another lesson I learned. I'm continuing to learn the hard way because once I know what to do, I’m very good at executing things, but at the detriment of my mental health sometimes. So, if you're able to step back from that, just kind of check in, make sure you're still okay. You know, you're talking to your family, you can kind of take care of yourself.

Mentorship: Why did you decide to become a mentor?

• Why did you decide to become a mentor, and what connected you with this at Flatiron School?
  • It just gets me excited. I feel like I'm not some kind of genius where I can see a concept and be like, “I got it.” Sometimes that happens, but not usually. I usually have to go work for it. Data structures are hard, and that was definitely hard for me to learn. I think if I can help somebody else work through that—because nobody was born with these skills—you have to go think, and the thinking part is hard. So if you can get help from somebody who has been there, I think that's invaluable. I've just really enjoyed helping people come up through Flatiron and just get on their feet and find their first job. There's this point where you accelerate through Flatiron, and you graduate and you're like “Okay, I can build an app.” But then there's still a little gap between that and your first job. It doesn't matter what your job is—it's just at a different speed. And so you have to make that leap, and then the acceleration keeps going up. It's more intense than I think people realize. So if I can help people at all get through that, then that's good. Because I think this is a great career, and if I can help people get there, then all the better.
• Was there someone who influenced your career path and who (knowingly or unknowingly) mentored you?
  • I think my friends were really encouraging at first. They were like “Just go do it. What's the worst that's going to happen?” I think the other person that had a big effect was John, my mentor. That was the guy that worked at NASA and Amazon, and he had a PhD in computer science, but he was just so patient with me. Just being able to sit and work through problems and be like, “I do it this way, here's why.” Because there are patterns and just things that you can grok from people who've been around for a long time that you're not ever going to invent on your own. So that was a game changer for me, for sure—getting to work with them.
• If you could give one piece of advice to someone just starting out in tech, what would it be?
  • First off, you should love this. If you don't love this, this is going to be harder. This is going to be harder than if you love it. But don't give up, because I think I see people graduate Flatiron and they're kind of like, “The job hunt is hard,” and it is—it's hard. But it's literally a matter of time before you get a job. It's not if you'll get a job, it's like, you just have to weather that storm. It takes a minute, but once you get through it, you're in. I think that's the one piece of advice is—as generic as it sounds—is don't give up. Just keep going. If you love it, people are going to see that. People are going to want you to work for them because that's your outlook.

Future Focus: Where do you want to go next?

• What’s something new you’re learning or exploring right now, and why does it excite you?
  • I think I've spent a lot of time looking into AI. I think there's a lot of misconceptions about it out there right now. And in context of software engineering, I think a lot of people are scared that it's going to start taking your job. I do not believe that that's the case at all. It's like another tool. It's like having a really good editor. If you have this really good, strong code editor that can help you, then you're going to be better at your job. You still need to know the concepts because AI can't replace that. But it is pretty incredible what you're able to do with model context protocol and RAG models, things like that. Basically, feeding additional context to an LLM is interesting. And then the other piece of it too, I guess this is two things—but the second piece is I'm starting to work on some talks that I'm planning on giving this summer at conferences. So I think that's the other piece that's exciting to me: just being able to talk, be in the community, and share findings and different things.
• Looking ahead, what’s a big dream or ambition you’re working toward in your career?
  • I think the company. If I can successfully start a company and turn a profit, then that will have been a big, big win.

Who should we interview next?

• Who should we interview next? This could be someone you know (a mentor or coworker), or it could be someone you learned from in another capacity (through a book, newsletter, blog, etc.).
  • So my mentor also passed away. I've had like two people who have passed away in my career, which has been hard. I've started to get to know some people through Front End Masters, which is a really good resource after you get out of Flatiron. They post a lot of topics, videos about very specific topics.

Lightening Round Questions

• What’s something you’re listening to or reading right now? (It can be any genre and can be a book, audiobook, or podcast.)
  • Like programming music taiko is at the top of the list. Yumi Zouma in camera great song  and then I always go back to oasis for whatever reason but usually like non-lyric type music. Books, I'm reading Secrets of Sandhill Road, which is like a really good primer for what a VC is, what VCs do. So if anyone's interested in that, that's a great book that's written by a partner at Andreessen Horowitz. I'm about halfway through that, but it's a really excellent book. The book, in my opinion, the book on creativity is by Rick Rubin. It's called The Creative Act by Rick Rubin, a way of being. That is absolutely a book I think everyone needs to pick up. The chapters are super short, you can read them in like two minutes. There's probably like a hundred and fifty chapters in this thing, but it's just like snippets on creativity and it's, they're so good.
• What’s one product or tool you’re into right now?
  • I've really liked Ghostty, which is a terminal emulator that's relatively new. And I've been looking at NeoVim. There's been a lot of noise about NeoVim, and I've just started to kind of dig into that.
• What date does your next cohort start?
  • Beginning of June
• Where can listeners find you?
  • My website is typerror.dev with one E. On Twitter, I'm J L C H N C, so my name without any vowels. I think those are probably the two best places.
• What made you smile this week?
  • We are fostering a dog and she is a ten pound dog she is a mini aussie but she's ten pounds which is like there's something else in there she can jump on our island in our kitchen, and she eats the cat food. I've been having to smile about that a lot because it's like get off the counter but she's a really sweet dog and I think she'll probably get adopted soon but she's a firecracker. She's wild. I've never seen a dog that small that can jump that high.