JD Carlston

Senior Director of Architecture at Pluralsight

JD has a passion for learning; they love painting, writing poetry, and creating sculptures. Code also caught their attention, and without completing their undergraduate studies they have still managed to shape their desired career through a philosophy of self-teaching.

Chemical Engineering

JD Carlston grew up in Colorado and Utah, mostly within the Salt Lake City area. They originally began a scholarship in chemical engineering, but soon realised that it wasn’t for them. Having a sense of their interest in technology, they would on and off try to fit in an official undergraduate education in computer science, but never fully finished it and have successfully built a career without it.

They felt early on that a lack of a traditional computer science education may be a blockade in the development of their career, but found that the effort put into demonstrating their abilities time and time again paid off in the eyes of employers. They realise that it’s no longer an issue and believe it to have been of benefit to their development as a unique thinker.

Varied Interests

They found a large range of employment opportunities in their early career, “my interests have always been all over the place.” They moved between roles in real estate, finance, video-conferencing, and a lot of telecommunications, with a drive to prove themselves as someone who could get the job done even without a degree. They have realised that their unique perspective and lack of traditional background has given them an entirely different perspective than their colleagues, emphasising the substantial evidence behind the hiring of a diverse range of mental models being an excellent long-term investment for companies. In other words, different backgrounds and a diversity of thought leads to a more prosperous environment.

Joining Pluralsight

Jumping into various environments and taking them apart really sparks their curiosity, whether that be in a team of people or a software program. This is what their current role as a Senior Director of Architecture at Pluralsight now allows them to do. They help write code, train staff, map, strategise and look after the many teams working at the company. Diving deep into various systems, they learn the flow and patterns of each along the way. This might be in order to help people work better together, or simply to fix up some code that has gone astray. 

These strategies equally apply to taking on new skills. The beginning point of any interest for JD is “Oh! This sounds interesting. I’ll go figure it out.” They maintain that one can abstract principles of learning and apply these to any area in order to learn anything one has an interest in. Figuring out an outline of what you want to learn and where you want to go is an important step, which they’ve applied to all of their previous roles. 

Thinking about the process of learning as abstractly as this has allowed JD to explore an assortment of areas that have piqued their interest. In their free time, they teach themselves how to watercolour, if they’re not working on sculptures or woodworking. They write many poems and see themselves iteratively improving over the course of time, as they have done with learning to program. Anyone of any background can equally apply this same line of thinking to new skills, as JD has with coding, and rise like JD to the top of their field.

You can find more information and keep up to date with JD via their blog.