Life in Startup Pivot Hell with Ex-Microsoft Lonewolf Engineer Sam Crombie [Podcast #171]

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Sam Crombie. He's a software engineer and prolific open source contributor to freeCodeCamp. He abandon his job at Microsoft, got into Y Combinator, and is currently ...

May 9, 2025 - 13:31

Life in Startup Pivot Hell with Ex-Microsoft Lonewolf Engineer Sam Crombie [Podcast #171]

On this week's episode of the podcast, freeCodeCamp founder Quincy Larson interviews Sam Crombie. He's a software engineer and prolific open source contributor to freeCodeCamp. He abandon his job at Microsoft, got into Y Combinator, and is currently in startup pivot hell trying to decide how to use the half million he raised.

We talk about:

How useful are AI coding tools, really?
Tips for getting new users to care about your projects
What's its really like running a Y-Combinator-funded tech startup
Tips for getting into an Ivy League computer science degree program

Support for freeCodeCamp comes from the 11,384 kind folks who support our charity through a monthly donation. You can join these chill human beings and aid us in our mission by going to donate.freecodecamp.org

Links we talk about during our conversation:

Sam's course on how to audit university courses: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-audit-a-class-university-course/
College Compendium, a univeristy course auditing tool Sam built with fellow freeCodeCamp podcast alum Seth Goldin: https://collegecompendium.org/

You can watch the interview on YouTube:

Or you can listen to the podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Be sure to follow the freeCodeCamp Podcast there so you'll get new episodes each Friday.