It's come time for Dru and I to part ways with First Opinion. It didn't turn out to be the right long-term fit, but I am proud of what we were able to accomplish in the last six months. Implementing drastic changes as a brand new employee has been one of the most difficult things I've been faced with in my career. There's a few things I'd like to do for my own reflection.

Successes

I didn't accomplish as much as I would have liked, and I have much to work on to improve my ability to promote change. However, I'd like to make a list of the things I accomplished with the help of the team and the hard work of a great product manager (who probably shouldered more of the work than anyone). I guess I'll call this the high-level "timeline of success".

Eliminated dozens of bugs in the iOS codebase
Launched a new results feature, giving patients summarized outcomes of their doctor consults
Added robust analytics tracking to monitor use and performance of app features
Laid the groundwork to integrate video-based telemedicine services into core product lineup
Worked towards a HIPAA compliant software stack
Guided a transition in mobile app design from a pixel-perfect to constraint-based approach, relying heavily on the Human Interface Guidelines
Identified weaknesses in the engineering process and worked together towards valuable improvements
Established periodic product team meetings to discuss vision, roadmap, and designs
Established periodic retrospectives as an open forum for team discussion and reflection

I didn't accomplish any of the above below items myself, and of course there is much more work to be done. However, we made some very significant strides in these areas that I feel, and hope, will be beneficial to the company long after my name is no longer found in file header comments, Confluence pages, and commit logs.

Learnings

I also want to reflect back on what I've learned. I've had many moments of clarity over the last year where I realized things could or should've been different than what actually happened. Tempting as it is to write a longform post-mortem detailing all the reasons why First Opinion didn't work out, I'll skip it. My goal is to get back to one of the things I enjoyed as a student, writing a series of blog posts about key learnings and takeaways, but now with the experience of working with startups in Utah and San Francisco.