Title:GTA Alumni Spotlight: Meet Charlie Harrington (C’08)

Meet Charlie Harrington (C’08), Head of Engineering at Folio!

Please introduce yourself.

My name is Charlie Harrington, and I graduated from the College in 2008 with majors in History and Political Economy. I grew up in Red Bank, New Jersey and now live in California. I’m the Head of Engineering for the technology startup Folio. Folio helps people in hospitality provide amazing guest experiences. We build software for goods procurement and payment, working with people at hotels who have to buy a lot of things (and pay for them) from different vendors. Folio is an Amazon-like platform, one marketplace place to buy all of your goods, with neat features like price comparisons, recommendations, and budget integrations. We also do some fintech – we facilitate payments to suppliers. So, it is e-commerce and payments, all oriented around hospitality and guest experiences. We’re a fully remote company and currently a small (but growing) team. I’ve been with the company for about a year now. Prior to Folio, I worked as a software engineer at various companies focused on self-driving cars, machine learning, fintech, and education technology.

At Georgetown, I considered becoming a lawyer. But working with the Corp gave me my first taste for building a company and products. This inspired me to learn more about business, so I did a summer internship at Morgan Stanley (even though I had never opened a spreadsheet before). I worked at Morgan Stanley for three years through the 2008 financial crisis. I liked parts of my job, especially the camaraderie of working hard with a strong team, but I felt like I was too far removed from actually building a business, which is what I loved about The Corp.

At the time, it was 2011 and there was a growing tech start-up ecosystem in New York City. I found an interesting one in the education technology space and luckily they needed someone who was quote-unquote good at spreadsheets. I worked at this education company for two years, then I moved to London to open their office. I bet on myself and tried something more creative, as opposed to sticking to the tried and true path of finance, and I’m very glad I did. Our team traveled around Europe, helping textbook publishers build personalized learning software with our technology – and this gave me a taste for Product Development. I realized that I wanted to go even deeper – and actually build the software myself. I bought some books on iOS programming, and I made a little mobile app during one of our company’s hack days. I loved the tight feedback loops of programming – and being able to get into flow – that I decided to try it out full-time.

I left London, moved to San Francisco, and started my career over for the second time. I went to a coding boot-camp, couch-surfed for six months while looking for a job, and I’ve been here ever since. I couldn’t be happier about betting on moving towards creativity and building things. 

How did your time at Georgetown influence your career path in the tech industry?

In multiple ways. For example, Georgetown’s multi-disciplinary mindset, the Jesuit philosophy of cura personalis, inquisitiveness, and the student-run clubs and organizations. Georgetown taught me how to go about learning new things. That to me is the ethos of entrepreneurship and technology; having an idea and the courage to go try it out,  even though it may be uncomfortable at first. The school also helped me recognize the importance of  surrounding myself with people who are also curious. This combination of curiosity, community, and opportunity — Georgetown excelled at it and certainly set me on this path. 

What does the day-to-day look like in your current role?

My company’s fully remote, and we try to be as flexible as possible with how individuals facilitate that. We have people in Japan, Canada, and all over the U.S. As a result, when I wake up, there is always activity, whether it’s code reviews that someone has pushed to Github overnight or customer support issues that we want to look at. Essentially, the sun never sets on work. That’s both good and bad. Sometimes, late at night, after my two kids are asleep, I log back in. 

On a good day, it’s headphones-on type work. I’m working through customer feedback about bugs or working on a product opportunity that we are thinking about. I can work with one of our designers or engineers to spec a new product out, and write the code. The most fun days are being able to do this and bring something to life. I try to balance my maker vs. manager schedule. If I have a good day, it orients more towards the maker schedule. 

Beyond that, because I work from home, I’m able to be with my young kids a lot. If they need me or I need to pick someone up from school, I can dive in and do that. I can’t imagine life without that ability. I feel very grateful for this flexibility that allows me to do my work while also being present for my family.

What do you wish more people knew about the tech industry?

Every company is a technology company in some way. Learning how to be adept in new technologies will help you no matter what you are doing. Approaching these tools with curiosity and open-mindedness and seeing how they can augment your life is really important. Another thing that I have learned is that some things seem complex, but with a little prodding, probing, and curiosity, anyone can peel back the hood. Every time in my career that I have done that, it has led to interesting results. Be curious and try unwrapping things!

What is your favorite app or website, and why?

I love Github – it’s how we collaborate on code as software engineers. I’ve, of course, also started using all of the LLM based tooling, like Claude and Chat GPT. If I’m bored (rarely), I check out Hacker News to read interesting articles and learn new things. 

What is one quick piece of advice you would give to a Georgetown student that is interested in tech?

“Create wonderful things, be good, have fun.” This is my life philosophy, which I borrowed from Klutz Press, a publisher of wonderful books that I loved as a child (and adult). These spiral bounds taught you new skills and always came attached with a little kit that had everything you needed to get started. So, for example, if the book was The Klutz Guide to Juggling, the kit would come with juggling balls. The books were informative, irreverent, and respected you, no matter what age you were. I’ve tried to live up to this credo with my career.

For more GTA Alumni Spotlights, click here.