I’m Hugo J-B. I live in Brighton, where I build products on the internet.

My route into software was not a straight one. I spent most of my youth skateboarding, and in my late teens, tried to become a Royal Marines Commando. I completed the joining process but was medically discharged during training.

For a while, I stacked shelves on the evening shift at Tesco. During one of my breaks, I read an article about the Mars rovers and the C code behind them. That sparked my interest in programming.

I started learning online, became completely obsessed, and quit my job to go all in. For a while, I kept it from my family and continued to leave home to “go to my shift”, only to sit in my car and study.

Within a year, I had built a few projects, gained some work experience, and landed a junior software engineer role at American Express. At one point, I left American Express and delved deeper into computer science fundamentals, Web3, and generative AI, before eventually returning as a software engineer on the business travel account team.

These days, I’m focused on finding ways to use generative AI effectively and help increase its adoption at American Express, and on the side, I’m building Grokast, a podcast player for active learning.