From Google to Roblox, How One Young Tech Worker Is Building Her Dream Career

Andrea Fletcher says job-hunting college students need to consider more than the company name

Rather than relying on Hollywood-like budgets to produce games, videogame company Roblox outsources the development to its mostly young players. WSJ meets a gamer making money from his creations and helping the publicly traded company attract new players. Photo: Roblox

July 11, 2021 8:00 am ET

At 26, Andrea Fletcher has already worked for Google , Apple and Roblox . She says her career in software engineering really began with a childhood love of logic puzzles that involve math and patterns. Then, as a senior in high school, thanks to a gentle nudge from her dad, she opted to take a computer-science elective over art.

Ms. Fletcher loved coding and problem solving. Today, as a full-stack software engineer at Roblox, the online platform where 43 million people build and play games every day, she gets to do both.

The Wall Street Journal recently spoke with Ms. Fletcher from her parents’ home in Atlanta, where she’s been working remotely for the past year. Here’s her story, edited and condensed for clarity.

What drew you to software engineering?

My dad is the one I can thank for getting me into computer engineering. Senior year of high school, I needed to take an AP class, and I was going to do AP art. He was like, “Try computer science.”

I had never touched computer programming before, and I fell in love with it. It’s very satisfying. You make a change, you see the output. Because of my positive experience in that class, I decided to major in it.

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