Astoria, Queens · builder, coach, one-person studio
I taught myself to build. Then I built a studio around it.
Touring musician, tutor, self-taught software engineer. Offers from Shopify, Amazon, and Google. Now a one-person studio running coaching, AI fluency, content, and code.
Two ways in: the work I teach, and the work I build.
Free · no spam
Two ways in.
Career · The Transition Lab & CareerZen
Tactics don't get you hired. Seeing the game clearly does.
For mid-career professionals leveling up in a market that changed under them. The same skill runs under everything I build: see the system clearly enough that the right move gets obvious.
AI fluency · jointheparty.ai
Most people stop at the chat box. I show you the rest.
For people already running something real, a business, a practice, a full life, ready to build with AI the way an engineer would. Live, hands-on sessions. I sit next to you and we build the thing.
What people say
“She helped me re-frame how I talked about my self-taught background — something I hadn't realized was holding me back. I came in feeling like the odds were stacked against me. I left with a job and a different way of thinking about myself.”
“Lauren helped me see that recruiters aren't gatekeepers — they're resources. I never thought about it that way before. That one shift changed the trajectory of my entire search. She was literally standing next to me when I got my final offer. I had no reason not to ask for what I wanted.”
“Lauren's a little mini-super-star in the Hack Reactor Alumni community for embodying positivity, grit and a growth mindset and using all of that to come out looking pretty good in the most volatile job markets anyone can remember. I honestly admire the living crap out of the way she approaches things and think there's a ton I could learn from her. She's recently done really well in Amazon and Meta interviews so I can't think of a better person to get a helping hand from.”
Free Resource
The Skill Alchemy Engine.
A tool I designed and built to map the skills already in your work onto the paths they open. The logic, the interface, and the AI underneath, all mine.
What lands in your inbox.
The Party, one read for everything I'm building and thinking about. Career, AI, code, and a life that holds them together. Three formats.
- field note
My Essay
One insight about building a career, a business, or a life with AI — and the identity shift underneath it. My voice. Every week.
- portrait
Human Story
A deeply personal story told the way Terry Gross would tell it. The work is the frame. The human is the story.
- system drop
The Workflow
A working automation you can deploy — sometimes a full nano-agent suite. The kind of thing that makes an engineer's jaw drop. Yours in the next issue.
The Course
The Transition Lab
The system I built for running a modern job search, end to end. $389 · Lifetime access · 90 days on CareerZen.

About Lauren
I toured as a musician, then built a tutoring practice that put two hundred students through college. I taught myself software and landed simultaneous offers from Shopify, Amazon, and Google. I walked away from $325K on my own terms and built a one-person studio instead.
Fourteen final rounds across four job searches, at Google, Meta, Amazon, Shopify, and others, through layoffs, a rescinded offer, and COVID. My community at Hack Reactor started sending each other to me before I ever called myself a coach.
Now I run that studio myself: a coaching practice, an AI-fluency platform, a content studio, and, newest, bespoke interactive web builds. Same hands on all of it.
One read, when it lands.
For everyone building the next thing: career, AI, code, and a life that holds them together. The party started. You're not late.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Ready to see the game clearly?
Coaching is one piece of what I build with people. Work with me directly, one session changes the picture.