July 11, 2024
Paige Haehlke
Determination and perseverance: The keys to Mark Thompson ’03’s success
Mark Thompson ’03, a Senior Developer Relations Engineer at Google, learned from his early-career mistakes, persevered through challenges, and leaned on his liberal arts education from Lake Forest College to find success in work and teaching.
Thompson, who grew up in Chicago with limited resources, wasn’t expected by his parents to pursue further education after graduating high school. Wanting to advance his learning, he had plans to attend a different college until he was invited by a friend to a Lake Forest College preview weekend. Like many students who first set foot on campus, Thompson immediately felt a sense of home and fell in love with the school.
“I had a blast and loved the community,” Thompson said. “I loved that the College was close enough to home that I could still see my parents and be able to support my family, but I could also have the experience of being away from home as a college student.”
Thompson majored in computer science, a passion he discovered at the age of 10. A lifelong video game enthusiast, he was driven by a desire to address the lack of diversity in the industry and aspired to be the change he wanted to see.
“There were never any video game characters that looked like me and my brothers, and if there were any Black characters, they were always based on a stereotype,” Thompson said. “So, I thought, ‘I'm going to make video games, and I'm going to change this.’”
While at the College, he created two video games for a senior project—one a 2D version and the other a 3D version of “Super Mark Brothers”—a play on Super Mario Brothers. But after an eye-opening experience in graduate school with someone in the industry, Thompson put his video game-making dreams to rest.
“I remember it clear as day: I was in a computer graphics class in graduate school, and we had a guest speaker who had worked at a local game studio,” Thompson said. “When I saw him, he looked so exhausted and ragged, and I was like, ‘If this is what that life is like, I don't want to do it.’ He couldn’t even find the energy to talk to us and left the room.”
After looking into other possible career paths, Thompson pursued enterprise application development and worked on back-end development and server-side development. Several years later, he learned about front-end engineering and has been working on that ever since.
But Thompson’s career hasn’t been without its challenges; he was fired from his first engineering job due to being chronically late.
“The challenge there was that I knew how to write code, but I didn’t know how important it was to come in on time,” Thompson said. “When I got fired from that job, that really shook my confidence because I had never failed at anything before. That was a big learning experience about how to get back up after you get knocked down.”
Making it to Google
In 2017, Thompson was building a fitness company startup. To gain free promotion for his app, he used Flutter, a software created by Google for building mobile apps, and posted publicly about it. Leaders of the Flutter team at Google saw his work and began inviting him to events. When a friend of Thompson’s was contacted by someone at Google about a position, he recommended Thompson for the job instead. And because that person already knew who Thompson was, they invited him to interview for the role.
Thompson knew he couldn’t pass up this opportunity and realized he had to nail the interview.
“I studied two hours every night for three months,” Thompson said. “I had a young child at the time, and I would rock his crib with one hand and study with the other.”
Thompson put in so much time and energy preparing for his interview because he knew what the opportunity meant for his career. Securing a position at Google would propel his professional future and provide lasting security for his son.
“I didn't have anything to lose by going all in,” Thompson said. “The worst that could happen is they could say no, and I could try again the next year. The best thing is that I could get in, and then it could change everything.”
What Thompson loves about his job is the scale of the problems he solves—not serving five or 100 people, but millions of users. He also has autonomy to set his own expectations, and his experience at Google has helped him hone his skills.
“Thinking about how I’ve grown at Google as an engineer, that’s invaluable,” Thompson said. “I talk to brilliant people, and we all share ideas. It’s just such an amazing environment, and I love that I get to do the things that are important to me.”
Unlocking the potential of others
Another passion of Thompson’s is teaching. He has taught coding bootcamps at Northwestern University, where he won the Distinguished Teaching Excellence Award, and Harvard University. He found his love for teaching as a child helping his siblings and cousins with their homework. Thompson enjoyed helping them see complicated things in an accessible way.
“Still, to this day, I look at technical problems and ask how we can make this less scary, because it doesn't have to be scary,” Thompson said. “If I can teach someone a certain concept, they can go on and do great things for themselves. That's an amazing act of service in my mind.”
The liberal arts education Thompson received at Lake Forest College has been invaluable to his career, especially the wide variety of classes he took that bolstered his communication skills. The diversity of the student body also proved to be a real benefit.
“I grew up in an all-Black neighborhood, and I didn’t know any white people except for my teachers, and I also didn’t have friends of any other races,” Thompson said. “But at Lake Forest College, I was exposed to people of all different backgrounds. Going into the workforce, that made it easier to relate and build relationships with people.”
Thompson’s success in his career and teaching endeavors is due to his work ethic and ability to overcome challenges, and his perseverance has paid off.
“I think I’ve had so much success because of my determination and will,” Thompson said. “I just refuse to not pursue the best outcome for myself.”
Thompson hopes to pass along this mindset to the next generation; he spoke to the Lake Forest College Computer Science Club this past year about how to defy the odds and exceed the expectations of others, and he aims to be a resource for students finding their way in the industry.