Erica Joy Baker has had a succession of dream jobs in Silicon Valley—at Google, at Slack, and now as a senior engineering manager at Patreon, a crowdfunding platform that connects artists with donor-fans. But back in the day, in 1998, she was just an 18-year-old computer geek, sitting in her dream class at her dream school, getting the stink eye from her computer science professor and trying not to cry.
