# Karan Chitnis > Unemployed At Mom’s Basement Location: San Francisco, California, United States Profile: https://flows.cv/karanchitnis As an Indian child, I had 2 options of what I could be when I grew up: a doctor or an engineer. I thought, "why not both?". As a result, I decided to pursue a double major in Computer Science and Molecular and Cell Biology from UC Berkeley. For me, there is no bigger thrill in life than sitting behind a computer for 40 hours/week trying to find the missing semicolon/curly brace/parenthesis and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on medical school while working 80 hours/week for close to minimum wage. ## Work Experience ### Software Engineer @ Microsoft Jan 2017 – Jan 2021 | San Francisco, California I feel incredibly unique being a brown software engineer at Microsoft. Rose through the ranks to become a junior developer after 3.5 years while others joined startups and become principal engineering managers in 6 months. ### Unemployed @ Mom's Basement Jan 2016 – Jan 2016 | San Jose • Making executive decisions on whether to eat cereal or order Dominos. • Attempting to play less than 7 hours of NBA 2K14 per day. • In charge of the remote control whenever Full House or Matlock is on. • Led and organized individuals to complete missions designated by the United States government... in Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. • Licking Cheeto dust off my fingers. • Training to beat the Netflix binge watching record. ### Software Engineer @ Datos IO, Inc. Jan 2015 – Jan 2016 | San Francisco Bay Area I discovered that I am a very quick learner. It only took me 3 months to get somewhat comfortable with using a Mac and another 8 months to understand the basics of Vim. • Created the API layer for the application (implemented in Node.js). • Worked on the backend and created features such as a real-time alerts feed and statistics for the clients' storage consumption/database usage (Python). • Worked on the frontend of the application as well (AngularJS). ### Co-Founder @ Memeja Jan 2012 – Jan 2012 | Sunnyvale, CA The founders got into numeorus verbal altercations and their startup died along with their friendship, funding, hopes, dreams, and aspirations. Other than that it was an amazing experience. A visual storytelling platform where users can share their experiences though memes, images, and text. Users can create a meme, tag their friends, and post their creation onto a live feed. ### Surgical Department Volunteer @ Kaiser Permanente Jan 2011 – Jan 2012 | Santa Clara, CA Including lunch time in my logged work hours and unintentionally (but consistently) providing incorrect directions/information to people made me realize my passion for being a doctor. • Recorded and tracked the surgery status of patients. • Responsible for making family and visitors comfortable in the Surgery Waiting Room. • Assisted nurses in various duties. • Answered phone calls, gave clear, accurate information to visitors, and transported patients in a wheelchair. ### Research Assistant @ UC Berkeley Jan 2011 – Jan 2012 | Berkeley, CA NOTE: Please do not ask me to elaborate on the following topics because I am as clueless as you are. This is what the job description says so apparently I did the following: • Detected and measured changes in intensities of FRET, FM4-64, Cerulean, and Citrine fluorescent probes during synaptic transmissions. • Examined interactions between proteins before, during, and after vesicle exocytosis in hippocampal neurons. • Used software such as Image J, Andor Solis, and GraphPad Prism for bioimaging. • Isolated and plated hippocampal neurons, maintained cells in culture, and identified successfully transfected cells. ### Marketing Intern @ Shmoop Jan 2010 – Jan 2010 | Mountain View, CA By marketing I mean scraping information off the web that could have (and should have) been automated using ~15-20 lines of a python script. Paid $5/hour because as we all know, interns aren't real people. • Researched and contacted schools and libraries that could be potential customers. • Programming for the website. ### Extern @ UCSF/San Francisco General Hospital Jan 2010 – Jan 2010 | San Francisco Bay Area, CA Although everybody there seemed elated looking at various colored urine/stool samples, sitting idly next to the centrifuge, and pipetting the same fluids for 8 hours a day, I knew the job wasn't for me. • Identified pathogenic microorganisms and performed antimicrobial susceptibility testing. • Observed how microbiology cultures are routinely worked up and logged data into the computer. • Learned which tests are conducted for bacterial identification. ## Education ### Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science University of California, Berkeley ### Bachelor's Degree in Molecular Biology University of California, Berkeley ### High School Lynbrook High School ## Contact & Social - LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/karanchitnis - Portfolio: http://www.beetbot.com --- Source: https://flows.cv/karanchitnis JSON Resume: https://flows.cv/karanchitnis/resume.json Last updated: 2026-03-29