Posts on Goose on the Loose

On Culture

hi.george.tong@gmail.com (George Tong) — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Super early in my first full time job at Robinhood, I remember one of the operation managers changed his slack job title to be “Culture Builder”. At the time, I considered a job a job. Clock in, get your work done, and clock out. I remember feeling a twinge of annoyance - why does this person care so much?

Since then, I dabbled at tech leading, dove into climate tech, joined a 10 person robot recycling company as a Senior SWE, and then joined a another 10 person carbon capture company again as a Tech Lead.

Mini Project: Simple Protein Visualization Web App

hi.george.tong@gmail.com (George Tong) — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been busy embedding myself in the intersection of biotech and climate tech for the past few months by reading, writing, and talking with as many people as I can. I’ve been itching to get back to my coding roots though, and so decided to hack together a quick project over the course of a few days. I wanted to work on something that would allow me to brush up on my front end development skills while also being biology related. Thus, I developed a simple protein visualization app. The app:

How exactly is Cascade Biocatalysts changing industrial biomanufacturing?

hi.george.tong@gmail.com (George Tong) — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been exploring the synthetic biology space due to its potential to improve human health and mitigate climate change. My initial foray was into “traditional” synthetic biology companies that used genetically modified microbes to produce a specific target of interest. Cell free industrial biomanufacturing was a space I frequently heard about, but didn’t explicitly dig into until hearing about Cascade Biocatalysts via the Grow Everything podcast. I actively dislike using clickbait phrases like “revolutionize the space” or “breakthrough technology”, but I think this company and cell free biomanufacturing as a space are definitely worth keeping an eye on.

Understanding the synthetic biology business and ecosystem

hi.george.tong@gmail.com (George Tong) — Fri, 24 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

As mentioned in my last blog post, I’ve been exploring the synthetic biology space from the perspective of “how do I make technology that can act as a lever to move this ecosystem forward?”. My hunch is that a space projected to go from 13.09 billion in 2022 to 55.37 billion dollars by 2030 will surely need picks and shovels companies to support that kind of growth.

In this blog post I break down what I understand to be the “traditional” business path a synthetic biology company takes from inception to maturity, the various problems along the way, and existing players that help solve those problems. I use a fictitious company called Mika (named after my dog) that is making bio based fabrics that can replace traditional oil based polyester. Hopefully this article gives a solid high level overview of the ecosystem for the next entrepreneur stepping into the space.

Cautious Optimism on Synthetic Biology

hi.george.tong@gmail.com (George Tong) — Thu, 09 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In my last blog post I wrote about the four pillars of alternative protein technology: cultivated meat, precision fermentation, plant based protein, and molecular farming.

As I researched more about precision fermentation, I stumbled into its overarching domain of synthetic biology, “a field of science that involves redesigning organisms for useful purposes by engineering them to have new abilities.”

Synthetic biology has an incredible amount of potential to tackle climate change, ranging from microbes that decompose plastic, to microbial biofuel production, to animal-free milk proteins production. Just last year, BCG released a report assertively titled “Synthetic Biology Is About to Disrupt Your Industry”. As someone focused on tackling climate change, joining or making a company that drives this entire ecosystem forward is incredibly alluring. However, synthetic biology has historically struggled to meet these high expectations, with many companies only delivering a fraction of their promises. The initial synthetic biology boom and bust cycle saw big names like Zymergen and Solazyme wither away and get purchased for a fraction of their valuation. A question I’ve frequently been posing to existing players in the space is:

A Primer on Alternative Protein

hi.george.tong@gmail.com (George Tong) — Sat, 12 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Ever since I read this fantastic article on cultured meat half a year ago, I’ve been absolutely hooked on the alternative protein space. The industry is relatively nascent and very complex, with few clear beginner friendly resources to guide newcomers into the space. As someone with no biology/food science background, I have the unique opportunity to write about my learnings from a layman’s perspective. This article will give the reader an overview of the alternative protein space, its incredible potential, and some of its problems. I ultimately hope this article increases the number of people working in this space, or at minimum increases readers’ willingness to buy alternative protein products.

Regenerative Finance From First Principles

hi.george.tong@gmail.com (George Tong) — Thu, 28 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve long believed that the majority of the crypto ecosystem is a scam, and truth be told I still believe that. However, in the Work on Climate slack there are similarly crypto-skeptic folks that are sold on the regenerative finance movement (frequently referred to as ReFi), with many of them referring to Regen Network as a prime example of a fantastic project. That piqued my curiosity enough to listen to the Regen Network’s founder, Gregory Landua, interview with the ReFi Podcast. Greg’s genuine desire to improve the world, his clear track record of having done so, and his conviction in ReFi convinced me to revisit the ReFi movement without any prejudices and analyze the movement from first principles.

Work on Climate Success Stories Panel

hi.george.tong@gmail.com (George Tong) — Sat, 30 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Lessons Learned Pivoting into Climate Tech

hi.george.tong@gmail.com (George Tong) — Tue, 15 Feb 2022 00:00:00 +0000

If we spend 1/3rd of our waking life working, then why not work on something that matters?

This simple question drove me to reevaluate my career and long term vision, convincing me to leave my job at Robinhood and dedicate my career to fighting climate change. Finding my next role was harder than expected, so I wanted to write down some lessons I learned along the way in case they could be helpful for others.

How to fight climate change as a software engineer

hi.george.tong@gmail.com (George Tong) — Mon, 01 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

What we work on matters, and incremental improvements, no matter how small, have compounding effects. I’ve decided to put my efforts towards fighting climate change, and to anyone who reads this, I hope you will too. The problem is intimidatingly massive, but with that size comes incredible opportunities for impact and innovation. In this article I hope to summarize what I’ve learned so far about the energy industry and the current landscape of companies tackling these issues, so anybody like me, a traditional software engineer with no background in energy or climate change, can get caught up to speed a bit quicker.

Scaling Confidently with the Load and Fault Team

hi.george.tong@gmail.com (George Tong) — Fri, 17 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This post was originally published on the Robinhood Engineering Blog.

Reflections after one year of Tech Leading

hi.george.tong@gmail.com (George Tong) — Wed, 25 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

I still remember the exact moment in August of 2020. I, a “tech lead” just one year out of college, had just received a meeting invite to the biweekly software platform tech lead/engineering manager meeting. The meeting was filled with Senior and Staff engineers that were revolutionizing the computer industry when I was still crawling in my diapers. I was onboarding two engineers with extensive industry experience onto my lowly team of one, and my manager that I heavily leaned on had just left the company. I remember the mixture of excitement and fear that hit when I realized, “oh shit, I have no idea what I’m doing”.

Lessons Learned in making Lookoutt Bot

hi.george.tong@gmail.com (George Tong) — Tue, 15 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I want to make a difference. One way I tried doing so was by making a reddit bot, called Lookoutt, that regularly scanned secondhand websites and notified users on reddit when a listing matching their keywords was discovered. As a regular hunter of secondhand goods, I realized that manually scrolling through various secondhand websites every few hours was tedious and simply not feasible for your average user. The effort to find a specific item you wanted on a secondhand market was just not worth it when you could instantly find the item new on a normal retailer’s website. I hoped that by creating this bot I could reduce the effort required in finding an item so more people would be willing to buy secondhand rather than new. Here are a few lessons I learned from doing so:

An Appreciation of Stateless Deployment

hi.george.tong@gmail.com (George Tong) — Wed, 14 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

or maybe just non-AWS deployment…

As a student in college, I never really understood the value of containers and Docker, technology that seemed to pervade every single company that I interned at. It’s like when everyone tells you: don’t eat that, it taste like crap. You take their word for it, but you never really understand until you try it and realize - oh it DOES take like crap.

Well known fact, 50% of users use Docker because of the cute logo

This is the story of how I tasted the crap. A few months back, I was tinkering around with a side project that I wanted to deploy onto AWS EC2. Up until now, a lot of my side projects had been spun up on my own hardware that I could control. However, now that my Raspberry Pi and extra computers were tied up running other programs, I turned to Amazon AWS to take advantage of its free tier membership that let me use its EC2 instances (basically just a computer in some Amazon data center somewhere).

Building a Treasure Finding Bot (Part 2)

hi.george.tong@gmail.com (George Tong) — Sun, 16 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I had successfully managed to store Grailed’s history of sold listings (here if you missed it), but I still had a daunting task in front of me. How could I use the historical data to determine what was a good deal or not? There were so many factors to consider, such as clothing condition, style, brand, item type, and even purchase time: an item that is currently hot might not have necessarily been hot a few weeks ago. In an ideal world, I would be able to match an article of clothing with all the sold listings of the exact same piece, compare the sell prices with the old ones, and determine whether it was a good deal. However, because users specify the details of the items they list, the inputs are freeform and no two listings are the exact same. There was no way to reliably determine that two items were the same directly from the information available.

Building a Treasure Finding Bot (Part 1)

hi.george.tong@gmail.com (George Tong) — Sun, 19 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve always heard the common adage: “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure”. However, anyone that has gone online secondhand shopping knows that the usual reality is people think their trash is another man’s treasure, and are sure to price it as such.

an absolute steal

I’m a big fan of secondhand shopping: you can get premium clothes for much cheaper, be environmentally friendly, and get the thrill of finding treasures. What I DON’T like about secondhand shopping is how tedious it can be to find those rare gems. Everyday you have to slough through new listings of items you’re interested in, filter out overpriced trash, and sniff out scammers.