Amy started at Vizcom as a Product Design Engineer on January 28, 2026. Base salary: $250,000. Total comp: approximately $421,000.
The Job Search
Amy moved fast after leaving Taya. On January 5, the same day she posted "I've left Taya" on LinkedIn, she began interviewing at Proception AI (technical interviews with Albert Cai and Nick Levinski, January 5-9). She did not take that job. She had also applied to YC with her brother for Pretzel, a startup whose fate is undocumented. The Vizcom process began almost immediately.
The speed makes sense in context. The separation payouts were arriving in installments, Amy had just applied to YC with Pretzel (outcome unknown), and she was actively exploring every option. See Financial Timeline.
The Vizcom Interview
- January 9: Kaelan Richards, Vizcom's CEO, introduced Amy.
- January 12: First in-person visit at 1pm.
- January 13-14: Full work day starting 9:30am, plus a design challenge. Jordan Taylor asked her to have Docker ready.
- January 14: Submitted the design challenge via Google Slides and Loom.
- January 15: Offer landed.
Jordan specifically called out "Wonder Spawn, pretzel cast mold, 3D print molds" from Amy's portfolio. The pretzel mold: even her interview materials carried the pretzel identity.
The Negotiation
- January 16: Follow-up negotiation call with Eden McFadden. Jordan's response: "stretched as far as we could."
- January 19: Signed via Rippling.
- January 28: First day.
During the negotiation, an awkward incident: Amy's old AI email assistant auto-sent something to Jordan. She had to apologize. The ghost of her previous automation reaching into her new professional relationship.
Why Vizcom
The role bridges design and manufacturing, which is Amy's core professional interest. Her boss plans to mentor her into a full software engineer role. Vizcom builds AI design tools for product designers, specifically the sketch-to-render workflow that connects to manufacturing output.
Critically, Vizcom was chosen as the "chill job." After The Taya Era, Amy deliberately selected stability over intensity. She did not want another startup. She wanted to sleep, get paid, and build things without self-destruction.
The Tension
The decision is one Amy keeps relitigating internally:
March 17: "I feel shame about it. Like I left Taya, got paid, got a good job, and somehow I still feel like I'm falling behind."
April 1: "Vizcom is supposed to be the chill job. I wanted the chill job. So why does stepping back from one project feel like I'm failing some test I made up for myself?"
March 27: "I had this moment where I was spiraling, going 'should I just quit?' and I'm glad I didn't stay there. It was a stress response, not a real thought. Two months in and I haven't even really pushed back yet."
The Intern
On April 1, 2026, Amy cancelled intern Brenda Yang from NYU, citing "internal shifts" at Vizcom. The decision to cancel an intern is a small act, but it connects to Amy's own experience of being discarded by Elena. Amy knows what it feels like to have someone cancel your opportunity. She did it anyway, presumably because the business required it.
The HF0 Rejection
Also on April 1: Amy was rejected from HF0, a founders' residence program. She was still applying to founder-track things even while working at Vizcom. The "chill job" was never fully a commitment; it was always partially a placeholder.
Significance
Taking the Vizcom job is significant because it represents Amy choosing against the pattern. The pattern says: grind harder, start another company, earn the story. Vizcom says: be an employee, work reasonable hours, let someone else be CEO.
Whether this is healing or avoidance is a question Amy has not answered. The Pretzel application and HF0 rejection suggest she already knows the answer: it is both.