Michel Chatmajian spent years at larger SaaS companies watching good ideas get buried under layers of approvals and middle management. When he found Abnormal, he found something different: a company where engineers are trusted to own foundational problems, move fast, and use AI as a first-class tool in everything they build. One year in, he's gone from individual contributor to Tech Lead of the cloud infrastructure team, and his fingerprints are on systems that keep Abnormal's customers protected every day.
Choosing Speed Over Red Tape
Before Abnormal, Michel knew what it felt like to lose momentum to process. At larger organizations, even starting a project required chewing through layers of planning, sign-offs, and middle management.
"One of the big drawbacks of working at a larger organization is there tends to be a lot more red tape and a lot more process-heavy project planning," Michel said. "That's not very conducive for performing the work that you want to do."
When he started his last job search, he had a clear picture of what he wanted: something smaller, nimble, and on the verge of significant growth. Abnormal sat at that intersection. The company was scaling fast, onboarding customers at pace, and the infrastructure problems waiting to be solved were foundational ones that wouldn't exist at more established companies.
"You can implement some of the most cutting-edge technologies without having to deal with years of technical debt," he said. "That's an exciting thing, to be able to work on scaling and building an org."
"I feel like I have some real ownership and some real impact. If you lean into it, at Abnormal, you can make a great career for yourself."
Trust From Day One
Michel didn't have to wait long to feel the difference. From his first weeks, leadership gave him room to take ownership of impactful work and influence the team's roadmap.
"I feel like right away I got the trust that I needed," he said. "I started to hit the ground running and working on some super impactful projects. I was able to influence the roadmap and the projects we would work on fairly early on."
That openness extended beyond his own manager. People across the company were receptive to new ideas, willing to try different approaches, and uninterested in protecting the status quo. Even during onboarding, Michel noticed a different kind of leadership. He met CEO Evan Reiser in a Zoom call where new hires could ask questions directly. For someone coming from larger companies where C-suite executives felt distant, the access was striking.
"I was struck by how genuine and close to the ground a C-suite executive could be," Michel said. "Being able to ask questions directly to the CEO isn't something I was used to."
"People internally are very open to suggestions. They're very open to new ideas and doing things a different way. That's something that's kept me excited starting my work every day."
When the System Went Down
The moment that crystallized Michel's impact came during a major cloud provider outage. He was the incident commander when it hit, responsible for coordinating across teams, putting in fixes, and unblocking customers as fast as possible.
"I happened to be the incident commander for that incident when it occurred," he explained. "I was able to work with a lot of very smart people internally to find the root cause of the incident and figure out a path forward."
After the immediate crisis was resolved, Michel owned the post-mortem process: writing the blameless incident report, defining action items, and scoping the projects that would follow. Since the outage sat squarely in cloud infrastructure territory, his team was in the critical path of everything that came next.
"We're in a much better position today," he said. "We were able to go back to our customers and reassure them that we've taken the appropriate measures to avoid this from happening again."
"A lot of times in infrastructure, you only get recognition when things go bad. This was one of those cases where we got to see how much our work affects our end customers."
From IC to Force Multiplier
The outage response marked a turning point, but the bigger shift came when Michel stepped into the Tech Lead role. His day-to-day changed significantly: less time writing code himself, more time guiding implementation across three or four parallel efforts, shaping the team's long-term roadmap, and participating in org-level decision-making with senior leadership.
"My role is a lot more different than it was a year ago," Michel said. "I might not be implementing the work specifically, but I'm working with the developers on our team to guide the implementation. I get to touch various different systems in our stack at once rather than focusing on one specific project."
The scope matches the team's influence. Cloud infrastructure sits in the critical path of projects across Abnormal, so Michel is regularly pulled into planning conversations for products being built by other teams, offering guidance on how infrastructure decisions should be made.
"Since this is such a critical team, we have outsized impact," he said. "I'll be involved to give opinions about how we should implement certain things when different developers across the company are building different products."
"Rather than just caring about my own direct contribution, I'm now thinking about how I can level up the impact of my teammates."
AI as Operating System
For a cloud infrastructure team fielding a heavy volume of on-call questions from developers across the company, AI became the tool that changed the equation.
Michel's team built internal tools using AI to categorize incoming questions as they arrived, then used AI-driven analysis to identify the highest-impact areas where they could reduce repeat requests. The result: a significant drop in on-call load and more time to focus on the foundational projects that matter most.
"Our on-call load has decreased significantly, and now we have much more time to tackle the big, impactful projects rather than being bogged down answering questions all day long," he said.
Beyond that specific initiative, Michel describes AI at Abnormal as a first-class citizen that touches nearly every part of how engineers work. Starting a new project no longer means spending time on bootstrapping and syntax recall. AI handles the scaffolding, and engineers get straight to the root of the problem.
"It's invigorating and exciting to start on a project and not have to think about all the different bootstrapping you have to do," Michel said. "I feel like my velocity is multiplied significantly when implementing, and especially in the planning and scoping side of projects."
"AI is a first-class citizen here. It's only when speaking to friends in the industry that I realize how much of a difference there is."
Strong Opinions, Loosely Held
When asked what separates Abnormal's engineering culture from other places he's worked, Michel pointed to the way people approach feedback and collaboration.
"Everybody's opinions are strong but loosely held," he said. "If you ever want to provide feedback or keep iterating on some of the internal AI tooling, the team is more than happy to listen and implement those changes."
That openness isn't performative. It's tied to a shared goal: build the best product possible at the highest quality and fastest velocity. Whether you're a new hire or a senior leader, the expectation is the same. Show up with ideas, be open to changing course, and keep pushing the bar higher.
"At the end of the day, we're all working together to build the best product possible," Michel said. "Everybody's open to that internally."
A year into his Abnormal career, Michel sees a company where the problems keep getting more interesting, the tools keep getting sharper, and the trust that brought him in the door is the same trust that keeps him building.
"It's been really exciting for me to work at Abnormal over my tenure so far," he said, "and I can't wait to see what's next."
"I can't wait to see what's next and what other projects we're going to be working on."
