Ethan Mathieu '25: From campus apps to Netflix
Through his work with the Yale Computer Society, where he served as vice president, Ethan Mathieu developed apps that helped his fellow students find a common time to meet and expanded the society’s slate of software projects and mentorship programs. His four years at Yale have also included stints as a tour guide, working in the lab of Prof. Lin Zhong, and in his spare time, he could be found playing basketball or board games with friends. Next, he’ll be working to improve your home entertainment as he applies his computer science skills to his new job at Netflix.
We talked with Ethan, a resident of West Hartford, CT, about his time at Yale and his plans for the near future.
How did you come to choose Yale?
I've been visiting Yale since I was little just because it's so close. There used to be the New Haven Open Tennis tournament, and I would come down and watch. Also, Yale, Columbia, Rice and other schools did outreach programs into the Hartford area and talked about their schools. I connected with Yale because I was always somebody who really liked engineering, obviously, but also really liked history and political science. I worried about going to a school that was more tech-y and losing the ability to pursue those other interests. As a liberal arts school, Yale made it a big part of their branding that they wanted you to be able to pursue multiple areas of interest and that the degree programs were structured to be really flexible.
Did it work out that way for you?
Yeah. I've taken political science classes, history classes every year I've been here. Half of my schedule is computer science. Half my schedule is history, languages, just all types of random stuff. That meant my semesters were very diverse. I'm very grateful for that.
What did you work on outside of class?
I'm particularly proud of the products I made as part of the Yale Computer Society. We develop software to help the Yale community. One of our most popular applications is CourseTable, which lets students plan out their schedules using a clean interface. And I was one of the team leads for another product called ymeets, which lets you find common times to meet. The society aims to give students industry-like software experience by building these cool applications. If you were more of a beginner, you also can participate in a peer learning program before diving into a project. I personally benefited from this.
It's really cool because you get to see people that you know on campus using the apps you make. That is where I realized I love software. I was really proud of what we were able to create through the four years I was here.
After graduation, you’re heading to Netflix. What will you be doing there?
I'm going to be part of their new grad software engineering program. Specifically, I'll be working on the Cosmos platform, which is basically orchestrated cloud functions at scale. What that means is there's a ton of services Netflix needs to write to get stuff done. For instance, if you want to play a video for a user, you need to write a cloud service that encodes a stream that can be played on a user’s device. My team provides a software platform to simplify the work of other engineers who create these services.
Any advice to incoming freshman?
Start early and plan everything. It's okay for plans to change. I think plans should change. You shouldn't know exactly what you want to do. But I always think you should have an idea of what you're currently pursuing. Then you can adjust. This is not a call to close doors early. There are some I personally shut too quickly. But it's always good to just have a next step actively in mind.
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Published Date
May 13, 2025
