Q1 Results

Life and work update, plus random stuff I've been up to

I haven’t written on here in a hot sec, and given we’ve entered April (meaning 25% of the year is over already) its time for a status update. If anything, this is for myself as a record to look back on, but hopefully you will relate in some way (or if not, at least satisfy your curiosity about what goes on in my personal life and mind).

Let’s get into it.

Personal life

• Revisiting old roots: I've been spending more time with my parents since going through a painful breakup 4 months ago. They visited me at my apartment on V-Day weekend and in March we went down to D.C. to see the Cherry Blossoms and Pandas at the National Zoo. We also visited Georgetown’s campus for the first time since I graduated (which was during COVID). I felt like I got transported back in the past, and while I was happy to be back, I also regret not fully appreciating college life when I was a student - back then, all I could think about was graduating and working a “big boy job” in NYC (oh the irony).

  

  Back on campus with the parents - courtesy of ChatGPT 4o

• Time spent with family: Speaking of time spent with parents, I’ve been seeing this chart from Sahil Bloom’s book “The 5 Types of Wealth” circulating the internet, and it makes me cherish the time I have with my parents just that much more. If you only visit home twice a year and your parents are in their 50s, working off an average life expectancy of 80 means you’ll only see them ~60 more times.

A timely reminder (pun intended) of the shortness of life

• Volunteering: I’ve been volunteering at my local church on Sundays, helping with set up, greeting / ushering people to their seats, and facilitating teardown after the service. It’s a decent time commitment as I now spend 9am-1pm at church every Sunday, but it feels good to be part of a community and to use my time for something other than work. I’m reminded there are greater things in this life than just making money or securing the next infinity stone for my Thanos “career gauntlet” (read: playing the career prestige game).

Work life

• 1 year in: Now that I’ve been at Google for a year I feel less clueless than I did 6 months ago. I’ve been fortunate to work closely with a teammate who cares a lot about my development, and have improved at speaking in meetings, managing different work streams independently, and managing UP (which is IMO the most important skill for junior employees). Feeling very grateful in this regard. Having a coworker that you aren’t afraid to ask dumb questions to AND who gives sound advice is the biggest blessing one can ask for at work.

• Feeling lost: At the same time, I’m feeling pretty lost in general about my career. This is definitely a 1st world problem (I know some people would kill to be in my position), but I don’t know if I want my career highlights to be “generated $XXB in revenue for Google Ads”, or “got promoted to VP and launched yet another product to monetize people’s eyeballs”. This will sound cliche, but the corporate politics game has also never sat well with me. Managing large teams, appeasing stakeholders, and catering to people with conflicting interests feels like a soul-sucking game to play for the next 20+ years.

Side quests / random musings

• Coding: I started teaching myself to code this month after drawing inspiration from folks like Cyrus Yari who went from working as a banker to Senior Software Engineer at Tesla, and Marc Louvion who’s built a $2M / year indie hacking business. As Naval says, “learn to build. learn to sell. if you can do both, you will be unstoppable.”

  • Even if I don’t end up becoming a software engineer, I think it’s important to understand what technical people do, so that (1) you understand what it takes to build a great product, and (2) your engineers respect you more since you’re not just some Harvard MBA who took 1 business strategy class and now wants to be CEO. Check out my first ever project (an AI image gen tool) here!

• Self esteem is whether our self image matches our actions. Something so simple in theory, yet difficult in practice. I recently have been struggling to follow some of my own advice, and it makes me feel like I’m not living up to the ideal version of myself. Why is it so hard to live up to in private the things we say in public? Does anyone else feel the same way?

• Recommended reading: “The Pathless Path” by

  Paul Millerd
  - a refreshing perspective on work and the role it plays in shaping our identity and life, written by a former McKinsey consultant.