I guess it’s time for a new post. I was so busy recently.
I caught a flu yesterday, having severe fever, and my eyes hurt. This is not a call for help though, I’m doing fine. It’s just that it’s always in such times, a really emotional version of myself starts to flicker in memory, and I start to yearn, to write down something.
The last time I touched this blog site was early 2024 when I was ending my intern at All Out. I couldn’t have foreseen how many things changed in merely a year. It felt like I stepped into a whole new world. Maybe it’s Victoria? The city is just so… slow, compared to many places I’ve lived in before. About a year ago I was practicing for a English test, drinking soda my roommate left me during Christmas. Now I’m a Senior engineer in a promising Tech startup.
What was I starting this blog for anyways? To flex? Not really.
It’s more like a hobby of mine. I like to turn back every once in a while and look at an emotional post like this from myself a few years ago. I read through my previous portfolio post once again, and the plan in it worked out. My mentor and good friend Brian didn’t relocate to the US though, he stayed in Singapore, but he still hired me.
He was facing doubt when he told his upper management this decision. Some of them interviewed me, and they are okay taking me in – just that, at the time, they have people with much more experience than me. Brian talked them through, taking the risk, and I knew this – so I need to speak with progress.
I threw all my dedication to this company during the first 6 months of my tenure, and it worked out. People who previously had doubts now know they made the right decision.
That’s just a start of the journey though. Pretty much I’m still in my early career, and there’s a long way to go.
So yeah… I was just yapping about my previous plan going well. Not too much to say there. Oh, and I also published a second-author SIGGRAPH paper. Not bad as a master’s student.
Anyway, another point of one such post is to plan for the future. But at this time… really, it’s probably the most no-plan moment of my life. Like, when I was in high school I planned to go to a good uni, so just studied hard. When I was in that university, I wanted to go to game dev. Then I joined NetEase, planned to go abroad for a spin, and I did it, then planned to join this very company I wanted to join. Now what? I don’t know.
It looks like I’m already standing at a point where the future path cannot be planned. One can say it’s a blessing in such a position, because you got to define what “success” means in your own future – maybe it’s buying a house? Earning 1M in stocks? Becoming a manager? Publishing more papers? Get tenured as a professor?
But it’s also a curse. You know you still have a lot to find in this ever evolving world and you can’t help but wonder, what’s next?
For me in short term, I need to learn the way that a startup survives. Actually, I feel like I just never got to do the job I was intended to do, but luckily I’m able to adapt fast. That’s something I got to keep holding onto.
That’s about it. It was uncertain time, whether you mean the job market, the AI investment scope, or even stocks. But the only thing we can do is moving forward and upwards.