Reflecting on 25

./danielkim.sh

I’m turning 25 today.

Every birthday, I always have a mini freak out asking myself

i’m another year older

did I do enough?

am I far enough into my career?

could i be doing more?

So, as a preventive measure, I’m doing some self therapy and going to reflect on the main lessons I’ve learned in the last ~6 years between the first day of college and now.

There is always a shortcut, you just have to ask

I was an international student at UCDavis, where tuition topped off at $20,000 per quarter (of which there were 3 + 1 quarter over the summer). To afford my degree, I had to graduate as quickly as possible.

The really cool thing about UCDavis is that the tuition was a flat rate, regardless of how many classes you took. So, my first quarter in college, I went to the head of my college of engineering to petition for an exception to take 32 units/quarter instead of the max of 28.5.

After some back and forth with the dean of my college, the petition was accepted, and I was able to take an average of 8-9 classes per quarter, which allowed me to graduate within 2 years!

Every single person told me it wasn’t possible, but I asked until I found the right person and the right way to unlock the door.

Asking never hurts, it is key to getting what you need.
The worst they can tell you is no!

Make your own opportunities. No one will do it for you.

College was the hardest part of my life thus far. I gained over 40 pounds within a year, stress eating at the cafeteria while cramming for multiple tests a week and pounding back cups and cups of coffee to try to stay awake.

I made a sobering realization during the first year of college. I applied to over 40+ internships through all the ways the counselors advise you to do so - I connected with people on Linkedin, DMed them on twitter, cold emailed, applied to every single internship posting. It turns out that no one wants to hire an international freshman with very little real life experience. It was rejection after rejection.

Since I was going to graduate only a year later, I needed to find a way to stand out amongst the hundreds of thousands of CS graduates flooding the market.

I started a student organization (now nonprofit) bitproject.org, which partnered with schools, tech companies, and universities to teach students practical computer science knowledge. This was a grind like no other. I did everything from dying T shirts with Rit dye, staining my fingers blue all the way to signing partnership agreements with industry giants like (formerly)Twitter, Postman, and Microsoft.

But grinding does pay off.

This gave me so many case studies that I used to get my first job at a startup - pitching my CEO on what I could do for his business that I did for all of the corporate partners I worked with while running my student org!

If the opportunities are getting gate kept from you, make your own opportunities and GRIND!

Grinding the wrong direction means nothing

I got some amazing advice from my former manager at New Relic.

The business doesn’t care about how many hours you work, they only care how much your work has impacted the business (paraphrased)

After a year of grinding my heart out at New Relic, I got the dreaded you didn’t get promoted 1-1 with my manager. At this point, to get a promotion, I was working nights and weekends doing all of the projects.

Even though this call crushed me, I learned the most important lesson about corporate america. I need to optimize my work for how leadership viewed as “success” for my role. It didn’t matter if I spent 500 hours on a project that was objectively awesome - if that project didn’t help the business,leadership could not give less of a shit.

The next quarter, I ruthlessly prioritized, only taking on projects that were leadership priorities and had high visibility to at least a VP within my organization. If it wasn’t a project that the VP+ leader wasn’t actively involved in, I did not prioritize the project.

The number of hours you work doesn’t mean anything. Only grind towards defined goals and defined outcomes.

This was a game-changer.

I proceeded to get promoted to staff engineer the next promotion cycle.

Trust your gut

Vibes are everything. Trust your gut.

I know this learning is the most generic piece of advice, but I trust my gut and vibes 100% to make all of my important life decisions.’

The reason why I’m at Cerebras is because during my intro to call with my now boss Julie, things just felt right.

On paper, this job had many things that I had in my disqualifying list, on top of the list which was that I would have to commute an hour each way to Sunnyvale twice a week. And I don’t drive.

However, despite all my reservations, I moved very fast. After 3 interviews and 1 take home assignment within the span of 48 hours, I got the offer and joined the team soon after.

The thing that led me to join were this

In this new job, i’ve been working harder than I’ve ever had before, but I feel the most fulfilled i’ve ever been. I’m learning so much about how hardware, ai, machine learning, big data, insert meme here. I’m having so much fun!

You can write all the pros and cons list, wishlists you want. Ultimately go with vibes.

Final Thoughts

I’m old(er). Thanks to this exercise, this is the first birthday where I’m not agonizing over the question of whether I did enough. You know what - I’ve been crushing it, and I’m happy to say I have 0 regrets. Life’s been awesome and I’m the happiest and most fulfilled I’ve ever been.

Now cheers to the next 25!

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