Every second, I vigilantly counted my worth based on how I spent time, like a bomb with a countdown timer, ticking only at the mercy of satisfactory productivity.

Yet I realized most people did much worse than I did. They don’t even face their own anxiety when they schedule me as a precise one-hour invite on their calendar.

“What are you building now?”

As if your life would gradually disintegrate into entropy if you didn’t build something upwards.

I grew loneliness. No—

I discovered loneliness, from the precocity of being a foreigner in the U.S. after graduation. I can’t find anyone who can punctuate my existence of mine. They are all too busy shaping their holograms of that future, accomplished self.

I can’t help noticing that someone trying to pick me up at a bar might have paid more attention to me than those around me. At least they lock their eyes on me, rather than browse me in the background. At least, for a brief moment, I feel seen. Not that an infant who received everything except attention.

Yet, for all my complaints about others, I’m still mortified by my own unproductivity. Sitting without performing feels excruciating, even as my body screams with resistance at the thought of advancing further.

“Our company works hard, including nights and weekends. Is that okay for you?” I hung up the phone, feeling too timid to utter the no. As if that, no, is as sinful as molesting a 5-year-old child.

“Our company works hard, including nights and weekends. Is that okay for you?”
I hung up the phone, too timid to utter a no, as if that no were as sinful as molesting a child.

Life is a game, yet I’m the Snorlax misplaced in Mario Kart.
I would never be fast enough.

I am mortified and buried in my unproductivity.

confidence starts from self care

I remember the first time I was fired. Fear rushed in, and all my strength went into learning how to live with uncertainty. I learned to be okay with completely lost. I learned to say yes to the unknown. I learned to attempt hard things, and laugh so they lose their power. I learned to walk in my own timezone, unhurried by the clocks of others.

But now, this second time, I feel a different fire. A pull to go further. To be bolder. To practice not only survival, but ease. To explore what it means to live with genuine ease. I don’t yet know what ease looks like. But I know this: the path is honesty in exploration.

dream, but don’t make dreams your master

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same; — If

Confidence is trusting yourself when others doubt you, while making room for their doubt. Openness is moving with direction when life is uncertain, while not being ruled by that direction. Yes, I will seek a new job to grow as an engineer. But I will not let the urgency, I must have it now, I must figure it out now, become my master.

Because when I clutch a notion too tightly, I chain my worth to it. I lose sight of the experience itself. Instead, I want to trust my instinct. Trust the universe. If rejection comes, let it be life nudging me away. If an opportunity comes, let it be an invitation, not a victory lap.

And when I see both success and failure as invitations, triumph and disaster become the same. Both dissolve in front of my honesty. Both bow to the same truth: I am still here, still walking.

fear, but don’t let it be your keeper

Fear still lingers in the corner, even when nothing in reality is truly threatening. It comes from imagination, from the mind’s ability to spin the worst-case scenario out of the unknown. Fear becomes a Siren, pulling me away from trusting life, clouding my ability to see clearly.

And when there is no clear focus, social expectations grow louder. I notice how easily anxiety spreads: the quiet mantra people whisper to themselves—I am not enough. I am not making enough money. I am not making enough progress. I am not working hard enough. And so they run faster, make themselves busier, chase efficiency as if it were salvation.

But the real lesson isn’t in working harder. It isn’t in fitting in. It isn’t in squeezing more efficiency out of ourselves. The real lesson is elsewhere. It is slower. It is deeper.

Sit, Esther. I invited you to sit. Sit with the discomfort of your limits, sit with the honest reality that you cannot achieve everything. I felt your anxiety when you couldn’t finish your project, and your inner self screamed, “they will think I’m dumb!” Yes, let’s sit with this discomfort. Let’s disappoint people and face your fear of being incapable. I know, I know, it hurts your ego. But this is where you train confidence. Confidence is the stillness of a wide ocean, unshaken by the waves of insecurity within you.

Sit, Esther. I invited you to sit. Sit with the discomfort of being lost, sit with the honest reality that you don’t know much about life. I felt your anxiety when you couldn’t figure things out, while others seemed to know exactly what they were doing. “They are all progressing except me!” your inner self cries. Let’s make peace with this fear and offer her a cup of tea. Trust that the real lesson isn’t about running faster, but about learning to hold uncertainty with steadiness. Patience is the giant mountain, unmoved amid chaos in the rush of the crowd.

I know I know. Fear will visit you sometimes the future, but I wanna let you know, and let your weirdo friends know, I have invited you to sit.

Don’t run. Sit. Esther, I invite you to sit. And when you are ready, begin again.

“It’s uncomfortable,” my roommate replied, “but I still think I’m worth it.”

Alright. Time to drop the bomb. I’m about to ask my startup—a place where people work Monday to Sunday—for a two-month break.

I know how ridiculous it sounds. I’ve been terrified to bring it up. Even though I know I need it, I’ve procrastinated for a month, too afraid to speak. My school counselor finally encouraged me: “Even if it doesn’t work out, you’ll see how much they value you through the conversation.”

Then last week, I found out they messed up my visa, and kept it from me for a month. That was it. I was burnt out, fed up, and I didn’t care anymore. So, I took a deep breath, walked into the meeting room, and asked.

And… it was a disaster.

“Why do you need a two-month break?” they asked.

“I want to rest for a month, and spend another month learning AI,” I answered.

It wasn’t unreasonable. I’d been asking for AI-related projects for months but kept getting sidelined.

Their response?

“Then you’ll have to work more nights and weekends.”

But I already worked nights and weekends for the startup.

“If you finish faster, you can use the extra time to study AI.”

But every time I finished something, more work just piled up.

“You need to be more efficient.”

Wait. Are you saying I’m underperforming now?

“Let’s brainstorm where you’re wasting time during the day.”

And just like that, I was shoved into the hot seat, forced to dissect my life, explain where I was “wasting time.” It was humiliating.

“Uh… I guess dinner with everyone? Sometimes we chat for a while… but I don’t want to cut that. It’s our bonding time,” I muttered.

“Then you can learn to exit the conversation earlier and get back to work.”

I wanted to scream. We don’t even get national holidays off. And now even dinner was being dissected?

In the end, nothing changed. They reluctantly gave me a two-week break, but my boss, clearly furious, slammed the conversation shut: “THIS IS A STARTUP.”

“THIS IS A STARTUP.”

I walked out feeling empty. Not angry. Just numb. I barely even fought back. It wasn’t worth it. My friends were livid on my behalf, but honestly, I’d loved the experience. I gained clarity that I didn’t know working there for the entire year.

Here’s what I learned:

1. Business always comes before relationships.
   No matter how “friendly” the culture seemed, it was clear: I come second to the business. So I have to think for myself, too.

2. I wasn’t as valuable as I wanted to believe.
   For a long time, I worried maybe I just wasn’t good enough. But lately, I’ve been receiving validation from outside. This conversation confirmed it: I’m not as valued here as I’d hoped.

3. Their only solution to problems is “work harder.”
   That’s their philosophy: more hours, more grind. I don’t believe in that. I believe in working smarter, not harder. And that’s a fundamental mismatch.

These realizations were immensely valuable. No more illusions. No more sweet talk to blur things. I saw the culture, crystal clear. Now it’s up to me to decide whether I can live with it.

Funny enough, a week later, they called me into another meeting. This time, they came in with… a paid time off plan. They admitted they’d been disorganized for too long, and now they wanted to set proper policies.

Turns out… big asks do work.

Here’s what I learned about big asks:

• They’re terrifying, but when you’re honest about what you need, the real victory is in asking, not the outcome.

• You gain insights you might not uncover in years.

• You think it’ll ruin relationships—but sometimes it sparks change for everyone.

Honestly? I’d do it again.

But I was stuck on the waitlist for an entire month. No luck.

Just as I was about to give up, I told a founder friend how much I still wanted to attend. I previously saw someone post sth on Twitter about getting in.

She looked at me and said, “Why don’t we tweet too? Let’s ship it in 10 minutes.”

I almost said no. It felt so embarrassing—asking for help online, in front of founders, engineers, and researchers who all seemed way more accomplished than me?

I’d rather disappear.

But I’d been trying to practice the mindset of How to open a closed door?. So I took a deep breath and said, “Okay. Let’s do it.”

She stared at my Twitter profile and the first thing she said was, “You need a photo. Right now, you look like an NPC.”

Whaaaat?! Beg my way into this program and sell my soul online? No way. The discomfort hit hard. I winced, then muttered, “Sure. Whatever we need.” Honestly, I felt like a scared little kitten just thinking about putting myself out there.

But deep down, I knew: the worst that could happen was a bit of public embarrassment. The best? A chance to learn from some of the greatest minds and connect with people who share the same drive.

What happened next is kind of a blur. All I remember is battling constant self-doubt while my friend and I brainstormed tweet strategies, trying to push through the cringe.

And then, I posted.

What I didn’t expect was for the tweet to blow up.

People started tagging YC’s CEO, Garry Tan, saying things like, “Let this incredible woman in!” Friends were vouching for me, sharing the tweet, spreading the word.

For the first time, I felt a wave of relief—like no matter what happened next, at least I had really tried.

And then, the next day… Garry Tan replied

As you know, I've had a turbulent career journey as a young professional, being fired and zigzagging from big tech to startups. Along the way, I’ve gained valuable social and business skills.

When most people think of job searching, they typically imagine this sequence:

1. Apply

2. Interview

3. Get the job

4. Negotiate benefits

It's a conventional mindset—either you pass the interview, or you don’t, and your mood hinges on that outcome. But after observing how our company hires and talking with founder friends about their hiring processes, I realized most people completely misunderstand how to play the game. Actually, it’s more like being a fruit stall owner trying to exchange your goods with a fish stall owner!

I know that sounds confusing right now, but let me explain.

Recently, I went through an interview process to expand my network. The founder followed the traditional approach—asking about my experience and what interests me. But I turned the conversation around by asking, “How may I help?”

This simple question is powerful. It’s not just about offering my time or skills; I’m offering everything I have, including my network. I told him, “Even if this doesn’t work out, I’d be happy to introduce you to some great builders, as I attend hackathons every weekend.” That shifted the power dynamic. He thanked me and even asked about the roles I was looking for, offering to help in return.

What happened here? This is called principled negotiation. Most people view hiring as a positional negotiation—a zero-sum game where one party wins and the other loses. This is why people fight over higher salaries. But principled negotiation focuses on interests rather than positions, seeking mutually beneficial solutions. It’s about solving problems together, not just bargaining. Doing this requires deep understanding of the other party, and luckily, I lived in a incubator that all my friends are founders.

For example, even though the company and I weren’t a perfect fit for each other, we had plenty to offer each other. I could offer my SF talent network, and he could offer his founder network. Principled negotiation isn’t easy to apply, but I’ve come to realize it’s rooted in a strong business mindset—exchanging fruit for fish—and having empathy for others. Creative solutions are always around the corner when you approach things this way.

I’ve noticed that many people view workplace interactions transactionally. And society taught us it’s evil and capitalistic. They feel frustrated when they don’t get what they want right away or fear being replaced, especially with the constant news of layoffs. And nowadays I think it’s a completely incorrect mindset. I see everyone I meet as an asset. We all have the capacity to help each other at different times in our careers, as long as we’re attentive to each other’s needs. Great professionals, the ones people enjoy working with, are those who have a clear understanding of what they need, the honesty to offer and to not offer help, with the creativity to find collaborative solutions. They also possess sharp observational skills and empathy, allowing them to truly understand and connect with others.

I know I’m not the best engineer in the Bay Area, and I probably never will be. But my competitive edge comes from my scientific background and consulting experience, which have taught me the complexities of business and people. These lessons apply to everything—fundraising, hiring, networking, and product building. People. People. People. Even though AI is replacing us, people are still the one making those AI for now.

As I believe work will become more fragmented with the rise of AI and layoffs will continue to happen, I think the ability to navigate these uncertain, grey areas will become more valuable.

Layoffs are scary, and the future feels uncertain. But danger, risk, and uncertainty all imply opportunity. Don’t just be an engineer. Let’s open more backdoors on this planet together.

After I graduated in May 2023, as I was trying to figure out my career, some founders also told me the similar concept, “If I were you, I’d try working in different companies and functions through short internships. I regret wasting time doing a slow transition.” Back then, I wondered, “Why would anyone allow me to try that? I don’t have the skills!” Looking back, I realized that I did try five startups in the year before settling down. It was a chaotic time, but it helped shape how I now view “work” as an inexperienced new grad.

What does “work” mean, and what is it for?

Is it just for survival? Fancy lunches at big tech companies? Work-life balance to pursue more hobbies? Exploration of a new field that humans haven’t charted? Establishing good relationships to grow with your colleagues?

Here’s what I do and what I’ve learned:

What I do:

• Startup 1: AI engineering in EdTech

• Startup 2: Technical writing in LLM observability

• Startup 3: Built a startup with a mentor (software engineering) in EdTech

• Startup 4: Prompt tuning in EdTech

• Startup 5: Software engineering in EdTech

Work is about survival. A wide professional network is key to survival.

Of course, work is about survival until you reach financial freedom. Getting a job nowadays feels much easier than it did when I was in Startup 1, thanks to the chaos. It’s not just because I’ve become more professional, but because I’ve become street-smart and resourceful.

After learning how lengthy and complicated the U.S. job search can be under immigration visa constraints, I realized that job security isn’t about skills—it’s about the network.

You’ll always grow skills as you work more, but the shortcut to landing a job under the 60-day U.S. visa constraint (since the U.S. will kick you out if you don’t have a job after 60 days) is to know people who are hiring. Fortunately, placing myself in an incubator where there’s a constant influx of new founders needing team members gave me awareness of who needs help. Even though people post hiring announcements, they often ignore the applications because they’re busy and don’t know you. However, if they meet you, get to know you, and like you, you’re in a completely different game—even if your skills aren’t the best among all candidates. People are people.

You might ask, how about the money? Yes, I sacrificed money and comfort from bigger companies, but I built strong resilience for difficult times. I know that even if I get fired today, I’ll get hired next week. Not only will I get hired, but I’ll also have a choice in who I want to work with.

Mission matters, but day-to-day work might matter more.

In Startup 2, I didn’t bother too much with learning the business because I wasn’t interested in LLM observability. But even in Startup 4, where I was working on prompt tuning and spending most of my time in meetings, I found it so boring that I couldn’t continue after a month. Day-to-day satisfaction really matters. My current work only has one meeting a month, so the rest of my time is spent in the flow of coding. I feel concentrated and fulfilled every day. And yes, since I’m aligned with the mission, I spend extra time learning about EdTech products on the side and applying them in my work. But still, it’s not how I spend most of my time. I need to work on something intellectually challenging and not have too many meetings every day.

Work in a place where you love, love, love the people. It will auto-resolve many problems, and shape who you are.

Most people underestimate how much the people around you matter. But picking the right people means picking the right place to spend your energy, and those people will help shape you into a better person.

Many problems get solved with the right people and vice versa. Let me give you a practical example: Our company recently hired a new engineer, and here came an extremely smart but intense candidate who made me really uncomfortable. Sitting with them made me feel suffocated, and I was so worried they would hire them because they seemed so incredibly talented.

I thought,

Interestingly, none of us liked them, and they were immediately rejected without consideration. And I realized, wait, we really have similar tastes when it comes to people. So I said, “Yeah, hire whoever you like, because I’ll probably like whoever you pick anyway.”

On the other hand, in Startup 2, the YC co-founders seemed like a golden match but ended up having a terrible experience. They were talented and experienced engineers and designers, but their personalities clashed. They fought, broke up, dealt with legal problems, and eventually couldn’t align, so they closed down the company very quickly.

My second reason to pick people you love is that, as you sit next to your coworkers for at least 8 hours a day, they shape who you are. In one startup, the founders were constantly anxious, and I felt stressed and terrible sitting next to them. On the other hand, my current founders are mostly happy and calm, and I’m happy and calm too, which allows me to stay curious every day. So nowadays, if a founder tells me they only hire “top-tier engineers” with elitism as a value (which is something people sometimes put in the values section of their job boards), I stay the f*** away from them. Thank you, next time!

I feel immensely grateful to work with my team, who work hard but also value rest and relationships outside of work. I’ve learned a lot from them, not just about work but also about having a positive attitude in life.

If you work in a startup, having customers is an important foundation for progress.

I fought a lot with founders who didn’t have customers. Not having customers almost means not having direction, because when someone says we should do A, there’s no way to measure whether A is actually good.

You might ask, shouldn’t you just follow the founder then?

Well, things are more complicated because, as an early team member, you have to make tons of important decisions when responsibility isn’t clearly defined. I fought with some founders because we only had < 100 non-paying daily users, and I started trusting them less and less on product decisions. In my current job, we still fight about ideas, but we look at metrics together and make decisions based on 750K users.

People have very different philosophies on how to run a company. Some founders believe in iterating on quality first before releasing to users, while others believe in launching fast. The thing is, if you don’t have customers yet, no one can really tell who’s right other than by trusting and believing in the founders. In the beginning, I didn’t care because I just wanted a job, but nowadays, as a founding member, I do care, because I want to work in a sustainable business.

Ending: Discovering what I want for work

When I was first laid off from my job at Startup 1, I was devastated. It felt like breaking up for the first time, and I thought I’d never find love again. How on earth would I find another EdTech startup where I liked the work so much?

Looking back, I find it hilarious because, compared to my current work, I didn’t like the people and the work nearly as much! I was like a frog in a well!

I didn’t really know what I wanted for my work because I can still recall so much career advice I got during my job search, like:

• “You should prioritize finding a mentor over everything, because people don’t leave companies—they leave managers.”

• “You should find a medium-sized startup because early startups don’t have time to teach you.”

• “Don’t worry about money at all right now, because it’ll pay off in the future.”

None of them are completely wrong, but none of them are completely right from my experience. Nowadays, when people say they want to work with me, I’m able to get a gut feeling. And I realized it’s thank to f**king around so much in my first year. Now, I want my work to be a meaningful space where I can learn and explore, surrounded by supportive, secure, and fun relationships that challenge me to grow, all built on the foundation of financial stability.

Ahh…why does it sound like marriage?

For days now, I’d been trying to fix a critical issue on production—an issue that, no matter how hard I worked, seemed to slip further from my grasp. 60% percent of users were affected, and the pressure was mounting with each passing hour. My mind churned with solutions that never quite worked. I felt the weight of it pressing on me, gnawing at my concentration, my confidence. I hadn’t slept well the night before. I kept tossing and turning, unable to quiet my thoughts.

The next morning, I woke up feeling drained, the weight of the previous day still heavy on my shoulders. My body moved on autopilot, heading straight for my desk, fingers already reaching for the mouse. But then, as I stood there, I paused.

Wait a minute, I thought, a quiet voice cutting through the blur of exhaustion. This is the time to practice. This is what I’ve been trying to change.

I took a breath, steadying myself. Instead of sitting down to dive back into the problem, I turned away. I wanted to detach, to break free from the grip of that relentless urgency. So, rather than opening my laptop, I put on my gym legging.

It wasn’t easy. It felt like time slipping away—time that could be spent fixing the issue, pushing forward, doing something. But in that moment, I knew I had to try. I had to see if I could carve out space, even if just for an hour, to reclaim my own rhythm. So I went to the gym, and then be in the cafe. Instead of working on the problem, I wrote down my feelings.

Interestingly, as I reflected on it, I realized something important: the difficulty I had in separating work from myself wasn’t all bad. On one hand, it came from my genuine interest and curiosity—my desire to dive deep, to understand, to improve. But on the other hand, there was a darker side to it. Sometimes it was tangled with insecurity and anxiety when I didn’t meet my own expectation.

I found myself constantly questioning my own abilities, wondering if I was good enough, if I could really handle it. And beyond that, I’d catch myself worrying about how other perceived my ability. The worry crept in like an unwelcome guest, making me second-guess everything I did when things don’t go smoothly.

After the gym session, I chose not to return immediately to the frustrating problem that had been gnawing at me. Instead, I shifted gears, deciding to tackle something different—something I knew I could handle. The small victories, the sense of accomplishment, gave me a surge of energy, a quiet but powerful reminder that I was capable. With that boost, I felt ready to face the challenge again.

I realized that setting boundaries isn’t as simple as just saying, "No, I’m stopping now." It’s a lot of complex inner work going on. Weirdo friends, I will update you more with my exploration.

As a person not so driven my money, I don’t really mind not having money, it is just sad that I don’t have money now, and I will still not have money if I decided to found my startup. That’s the hard part.

And the worst is not about being poor, but the bad decisions I have made due of lack of money. So I started to ask myself a series of questions.

• What kind of bad decisions I’ve made due to my scarce financial mindset?

  • I didn’t have good insurance, don’t feel comfortable buying productivity tools (e.g. mac and monitor), and my furnishing was initially a disaster because I just don’t feel comfortable spending money on it until I realized it’s fucking up my brain. House search and moving a house is also stressful.

Yet, if I want to work on a startup, or persists on anything for a long time, it needs to be sustainable. So the next question for myself is,

• What kind spending are actually necessary for being a happy healthy human being?

  • a decent insurance, taking uber in the SF evening, spending money on tools for work, going to dance classes, yoga classes, buying clothes, furnitures, and travel from time to time.

• how does sustainable in finance for me feels like/look like?

  • I don’t feel stressed when I spend on necessities mentioned above, and I can feel comfortable making good decisions for my heath, education, living, safety, and productivity.

  • I can pay back my current debt.

  • I also want some saving for emergencies.

• How much extra money I have that I will feel comfortable?

  • At least extra 2K a month in SF with 60K in the bank.

• When do I want to reach that?

  • Next May for the monthly goal

• What is the effort to put in to reach that?

  • More cost cutting for spending. I set up a month financial reflection meeting with myself.

  • Switch my job

  • Find other money stream

The big challenge here is that if I don’t have money, I also don’t have runway to work on my stuffs too.

• Should go back to well paid big tech to accumulate some wealth to get ready?

• Should I work for bigger edtech company as a compromise in between?

• Is there way to raise fund early and quick?

I realized I’ve been just sucking my money problem up, but building my passion is useless if I’m not even healthy and happy. How does all these founders navigate their money problem in their early years? What are some financial attitude to cultivate?

Please enlighten me if you have ideas or readings.

Last week, when I asked our founder if I’m continuing the work, he said I did great. But we don’t have much runway, and the startup needs to grow. We bet all the money on influencer campaigns this month. If things go viral, we can raise more and be in a great position. But if it doesn’t, we are in a worse place. The company will have a big restructure, and, aka, I will need to leave. We’ll see the end of my story in the next two weeks.

Early-stage startups come with a lot of big bets and suffering. Companies in our incubators areoften “pivoting” (aka this idea doesn’t work, and they run out of money), and it’s really hard and unstable. Our neighboring company just lost 50% of their employees and needs to lay off more in a week. It’s not only about money; when everything is collapsing around you, it’s a lot of emotional stress too.

I was like fxxk. I have worked so hard to get here.

To work on learning-related problems in the US and build my network for the future, I grinded through being fired, powered through jobless periods, borrowed money, downgraded my house, and slept on the floor next to my suitcase just to make ends meet while working on my passion. Now, I finally find pleasant teammates and a learning product I can work on. And now, the reality is fxxking saying,

You must be kidding me.

Sometimes I feel jealous of how comfortable my peers are around me. They have regular 40-hour-a-week jobs, go on dates, and hang out with friends in the evenings and weekends, with decent salaries and comfortable homes. In contrast, I work so, so, so hard every day because I know if I don’t, my vision will quickly get slaughtered by reality. So comfort isn’t an option.

Failing and starting things over and over again is a regular lifestyle for founders, even though I don’t even feel qualified to be a founder yet. But the path I’m actively choosing has already determined the lifestyle I’m in. Education is a hard industry to break into, a hard industry to make money in, especially when I don’t want to conform to the traditional system that learning is situated in. And it’s hard enough that no one has really been able to change it, so I have to.

I feel like crying. My close friend from college also just decided to close down her edtech startup. Before, we could share how hard life is while pursuing our passions. Now, I feel so lonely on my path.

This entire week I’ve been bombarded by moving houses, living on the floor like a homeless, and finding and transporting affordable furniture for my house when I’m not working. This challenge hasn’t ended yet, but the next challenge is already waiting around the corner. And I hate it. I hate being in so much chaos, but I think I hate giving up even more.

I guess we’ll see if reality chokes me first or if I slaughter it first. The game hasn’t ended yet. We shall see.

These days, I find such announcements unnecessary. What's the point of showing off? What is there to prove? It's not that I want to discredit his hard work, but coding six days a week is just a regular routine for me.

I wonder, does proving this point make people feel better or more self-assured about enduring the grind?

For me, learning engineering is driven by intrinsic motivation and personal interest. Working at a tiny tiny startup aligned with my interests naturally fuels my passion for learning. With the pressure to survive, it simply becomes a daily habit, including weekends. That’s it—nothing to prove, and nothing to broadcast. When learning and working become a flow of life, I wonder if comparing oneself to others and self-judgment are just another moment of distractions.

When work doesn't feel like a burden, it becomes indistinguishable from life—just a continuation of doing what I’m interested in. It brings me peace and joy, like engaging in a daily intellectual exercise and contributing to beautiful creations in the world.

Reflecting on the conversation, I realized that, on the surface, my friend and I might seem similar—we both aim to bridge the gap in our skills quickly. But I've already found joy in the process of trying, not just in the shortened path to the goal.

A founder in our incubator has a sarcastic term for the culture in San Francisco: "hustle porn." Everyone is eager to showcase how hard they're working, but this relentless pursuit often leads to serious physical health issues. We've witnessed some alarming cases—successful investors so overwhelmed by stress that they experience frequent vomiting during tough times. While everyone is focused on moving fast, there's little guidance on how to work sustainably, both physically and emotionally, over the long term. Those qualities are called discipline and patience. The drive to succeed can blur the line between short-term victories and true, lasting success.

Society has sold us the idea that there's no such thing as a free lunch, creating two big illusions: (1) If I feel more pain, I must be progressing more. (2) If I want to progress, I must feel pain.

But is that really true?

Many of us think trying is hard and painful, but it can be hard yet joyful. Doing hard things don’t equate to absolute pain. Depending on personal motivation, hard things and pain aren’t dot products of parallel vectors. The key difference lies in mindset: a result-oriented mindset ("I'll be happy when I get there") versus a process-oriented one ("I'm happy because I'm trying to get there").

In fact, I’m actually arguing that having a none grinding mindset allows me to perform better. In the high-pressure environment of startup life, I've learned that maintaining my chill and happiness actually boosts my productivity. Without the burden of mental barriers, it's easier to dive into focused work. This is just a basic concept called “desired difficulty”. Moreover, psychology has shown that stress narrows our mindset, leading to poorer decision-making. It’s really not that strong as a correlation between pain and optimal performance. The correlation between pain and optimal performance isn't as strong as some might think. That simply doesn’t make psychological and biological sense.

This realization led me to wonder—why not apply this mindset to all aspects of my life?

I realized I've been biased by a result-oriented mindset in other areas. For example, in one relationship, I kept questioning myself, "Why can't I solve this problem, even though I've tried so hard for so long?"

I was clouded by fear of a bad outcome, disappointment in my abilities, and confusion from others. It felt like a knot in my heart every day. I worried that trying would waste my time and make me look foolish and laughed by others. But isn't this just another instance of overemphasizing winning while forgetting to enjoy the game?

Life is a game. Trying to win is important, but the joy comes from simply playing. It's the fun of continuous play that will carry me forward to the long term success.

I now see myself like a professional knife sharpener, a watchmaker, or a chef who is wholly dedicated to their craft. Performance and productivity are external judgments, not reflections of my focused process. Overwork represents the expectations of my manager, not the relationship between me and my craft.

"Oh, I worked until 10 pm on Saturday?" In the past, this would make me feel miserable and frustrated. Now, I see it as more time to hone my craft. Work has become a flow of life.

Work as a flow

I still notice my self-judgments sometimes: I’m working slowly, I can’t finish on time, or I’m working weekends. Voices in my head still ask, “What if I can't finish this on time?” and “What will my manager think?” But now, I recognize these thoughts, meditate on them, and return to the focused flow of my work.

Nowadays, everything in my life feels like a flow. I eat with abundant mindfulness, savoring each bite dancing on my tongue. I code with intense concentration, focusing solely on the present moment, free from worries about past performance or future deadlines. I enjoy watching a Japanese clerk carefully shape rice in a bowl, and I meditate at the Nanzen-ji Temple in Kyoto, feeling the groundedness of its wooden floor. A voice inside me gently reassures, “Don’t worry. You can be confident.”

Living in this state of flow is so enjoyable that it almost feels surreal. Being in flow doesn’t mean I’m free from worries and thoughts; rather, it means finding my place in any situation. When I rush to work, anxious about finishing my shower, breakfast, and catching the bus, I ask myself, “What would make you feel most comfortable now, Esther?” I no longer force myself to meet every desire. It feels like trusting the present, being in the flow of life, and tapping into an inner intelligence always within me.

I work weekdays and weekends without much pain of overworking. My visa status remains unstable, but the thought no longer bites. I see myself as a relatively mediocre engineer compared to the high standards around me (bc I’m in San Francisco), yet it doesn’t deter my progress. I’m in a flow—a flow of life events beyond my control, but I float on in my work like a boat in a river.

Work like a craftsman

I describe myself as a craftsman in coding not just because of the flow and focused state of mind I experience, but also due to the mental gymnastics involved in honing my craft.

Firstly, I practice handling the discomfort of being stuck with patience. Usually, when we encounter a prolonged block, we feel anxious and seek immediate resolution because we strongly resist the feeling of being stuck. However, the essence of being a good craftsman lies in patience. I learn to temporarily suspend the desire for quick closure and explore different approaches to make things work, even if it means taking a new route. Why?

“Don’t try to hit the target” doesn’t mean giving up or not trying, but rather stopping resistance and cultivating awareness to shed bad habits and explore different routes.

Secondly, it's about practicing detachment from my work. In the ambiguous environment of startups, my mind used to spin about work constantly, even on weekends, leaving me exhausted all the time. Letting go is a crucial skill for creating good craftsmanship. Constant high intensity strains everyone and everything, making us inflexible. Learning to detach helps maintain balance and fosters better creativity and resilience in my work.

I’m currently practicing how to flow with ambiguity and maintain adequate detachment. Instead of worrying about having too much, I tell myself to let go once I feel I’ve done enough. If others disagree, they can let me know. In a messy work environment, where clear deadlines are rare, I’ve started proposing later dates (with a bit of humor) rather than blindly rushing to meet unrealistic timelines.

Previously, I felt at risk of damaging relationships or undermining my abilities by doing this. Now, I’m testing this new approach with the intention of restoring my energy and creating better work. My craft will thrive only when I find happiness, peace, and security, allowing me to focus wholeheartedly. I’m practicing. (Please remind me this when I’m stressed about work)

Finally, there’s the pursuit of quality to breed my own expression. I used to see overwork as unfair and felt burdened by it. But by viewing my work as a craft, I realize that the pursuit of correctness fosters true expression. Working in a startup demands speed, but I still dedicate the last 10% of my time to refining my work. Imagine building a new park for your neighborhood: you can ignore the surrounding buildings and residents, but a good design takes time to observe and harmonize with the environment.

This is similar to my work. There’s always a simpler and more elegant way to build on existing efforts. I strive to create beauty, simplicity, and quality in everything I do.

I’m not working; I’m crafting. I flow through the process with patience and a pursuit of quality, letting go of expectations. I’ve realized I’m not on the path to becoming a good employee, but making of a true craftsman.

The appeal of San Francisco lies in the fact that no matter who you are, as long as you can produce good work, you can be on the stage.

By "good work," I don’t only mean highly technical work; good ideas are included. For instance, I’m a software newbie. Sitting in a room of researchers, founders, and investors, I feel like there is nothing I can say.

However, when I presented my simple side project at a house hackathon, people noticed it. Those people whom I deeply admire said I’m cool. Whaaaat?

Famous hackers follow me, retweet me, but most importantly, I got into their community. This has unlocked a lot of new experiences. For instance, Alex invited me to an exclusive dinner at the top incubator in SF, where I was amazed by all the product demos.

Alex said that he got free tickets to the latest Google demo as a “creator” because he constantly posts and goes to hackathons. Sasha is staying with people from Latent Space, the most well-known AI newsletter in the Bay Area, if not in the world. Jeremy’s AGI house hackathon has invited Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google.

Most people thing the way to go about your career is climbing that social ladder or going to company sponsored events. After exploring all these stuffs in SF, I realized that is completely inefficient and ineffective. Do you think Google employees even have this kind of access to their founder?

If you are in the right community, you can meet really good people. They aren’t just important central hubs in SF; often, they have great qualities that go beyond tech. They are well-educated in philosophy, psychology, economics, and various other fields.

Don’t think of this as a transactional relationship or “networking.” Most people are humble, curious, and supportive. For instance, when I wanted to get rid of my project away, Alex commented and said, “Your mobile here and there is buggy!” So…I had no choice but to flesh out my project. Putting myself out there really helps me with my daily building process.

Last night, I went to AGI house’s hackathon, where we launched all our projects and products together. We commented on and retweeted each other’s products and projects so we could all go viral together. Look at this girl—her project went viral overnight.

But do you know how many followers she have? Only 200.

This is the madness of bringing a big group of talented people together. By meeting great people, you find new friends and shortcuts to new resources in SF.

I know everything looks shiny in “Silicon Valley.” But the truth is, you need to put in a lot of hard work. Hard work means going to events and hackathons or relentlessly building on your passion project, even when you want to relax on weekends. Simply attending hackathons and events or being good at socializing won’t bring you valuable resources and a strong network; only producing good work will.

Does it need to be tech? Mostly, but not necessarily. This is what my friend launch on the hackathon yesterday: his debut song, More than a tech bro.

I’m more than a tech bro, I have hobbies like hiking and climbing.

I’m more than a tech bro, if I work weekend just cuz I like it — More than a tech bro

To conclude, the three keys to finding your own stage in San Francisco are:

1. Produce good work. It doesn’t need to be deep tech project, as long as you can create an interesting niche.

2. Publish your work on Twitter and share it with your community. Learn how to tell the story of your work.

3. Connect with very good people as your network. Learn how to make good friends.

As usual, I crafted out this learning environment, so I can continue working small step at a time consistently.

Good news: I found an opportunity to work with my friends.

Bad news: It’s only three months and it’s very low paid.

How low is it? It’s probably half of the money my average classmates are making. How high risk is it? I still might get kicked out of the US after three months. But I’m so happy. I find myself in the exact place where I want to be.

I start dirty and cheap

My friend’s company is very early, but I do want to see how complicated it is to be at the earliest stage of the company. The pay is so low, but I have a very non heriachacal and non patriachical relationship with him. He is a decent mentor. Since I already know I’m capable of working in a misaligned but well-paid job, I know that I need to compromise a lot for my great work.

I don’t even get health insurance, but I’m in one of my favorite incubators in San Francisco. The founders there are so young. Some of them are even just 19. Being exposed to a network of young founders and seeing how people build and build with them? It feels like a dream.

In fact, I start even dirtier and cheaper than this.

Actually dirtier and cheaper

I’m also working with another founder. Do you know how much I get paid?

$0.

Yes, 0. I know you might think I’m a complete idiot. I might be. But I know that the founder is in the best incubator in SF, and he has immense experience in founding successful companies. I might be stupid free labor, but the potential learning and network I’m tapping into might also be unpredictably big in the future.

I remember when I started my first internship, I was paid $70 from an Indian company. $70 a month, not an hour. What's worse, I worked hectically till almost 12 am every day. My Indian schoolmate laughed, “Esther, You are worth so much more!”

However, after that intense learning experience, all the work, from Taiwan startup to Meta, has been very easy and chill.

I’ll probably be poor in the next few years

I learn that I need to take lots of shit for my vision. Being poor in the next few years is probably the first one. However, based on all the coffee chats with founders who I admired, they all started dirty and cheap. They have no arrogance. They asked for nothing but to achieve their vision.

One friend in his 40s, and already out of his IPO company told me, “You should live even cheaper. Even now, I don’t have a wife. I don’t have children. I don’t buy things. I only buy books and work on my problem.”

Compared to him, I don’t have money, I don’t have a network, and I don’t have experience. So I need to start even humbler than they do. And that’s will be how this story begins. Dirty and cheap.

• Gotta die #1: Hard time job searching

• Gotta die #2: I’m an ostrich

• Gotta die #3: Conviction is a stone

• Gotta die #4: Worst Case Scenario

You know I’m…yes, gotta die. My days are divided into 4 modes. The biggest mode is Mode 1 - Panic.

Four modes of dying

Mode 1: Panic

The moment I woke up, I told my roommate I’m gotta die. And my roommate will say “你要活下去！” (You have to stay alive!) My mind usually repeats 950 times “I’m gotta die” to myself. This takes the majority of my mind.

Mode 2: Anger

Mode 2 is swearing at my intuition and conviction. Hence, you will see me saying “fxxk you” 50 times a day to them (essentially myself) in front of all the pedestrians. I look like a complete idiot swearing at myself haha.

Mode 3: Bargaining

Yes, welcome to my bargaining stage with the universe. I spend the rest of my time bargaining and begging the universe to give me an easier life. I don’t know if the universe is listening tho. They might not understand human languages.

Mode 4: Let’s find a way out

Mode 4 is Let’s find a way out stage usually happens after I exercise. Around 2% of my mind starts panicking and thinks about what can we do and how to do it.

I know many of you have suggested it I compromise for a few years to stay in the US. I have filed this appeal to Esther many times but got rejected. That’s why I’m quite mad at Esther. But anyway, most of my time has been in my panic Mode 1.

Miracle around the corner

However, however, Esther as a creative human being, was still continuing on her fun project: How to ask for help. She and her friends keep asking for one help a day, including asking random technical questions on Twitter about how people go with their entrepreneurship journey. Any sort of random ask.

Esther decided to rather go home than stay in a misaligned job in the US. One day I decided to ask people what Esther would miss out for her. The first person who came to my mind is a VC from edtech capital in the Bay.

Usually, I hate VC people because they are usually powerful, rich, snobbish people who bet on startups like betting on horse races. But that VC was a nice person when we talked and she didn’t have any arrogant energy. Since she might know more about the tech resources in the US, I think she can probably tell me what I’m losing leaving the US.

Yet, she didn’t tell me what I lost, she just asked about how I job search in edtech. And after a few days, a miracle happened. She said that some founders wanted to talk to me. Apparently, she sent my information to her network.

Omg omg omg weirdo friends, do you know how crazy that means? There was a company that I’d been trying so hard for a solid two months. I built a website and tried to ask my friend who worked there to help me, but I still, barely got to their hiring manager. But now their FOUNDER wants to talk to…. me? me? me?

She suggested a company that I super super like, and I told her I tried it before but they only did many many experienced hires. And then she emailed their board member to see if it was possible to open a chat.

Whaaaaaat?!

I was mind-blown.

What I learned

Even though her help has not worked out yet or even it might not work out in the end, she unblocked my dilemma and showed me possibilities. It’s not necessarily an either/or choice between my passion and the US. I feel so stupid, why didn’t I think of trying both before? If I have used my knee to think a bit, it is so obvious the best strategy for both short-term and long-term alignment.

We always said network network network, but she is the first person in my life who really showed me what a powerful network really means. I stopped feeling that I had gotta die even though my situation stay almost the same now. I learned that there are still so many untraditional possibilities and creative problem-solving I haven’t tried, waiting for me to explore and play on this planet.

Initially, when I saw the message, my head was??? But as you know my head is nothing regular, so I thought why not play a game together anyway?

Hence, this post is dedicated to this weirdo friend. Since we aren’t interviewing for the same positions, I decided to share my learning strategies that are fun, nonstandard, and generally applicable.

In addition, there are already millions of suggestions on how to prepare for interviews, so I will not focus on ideas that are standard, like doing more mock interviews, learning the algorithm pattern, review questions you could not solve last week. I will focus on some creative learning that I evolve.

Technique-based learning: How I prepare for algorithms

This is my PPP strategy to prepare for algorithms (Leetcode) interview. And yes, I make up PPP just now.

1. Pen & Paper

2. Practice problems

3. Playback for self-feedback

P1: Pen & Paper

Most people think the first step of practicing technical learning is about learning the technique. Personally, I find this is a bad start. The first step of learning is always finding the joy of learning. And finding joy requires us to separate the stress and the fear of interviewing. I’ve mocked interviewed with some of my friends. They did poorly not because they could not learn, but because they hated it. They immediately associated algorithms with interviews and hectically pressed the “run” button when they could not figure things out.

So how to associate algorithms with joyful learning? I do two things.

• I go to the same plant cafe to study algorithms with pen and paper.

• I learn it for a month without a single application.

I know not applying sounds crazy, but let me explain the reasoning. First, if you haven’t reached a certain proficiency threshold, you cannot solve problems in an interview anyway. Going to interviews and getting roasted only creates more stress and fear when you do algorithms.

Instead, I create a joyful learning experience for myself by going to a plant cafe with pen and paper. Pen and paper help me modify my “hectically press running button when I’m frustrated” habit. So I can really think the problem through. I know it sounds really stupid, but this must be the most useful learning method I discover when learning algorithms.

At the end of this practice, I feel emotionally stable and curious when I think of algorithm problems, and gain the ability to think clearly about most problems. I train both my mentality and skills.

P2: Practice problems

Of course, interviews are still on your laptop, so we need to switch back to our computer. In this stage, I noticed I could get back to some of my bad habits of rushing through questions when I mock preparation with friends because I’m imagining I’m in an interview. So here are some things I do in this stage:

• I select a dimension to hone on: I will not try to solve problems in 20 minutes, but instead focus on a dimension I want to hone on. e.g. I tell my friend I want to practice “thinking clearly,” “solving in time,” and “communicating well” today.

• I walk through a wider range of common problems, master pattern matching, and review unfamiliar problems.

The practice in this stage is quite standard as most blogs will suggest.

P3: Playback for self-feedback

As I realized I didn’t always have people to practice with me, I came up with an interesting idea. Why don’t I record my own interviewing process? With recording,

• I can feel like a live interview because I’m seeing myself (Inspired by Jeremy’s podcast)

• I can play back my own recording to see how I talk.

As I look through all my recordings, I can clearly see that I fumble and jump ideas when I’m stuck, and my talking tone is completely BORING. I will not want to interview myself! After I went through my own self-feedback loop, I didn’t only solve problems on time, my talk became fun and engaging. I know I’m engaging because one interviewer even wants to write code for me when I present the coding problem as a fun challenge.

Interviewers are humans by the end of the day. Why not make interviews a fun teaching and collaborating session like Feynman’s class?

Knowledge-based learning: How I prepare for system design

If technique-based learning focuses on the problem-solving process, knowledge-based learning focuses on memory. How to retain as much memory as I can learning system architecture? Typing and screenshoting is a terrible way of learning because I don’t remember a shit 2 days after. Here are some methods I use.

• Drawing and note-taking to create a visual impression

• Understand the context of the technology

• Recall and rephrase concepts

Drawing and note-taking to create a visual impression

Drawing creates strong spatial and visual memory and some important become noticeable compared with screenshoting.

Understand the context of the technology

Memorizing technical terms is painful, but it’s easier when you know how to connect the dots together. For instance, it’s so hard to remember the difference between OTLP and OLAP.

But if you put it into historical concept, it’s so easy. OLTP (transactional) happens because the traditional database that handles transactions is pretty bad at data analytics. It’s slow. That’s why we need OLAP (analytical) for big data analytics.

Recall and rephrase concepts

Whenever I finish learning 1 concept, I usually write a paragraph that I digest myself. For instance, this is my OLTP vs OLAP learning.

We have OLTP that is good at inserting and deleting database, however, it’s bad for complicated query and analysis. At that time, we wonder why can’t we aggregate data from different places and do analysis together? So we start to use data warehouse. And OLAP becomes the engine to query data warehouse.

How I play the job search game

Most people think of job search is only about ability, but it is really not. I spent a careful amount of time learning how to play the game. Beyond the traditional suggestions such as networking, there are two big lessons I learned.

Bring surprise and novelty

Given that even getting an interview in the US is very hard, I prepare interviews carefully. How to ensure I’m better under fierce competition? Being fluent and looking smart isn’t enough. I need to bring surprise and novelty. But how?

Most of the interview questions are already publicly accessible on Glassdoor. I went through those questions carefully and thought of how to bring new things that most people will not know. Can I provide novel techniques? Can I bring an interesting perspective based on my past experience?

Yes, the questions I get might be different, but I make sure I think two steps ahead of most people.

Crafting my style

Personality in the workspace matters. When I was writing, A guide for women in tech, I learned that I needed to learn how to craft my personality in the workspace, including my interview process.

Most friends said, “But the job market is shit. Those companies are in the upper hand.” Not true if you know how to craft your style well. I read and practice Pitch anything: an innovative method for presenting, persuading and winning the deal to learn how to re-engineer the social dynamic when I’m in a disadvantaged situation. In addition, I constantly rethink my style in the workspace.

For instance, I used to be viewed as young and curious so people don’t respect me. I decide to present other angles of myself. This is my current style:

• Curious, but not out of naiveness, but intelligent

• Grounded and emotionally mature

I don’t present myself as a curious young new grad. I present myself as I know a lot, but I still want to know your thoughts and perspective. As I know I have a pretty grounded personality, I decide to show more of this side when I’m challenged. The style helps a lot because I start to feel I’m solving problems with people during an interview rather than trying to please you. Besides, I also select outfits that will help me present this style of me. So no hoodie and t-shirt.

I stopped pretending to be a confident alpha male but brought out my strength in a comfortable way that aligned with my personality. It is super funny that my behavior changes a lot in an interview after I start developing my style.

In one interview, as I was tired and could not solved the problem, rather than feeling anxious, I told the interviewer, “I’m tired and cannot think now. Can we take a break?” And then we took a bathroom break and chatted. I solved that problem in the last 8 minutes.

Dear the weirdo friend, I don’t know if you find this post anywhere helpful. But I’m so happy you gave me a chance to compile my growth and learning. Let’s grow and learn together!

If you went through many rounds, found yourself almost achieving excellence in your interview, but in the end still got rejected, there is still a sense of frustration popping up. You know that there is no one to be blamed. It is so clear to this point that it’s not about your objective ability. You can even fluently speak of the techniques that your interviewers don’t even know. You feel that it is possible that you think faster than them.

Sometimes, it’s just because the company all of a sudden decided to stop hiring at this point because of their financial or whatever reason. Or you happen not to vibe perfectly with one of the interviewers. Or because the market really sucks. It’s really not about you, but you can still feel deflated the moment you get that rejection email. What deflated you was a shatter of dreams. A dream to rest, to see your family, and to travel, and to pay back the money you owe. You emailed to ask for cancellation and refund for trips you cannot afford.

You didn’t lose your confidence inside you. You knew you were good. In fact, terrific at this stage of your career. Almost half a year of job search stimulated tremendous growth in both mentality and skills that you haven’t seen in most people. You are not ready to give up. You know you just need one good chance. You just haven’t made it there yet. A bit more patience. You told yourself. Your friend comforted you, 「沒事啦！此處不留爺，自有留爺處。」“If this place cannot accommodate you, there is always another for you.” And cooked you a big plate of shrimp dim sum. He joked that we can try to open an IT cafe for your OPT. You laughed, feeling slightly better.

There is always some day like this. But, you know the next day, you will wake up. You will shrug off the memory that your dad called you to give up and come back home yesterday. You will open your loom to record an interview practice to hone it again. You will write down “tokenizer” and all the technical details in your notebook. You will publish another feature you built. You will start to work like another usual day.

When we talk about capacities, we usually think of individual capacities. If an employee can finish their work on time and deliver what the company needs. However, little do we know that the capacities of an organization will potentially limit or unlock the individual capacities too. For instance, an organization that has significant overhead will only value a very high-profit margin product, such as 40%. In a way, it means that all the product ideas that will yield less than 40% of the predicted profit margin will be discarded. The company is incapable of targeting low-margin markets. And this applies to people too.1

So what do I mean by organizational capacities? I will use the definition from the innovator’s dilemma: resources, processes, and value. Resources are the assets of an organization, such as technology, people, and physical assets. The process is the pattern of interaction, coordination, communication, and decision-making that can range from manufacturing, product development, procurement, budgeting, planning, and so on. Values are the perceived benefits of a product or service.

Take process, for example. A process can define capacities in executing certain tasks while defining disabilities in executing other tasks. The established process will define the capacities of an organization.

For instance, market research and planning as a process is good for new product language in existing markets but useless for emerging and poorly defined markets. On the other hand, if you don’t do any research but experimentally and intuitively deploy products in a well-defined existing market. It will probably soon be a suicide. A small organization usually has a better process (e.g. no need to do data analysis and PowerPoint) to explore emerging markets. That’s why they have a better capacity to innovate.

The process also limits or unlocks individual capacities. Let me use myself as another easy example. When I worked at Meta, we had abundant resources—money, research, people. Therefore, I had a lot of freedom to explore with the resources. The deadlines were looser, but it required better coordination across teams to make small and careful changes. Most of the time was spent streamlining the processes, ensuring that people collaborated well. So I spent a lot of time writing documentation that people could quickly understand and appreciate. Big companies spend most of their energy managing people's processes of coordination.

On the other hand, when I worked at a <10 people startup, we had few resources. Everything needed to be fast, fast, and fast. They allowed me to have a lot of decision-making power and responsibility. Yet, there was no space to explore as everything was very pressing. The process of decision-making was not on the organization but on individuals’ initiatives.

Processes and values determine what an individual can do and what decisions they will make in their work, and most people call it culture. That’s why people say that the founder and the first 10 employees build the culture of a company. In early-stage startups, founders are the main decision-makers so the employees end up copying their founders’ processes and values.

Therefore, when people are talking about "a right fit" for picking the next company they want e.g. a good team, and impact to make… they are essentially discussing a match between their development criteria and the capacities of the organization.

How to find a good manager?

So, how can I find a good manager?

Thinking from this perspective, it is, in fact, saying that a good manager in big tech can hardly be as good as they used to be if they join a startup, because startups have strong survival pressure. I know this is a bold claim, but I hypothesize it’s generally applicable. It doesn’t mean that a medium or big size company will definitely give me a good manager, but it allows and encourages better managers to exist.2

In fact, asking if I will have a good manager is not enough. I ask “Does the organization have the processes and values for me to succeed?” A good manager will not survive long in an organization with a terrible culture while a good culture will cultivate good managers.

Let’s also break down what "finding a good manager" means. If I closely think about this need, it’s not exactly about the need to be led. It’s the need to learn best practices from programming to collaborating in my early career. I can learn coding through YouTube and collaborate on side projects, so the point of working is learning the things that I cannot learn with my current resources. For me, it means establishing best practices that I cannot easily obtain without enough experience and scale. For instance, the technical side is the use of tools and processes for scalable products; the people side is the way to mature my leadership, my emotions, and my decision-making while learning to advocate, persuade, and negotiate with others.

Always an action plan for Esther in the end, of course. Since the job market isn’t great, choices can be limited at this moment. I decide to put most of my resources into a medium-sized startup from searching to interviewing. (If you know the US a little bit, you will know the action plan to find a small startup vs medium-size company vs big tech is three different games.) A 3-year work visa in the US isn’t long. While gaining any experience is useful, how I want to spend my time for the next two years might be the most important question for me at this moment.

"People think I'm cheerful and happy, so they don't value my work."

"It's very hard to be a female founder."

"All the women in leadership positions act like men. I'm worried if I need to be like that..."

Putting on a mask and pretending to be a man seems to be a popular solution. However, is "pretending to be an alpha male" the only persona I can adopt to be heard, respected, and promoted? Is there another potential version of me that I can comfortably live with, without being dominant and aggressive?

Hence, Svitlana and I hosted a "Kind and Assertive" event where we invited women to let go of all the mistreatment they had experienced or social constructs that already existed. We focused solely on practical strategies we had learned and experimented with, which we shared and practiced with each other through examples and role-play.

Here are a set of questions we explore:

• What should we do when we feel unheard or undervalued?

• How might we create a version of ourselves in the workplace that we feel comfortable with?

• How can we leverage the emotional and relationship intelligence we possess?

Though we each only have our own hammer, when we share it with each other, collective intelligence can create a toolkit that we can apply in various scenarios. Here are some strategies we have compiled into six categories below.

How to Reframe Power Dynamics?

Let's start by rewiring our brains. When do we feel powerless and fearful? Is it necessary to think of it that way? And how can we break these dynamics?

The focus of these two strategies is on reframing our existing belief of "We are powerless" or breaking the powerless situations we find ourselves in.

View the conversation as a social interaction, not as power dynamics.

It can be intimidating to have a discussion with someone who is more senior, more experienced, and at a higher level than you, because we are influenced by status, age, or gender.

When I was studying how salespeople pitch, one idea was to shift the viewpoint of power. For instance, if you perceive money as something of very high value, you will definitely feel powerless because you aren’t the buyer. However, if you view money as a means that requires your action/product to activate, the deal is just fine.

Similarly, if we change our perspective, viewing conversations as social interactions, we free ourselves from the powerless status that we put ourselves in, and therefore can appear more confident or come up with more ideas to steer the conversations. When communicating with a high-status manager, instead of feeling powerless, consider their status as a means to influence and create impact. Without your willingness to collaborate and engage, that high-status manager cannot facilitate meaningful change.

What other social interactions have we had before and what power do we hold?

Break the Framing People Set for Us

Feeling powerless in a situation with a high-status man can be daunting. One strategy I've learned is to identify the framing that people impose on us and intentionally break it. What is framing? A frame is the tool you use to package your power, authority, strength, information, and status. For instance, when you say, "We expect revenues to be $10 million next year," you are framing with the information of revenue. If someone interrupts you and says, "Who cares about your made-up revenue projections. Tell me what your expenses are going to be," they have changed your frame. Being aware of the frame means not following the frame that others set for us. One way to do this is to place high value on something important that you want to protect.

Let's use time as an example. For instance, if your client says, "Well, I only have about 10 minutes to meet with you, but come on in," how would you respond?

• Appreciate their time, and give a super quick intro.

• Express that it is not enough time to introduce your product.

These are the responses I gained in the session, but they position us within the 10-minute frame that the client set. How can we improve this? How about valuing our time and the importance of the relationship?

No. I don’t work like that. There’s no sense in rescheduling unless we like each other and trust each other. I need to know, are you good to work with, can you keep appointments, and stick to a schedule?

By valuing our time, we don't fall into the power dynamic that others set for us.

What to Do When Emotions Are Intense?

This category of strategies is for intense situations, like heated discussions or uneasy relationships.

Ask Questions with Curiosity

Some very high-level colleagues asked Esperanza, "Where do you think you are misaligned with the company?"

Feeling attacked, she immediately defended herself by giving many explanations. Looking back, she learned that rather than giving long explanations, she could approach the situation with curiosity, asking, "Why do you think this way?"

By doing so, she shifted the responsibility back to her colleague. It's not only about learning his perspective but also about letting the other person be aware of the assumptions they are holding against her.

This strategy requires high awareness, as we often feel the need to defend and explain when we feel attacked. To apply this, separating outward situations from inward responses is the major practice.

Use Async Communication

Sometimes, it's challenging to have a smart reaction on the spot. However, using other communication tools, such as Slack, can give you time to draft thoughtful messages or arguments. Additionally, people are usually more mindful of the messages they send in chat because there is a record. A good reaction takes time to practice, but we can start small.

Break the Toxic Pattern with Surprise

When you're in an uncomfortable dynamic with someone, doing something surprising can be helpful to break the pattern and restart the relationship. For instance, you could give them chocolate or a compliment, like, "Oh! I like the jacket you're wearing!" Of course, it needs to be genuine. The surprise or kindness is usually very effective at breaking the awkwardness between both of you. When the pattern is broken, it becomes easier to communicate and repair the relationship.

This method requires a lot of emotional maturity (Not there yet, but want to have it in my toolkit.).

How to Embody Confidence and Assertiveness?

I view this category as short-term strategies that can quickly gain respect in the workplace. However, if these strategies aren't natural or if you want to work on things that align more with your innate self, consider "How to build a personal brand at work?" in the next category.

Don't be Overly Grateful

Ade told us that she was so grateful that the weight of her gratitude overwhelmed people. Just as she learned not to apologize all the time, she also learned not to thank people constantly.

Short Sharp One-Liners

People are more likely to lose attention during long explanations. Alaba shared that when she gave lengthy explanations, they often created more issues for her, making her look unconfident and creating even more space for critique with every word she said. However, if she used one-liners and avoided over-explaining, people questioned less and it also made her appear more confident.

For instance, "I don't think this is relevant to the discussion" is a complete sentence. The person can always follow up or clarify if it's insufficient.

Change Our External Expression

• Outfit: With a multitude of personalities, Christina usually wore her most authentic self-expressive clothes to work, often manifested in a hippie outfit and vibes. However, one day Amy conducted an experiment and wore more bulky, masculine clothes. Doing so awakened a masculine side within her and allowed her to exercise her power more easily, likely influencing how she is perceived in the workplace. It wasn't about molding to fit in, but rather embracing a certain side of herself that enabled her to reach her goals.

• Language Usage: Megan mentioned that people perceived her as less professional when she appeared cheerful in meetings. When she lowered her voice and spoke more slowly, people appreciated her work much more.

How to Build a Compatible Personal Brand?

Be Consistent with the Brand You Want to Build

Aarya said that her manager, Kritika, can easily say no to others but is still very likable in her company because Kritika is famous for “no-nonsense.”

Whenever Kritika calls out someone, there might be a few seconds of discomfort, but people usually think, “Oh, that’s just Kritika!”

On the other hand, if you are kind 90% of the time and saying yes to everyone, but one day you say a harsh no, people will often find you strange or even rude.

It’s about the kind of expectation you set for yourself in front of others by acting consistently on it. Hence, it is possible to be likable and assertive at the same time.

However, what if you cannot be consistent?

Share your ongoing development

If consistency is challenging, be transparent about your inconsistency. You can communicate to others, "I'm continuously evolving, and this is what I'm currently working on."

For example, Sophie informed her CEO that she wanted to improve her public speaking skills and would appreciate the opportunity to practice. If she suddenly started talking about it without prior notice, it might seem strange to others. However, since she gave a heads up, her colleagues could understand and rationalize her behavior, allowing her to change her professional brand.

The takeaway here is, if there's a brand you want to develop, strive for consistency! But if that's not possible, turn your inconsistency into a brand too!

Embrace and emphasize your difference

It is hard to always pretend you are interested given the cultural or gender differences. Instead of trying to fit in, it might be better to acknowledge the differences that exist, and that’s okay. For instance, we can be honest and say that we aren’t interested in football.

Highlighting it features your honesty and also reminds people that “We are different and you cannot judge me with the assumptions you hold.”

It’s okay to say I’m a woman, or I’m not from America, or I’m not interested in this topic.

How to Utilize the Power of Relationships?

It's common to hear that women excel at building relationships. But how can we utilize this skill in practical ways?

Make Your Enemies Your Allies

When a friend encounters others expressing racist or sexist opinions, Emily often responds with, "I understand your perspective, but please don’t share this with other women."

In doing so, she creates a space to educate those who may be unaware, while also building their trust and avoiding defensive responses.

Team up with other females

Emma mentioned that she and another female colleague, Olivia, are always overworking and underappreciated when they attend product meetings full of males. Emma told Olivia that she didn’t deserve this. Initially, her colleague found it hard to act on it because the responsibilities weren’t clear... But after their back and forth debate, she realized it’s not her fault and spoke up for herself. Teaming up doesn’t only mean supporting each other’s opinions in the meeting, but also empowering each other and challenging our biased perceptions.

Make Yourself the Ingroup and Bring Outgroup Dynamics

Ariana embraced her side of masculinity. She listened to all the soccer talks and merged herself into the friend group of men. She leveraged that she is already in the ingroup and brought segues into the real topics. People feel less attacked when they already consider you as their in group. It can turn some uncomfortable debates into casual discussions.

How to Utilize Emotional Intelligence?

Calling People Out with Emotional Micro-doses

It may seem like a risky approach, but it is quite possible if applied intelligently.

If you want to address people directly, find a safe space like a one-on-one. When Hana's colleagues kept talking during every meeting, she told them during their one-on-one, "Hey, you have been talking about sports for 20 minutes while we don't have action items yet."

Another way to call out is using emotional micro-doses. Emotional micro-doses involve coating some emotional comfort with direction, which will make it much easier for people to take in.

For instance, when Jiwoo was blamed for not finishing work with ambiguous responsibility, she didn’t apologize or get angry. She said, “I think Jack passed me the project but we never clarified the responsibility. I’m not saying that’s your fault, Jack. But I suggest that we should make who needs to finish what clearer in our collaboration.”

Approach with Humor

"Why are all the tech bros having Huel?" Himari joked with her colleagues. When we don't feel comfortable expressing directly, we can package the message in a casual and harmless way, like humor. People can still understand it without having a serious head-to-head conversation. Another example is when a founder asked Phuong, "Are you a beast?" (aka are you good enough to be on our team)

Rather than falling into his frame and proving that she’s good enough, Phuong can simply respond with humor to break it, “Well… if you mean my face. Sorry, I’m really not that ugly.”

Humor is one of the many ways to express ourselves in a non-aggressive manner. What other expressions can we use?

Reflection: How to Handle Our Emotions After These Strategies?

At the end of our session, I wondered, if most of these approaches are strategies, how can we still take care of our emotions? How do we handle the frustration or the anger that accumulates inside us over time even when we know how to resolve the task?

"Be empathetic towards both yourself and the other side at the same time," one responded.

"How about not taking our life so seriously? Everything can be a joke," Polina said.

"Why not cry? Why don't we allow ourselves to cry at work?" Camila wondered.

In essence, what even is "professional behavior"? If we are humans with emotions, why do we need to always be rational in the workplace? Is being professional a version that we pretend to be so we can blend in? Or is it one projection of us that is constantly evolving, adapting, innovating, so we can become the person who we want to see?

The more we discussed, the more I realized this is not only about our behavior in the workplace. It's about the philosophy inside us, the emotional intelligence that we are cultivating, and the person we want to become. It is not just an outward expression, but an inward practice.

Ending Notes

If you're reading this, it means that you've made it through the entire post and are probably quite dedicated to this topic. I want to encourage you to practice these methods through role play with a friend. I found that applying different strategies through role play was the most effective method during our sessions. Without practice, we will easily revert to our default strategy, which is most likely no strategy.

During one role play, my partner screamed, “Because of YOU, we will need to delay the entire project timeline!”

Her amazing acting completely freaked me out, and I gasped, “Give me a minute to think about it.” I quickly went through the strategy list above and decided to use “ask questions with curiosity” to understand the source of her anger, and gradually bring us back on track with the emotional microdose strategy. Seeing how different people approached scenarios that we were stuck with was a fruitful learning experience from collective intelligence.

Anyway, if you're interested in joining our learning journey, feel free to reach out :)

Notes

(a) Special thanks to Svitlana, Tianhui, Asma, Lavanya, Aonosha, Anu, and Dima for the brainstorming, and extra special thanks to Svit, Anu, and Tianhui for their exceptional editing.

(b) For simplicity, this post primarily considers gender dynamics, specifically females versus males, but its intention is to support minority groups. (c) All names used are fictional to ensure privacy protection.

(d) While many of the stories here are drawn from specific contexts, I have made every effort to avoid misinterpretation.

(e) Resources:
- Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal
- 15 principles for managing up

The latest paper on measuring AI performance is Are Emergent Abilities of Large Language Models a Mirage? (Schaeffer et al.). To give you some background knowledge, it is observed that AI performance has improved drastically from GPT2 to 3, and the main difference is the model scale, which is mostly the number of parameters when training the model (GPT-2 only leveraging 1.5 billion parameter, GPT-3 is over 100 times bigger).

Though emergent properties1 have been observed in large language models, this paper shows that: “emergent abilities seem to appear only under metrics that nonlinearly or discontinuously scale any model’s per-token error rate.” Because when they change to other metrics, that spike in performance no longer exists.

What you measure is a very interesting concept as Peter Drucker also said, “[only] what gets measured, gets managed.” In the art of doing science and engineering, Hamming also said, “you get what you measure.”

In giving a final exam in a course, say in the calculus, I can get almost any distribution of grades I want. If I could make up an exam which was uniformly hard, then each student would tend either to get all the answers right or all wrong. Hence I will get a distribution of grades which peaks up at both ends. If, on the contrary, I asked a few easy questions, many moderately hard, and a few very hard ones, I would get the typical normal distribution; a few at each end and most of the grades in the middle.

As you can probably see from all the examples, measurement is manipulatable. You can always show people crazy business growth to your both if you know how to manipulate it well. That’s why most of my data science work is thinking about what metrics to use among so many for integrity (you are using the right metrics), accuarcy (the metric is measured and compute correctly), and relatedness (business objective can be represented by the metrics). And this applies to life implicitedly too.

When I was fired, while a friend of mine got a easily return offer. I felt life quite unfair. What is my measurement here? It seems to be money, ease to coventional success, reputation, and life comfort. However, is that the north star metric to measure my career? Overtime, it seems to be a strong no for me.

Nowadays, I resonated with what Paul Graham said:

I do make some amount of effort to focus on important topics. Many problems have a hard core at the center, surrounded by easier stuff at the edges. Working hard means aiming toward the center to the extent you can. Some days you may not be able to; some days you'll only be able to work on the easier, peripheral stuff. But you should always be aiming as close to the center as you can without stalling. — How to work hard

This is also how I decide on what work to do and what job to take nowadays. Am I become closer to the center of my great work? Or I’m avoiding it because I’m afraid of failure, afraid of being poor, afraid of being undervalued, afraid of discomfort?

I’m not saying that we always need to going on the straight line toward our great work, because it’s not possible. Life is messy and we are messy too. However, if we have a rough sense of direction, we can get closer. Let me prove you with this drunken sailor problem.

It is well known the drunken sailor who staggers to the left or right with n independent random steps will, on the average, end up about square roote of n steps from the origin. But if there is a pretty girl in one direction, then his steps will tend to go in that direction and he will go a distance proportional to n. In a lifetime of many, many independent choices, small and large, a career with a vision will get you a distance proportional to n, while no vision will get you only the distance  In a sense, the main difference between those who go far and those who do not is some people have a vision and the others do not and therefore can only react to the current events as they happen.

If you are interested in how does it play out, check out these resources that I found: Interesting drunken sailor animation2 and your career is a random walk3. Yet, the essence of the concept is that even though we are lost and constantly make stupid and inaccurate decisions in our messy lives, if we know what our north star is, we can still be biased toward where we want to be. So, what metric is it that I choose for my life?

I have two: one for my career and one for relationships.

• For career: Get closer to working on my self-defined great work. I define great work as work that enables learning to be valued as an experience, not a transaction.4

• For relationships: The ability to learn about love and experience love.

Why does this matter? For instance, my old metric for my romantic relationship is "to be a great partner." And that's a bad metric because when I was treated miserably, I thought, "I'm still learning to be a great partner." So, I modified it to "be a great partner and find a great life partner." But that's not good enough either because I experienced a lot of growth and love through heartbreak, while under this metric, it is just a failure. That's why I refined it as "the ability to learn about love and experience love."

As for my career, as you can see, it is still very vague because I don't know much yet. However, no matter how lost I feel and how bleak the reality looks, with a rough idea of great work, I believe I will get proportionally closer as long as I keep that north star in my heart.

p.s.: Damn. Living like a drunken sailor, I feel so hopeful after writing this post. Thank you science and math!

Hence, I have explored another path that seems to be more suitable for me. Esther needs to explore, needs to test out different hypotheses through building different solutions. Let's start with Phase 2.

Phase 2: Sample and explore different solutions.

I want to build many side projects related to various learning hypotheses. Small is good, and I can begin by addressing my own learning problem personally.

Take my Spanish tutor, for example. You might ask, "Why not just use Duolingo to learn Spanish?" But for me, it's not truly helpful. Yes, Duolingo now has roleplay, but that's not exactly what I need.

I don't want an owl to explain things and tell me how other native speakers talk; I just practice my past tense extensively (see "The Bottleneck in Learning a New Language"). But all these language solutions want me to follow the curriculum they design, but they don't give me the exact stretch I need as a learner. Plus, I have no freedom to design and think how I want to learn. I always need to learn with the owl.

To conclude, there are lots of gaps in the solutions we are currently designing for learning, even if we are mindful of how we are learning and what we want to improve. That's why this stage of mine is to build lots of random learning solutions.

In this stage (aka my current stage now), I will build a lot of solutions that help me learn and share with others to use them. Probably 99% will fail for other users, but at least most of them will be helpful for me. Throughout the process, I will find an intersection between what I'm interested in and what others need, so I can explore and randomly sample niche problems. In the meanwhile, I will also build my skill sets as a full-stack developer that enables me to build whatever idea I have in my mind.

Phase 3: Scale promising solutions.

My solutions will probably be mostly tech-focused, so they have the ability to self-propagate if any of them are useful to others. So if one day, I really want to try to have a startup to build a solution, I already have an rough idea on what the market wants to have rather than starting from the ground up. With this accumulation of acumen and technical skill set that I’ve been training, I will likely have the ability to execute it too.

If I get really lucky enough, a few of the works I built during my Phase 2 gained popularity; things will be much easier. I don't need to worry about building a "sticky product" because I already tested and failed enough and found a direction.

Phase 1: I'm still so lost.

You must be wondering then what's my Phase 1 then?

My current problem now is choosing between Machine Learning and Product Engineering. As I've described to you, Phase 2 and 3 will be hugely related to building products, belonging to the product engineering category. Hands-on dirty work. But I've been interested in Machine Learning/Data Science for a few years now. And now I do not know what I'm more interested in. For building the product, I know it's supporting my belief, but I don't know how much I'm interested in the actual process of doing it. On the other hand, though I don't have concrete Machine Learning experience to tell my interest level either, I know I have a general interest in thinking about high-level stuff (e.g., doing research). So it's hard for me to make a choice here.

But my idea so far is, regardless of whether I pursue a product engineering or machine learning career, I will love to have a very, very chill but high-paying work so I can spend more time exploring learning on the side.

Opportunity

What kind of opportunity exists for me?

AI doesn't bring great opportunity to change the education system, but it also brings great opportunities for us as learners. Being an engineer isn't quite easy before, but it becomes significantly simpler with the assistance of AI. AI can write code for me, and I can learn with it. Me making tools that I want and need will be pretty manageable sooner or later.

Living in San Francisco also brings opportunities for new thoughts. San Francisco doesn't have great opinionated thinkers in thinking about learning, but there are lots of great learners and builders. People are opinionated on software as a tool and how to build the next generation of it (See "Tools for Thought"). They push beyond the frontier of the current system rather than integrating them with it. There is lots of technical learning and philosophies I can learn from it.

Anyway, this is a pretty feasible roadmap to begin with than slapping a groundbreaking solution out of my brain. I used to feel so scared of committing to some startup and diving deep into the education system. Because it feels so risky and painful. I think this is for Esther 10 years after. But now, I think, "Hmm... if Esther wants to learn X better, how can I build one for her?" Esther today can start.

Maybe that's how the journey will begin. I don’t know, but who knows?