First Day working in a SF AI Startup
Start from 0 again
With feelings of uncertainty and disorientation from leaving my hacker house (powerhouse), I walked into the office.
However, I quickly realized that there was no onboarding guide at all. Not even one piece of documentation is available. The codebase felt more like a team project than a company project, and while I received some verbal instructions from other interns, my founder was too busy interviewing to provide me with much guidance. When my founder did have free time, he simply said, “Tell me about your thoughts first.”
Despite the lack of guidance, the 0-1 muscle I built for the last two months really came in handy. I drew up a workflow map, focused on my proof of concept, and began writing my own vision, OKR, and timeline. I approached the project as if it were my own, keeping the timeline tight.
People here are nice, but that is not the main reason why I consider today a good day. It is because, in the last hour, I used AI to create fun learning concepts, even if it was just basic prompt engineering. My team's original prompt was very complex; they wanted AI to do 100 things in a prompt that overwhelmed it. (Yes, Baby Cruise and AI are my pets. I am empathetic.)
For me, I don’t worry about whether this product needs to satisfy this or that, and blah blah blah. I only think about 'What would I want to learn?' and engineer based on my joy of learning. I was delighted by the AI outputs I generated. It felt as though a flower had blossomed in my heart.
Today, I learn that even though I’m still scared, I might be at the right place.
This is the 59th post from my 60-day writing challenges. This post, I want to dedicate it to my hacker house (powerhouse) housemates. All the things they taught me have come in handy.
Happy to hear :):)