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Date published: 20-Jul-2022
Date modified: 20-Jul-2022

My Journey to Tech

MY STORIES (BACKGROUND)

I have hinted some bits here and there but let me pieces them together for ya: I came from a "nhà có điều kiện" family, which gives me an opportunity to study abroad from 10th grade. Due to a chronic brain-related issue that is susceptible to stress, my parents insisted I should go to a more relaxed school (VAS Hanoi & St Anthony's anyone?). In parallel, I lived under a huge shadow - my older sister. I'm talking about an Ams-er, always top class, who went to LSE then Yale and beyond. One more thing I should add, my family, as a heavy business oriented, have tried to push me to the business side every step of the way. I accidentally got into programming from a bad intention. In 8th grade, I modded a fighting game so my character can hit a bit harder compared to my friends. I love the tinkering part of it and start coming up with side projects from then on. (Funny enough this was the time when school started teaching Pascal, which came quite natural to me)

Around the time to pick college in my HS senior year, my family's business went bankrupt and my parents told me they would not be able to support me. My grade did not qualify me for any full scholarships so I was faced with the pressure to return to Vietnam. To overcome this, I made a series of rational decisions: pick the cheapest college with the most scholarships and loaded myself with any part time jobs I found available. At one point I juggled 4 jobs, 5 classes with extracurricular.

College was both the best and the worst of time coming in with the above plan. Obviously I picked CS and met great professors, whose passion got into me. In order to be allowed to pay the tuition in parts, I literally had to cry and beg the financial office. I met life-long friends with similar interests. Due to the inconsistent part time jobs, I regularly missed rent and had to skip meals. I met my now-waifu from organizing hackathons. The brain-related issue came back a dozen times when I needed to pull an all-nighter. I secured two great internships at Shell TechWorks, which let me work on actual end to end production solutions. I got rejected by hundreds of companies, some even refused to look at my resume. I finished college in 3 years with a bit more stable income.

Before graduation, I landed a return offer with Shell along with a dozen offers from all kinds of companies: Startups, Big Tech, Big Non-Tech, and Hybrid (Big non tech's incubator). I created a manual scoring model, weighted on various dimensions such as brand, team culture, comp, etc (can go into details in a later post). I ended up joining Shell based on its score. While it did not have the best pay (sub 90k) or brand, the culture and the varieties of project topics surely made up for it. Within 1.5 years there, I had the opportunities to work on cutting-edge technology, learned about best practices in software development, had 1 pending patent, and even got to explore electrical and mechanical engineering works. Combined with great teammates and manager, I was always learning and feeling supported even when I jump into the next career move.

Before Amazon, there were others tempting offers here and there. While they paid a lot more, I just don't feel the click and it doesn't pass my scoring model. On the other hand, Amazon was something else: I get to wear many different hats, my impact is on a larger scale, which results as a bump in my title. Fun fact: my entire interview lasted within a week, from initial recruiter call to the offer (which was extended 30 minutes after the final round).

I've been at Amazon for about 2 year now. While I cannot deny the intensity, I have a lot of fun.

WHAT I THINK GOT ME HERE (LEARNING/RETROSPECT)

  • Luck! I had a lot of opportunities but the most fortunate thing was that my passion happened to be in demand.
  • Tons of support behind the scenes from my sister, my wife, and my friends. I could not have made it here without them.- Expand my options and optimize on happiness in the long run. You are missing out a lot if you just aim for FAANG as your goal.
  • If something is not the way you like, don't wait for change, be the change. Ask, beg, find loopholes, etc exhaust all the options before giving up.
  • Make your own path. Be open to advice and guidance but apply them only if you think it is best. There are more than one way to success.
  • "Looking back, my life has been nothing but failure" - I mentioned this before. I failed a lot and at first it was taxing but once you get to a numbing point, you look at it with a different perspective and it becomes a valuable experience

FINAL THOUGHTS

I think mentorship is the next skill I want to develop, which is why I am quite involved here. With that being said, hmu, introduce yourself, grab a coffee if you are in NYC. I'm in VTS TechSphere as well if that's easier for you (pls don't post the link though).