!! Entry is Work In Progress !!
TLDR: American Dominance is a combined result of robust institutions, strong capital markets (both seed and public), and power projection through military might. National interests change, but ideology is often constrained by geopolcal realities. At times, however, ideology can influence the direction of national interests, as seen in the case of the United States with the backlash against U.S. led globalization where benefits have mostly gone to capital owners over blue collar workers.

Recently I wrote the following message to the committee I led in UPE:



I thought I would expand on that here a bit more with a few precepts that I have learned.

1. Take Aim.

Figuring out what you are optimizing for is the most important thing you can do so consider the question carefully: "What does success look like to you?". A few follow-ups could be: "What college experience do you want?" and "Is what you are doing creating the life you want?". If you are unsure about this, which is perfectly fine, you should still set an imperfect goal as it serves as a way to find meaning, purpose, and direction in the chaos of life. This goal need not be static, as your circumstances and wants change. What matters is the commitment to a goal and the accountability of failing. "Taking Aim" requires you to think deeply about the life you want, and be vulnerable to missing those targets - which is uncomfortable as most failure is. But it is infinitely preferable to sleepwalking to a life you don't want to live.

2. Compare yourself to others.

This is contrary to most of the advice others give, which normally ranges from: "Run your own race " to "Compare yourself today to yourself yesterday and not someone else's today". I strongly disagree with the first sentiment and would give a modification of the second sentiment. The market and hierarchies of competencies are how people organize themselves, be it in the workplace, academia, or socially. While this mindset, when taken to its extreme, can be incredibly harmful -- everyone hates name-dropers, status seekers, sizing up people -- it still serves as a great tool to set an aim. You should find people who are in the positions that you want and use them as an aim point. Self-iterate yourself until you reach that point. Comparing yourself to them should instill a sense of urgency, especially if they are the same age as you, as often those who win are those who get to objectives first. Be realistic about how fast you are iterating and do not be discouraged if the goal is further than you think.

3. Have a Better Network than you Deserve.

This is a common refrain, but worth repeating: The main benefit of institutions like UCLA is not the classes (I have yet to take a CS class that enrolled less than 50 students), but rather the network of people you will be surrounded by. I have been incredibly lucky to have found a community and a group of people willing to back me and them. Be open to meeting new people, as I said in the above message, the EV of most people here is positive. But, be selective with those you elevate and keep and constantly re-evaluate this portfolio. Your friends, and those you associate with, are a reflection of you because they influence you to be a reflection of them.

Many people would know me as a low-risk person. All my holdings are in index funds with a 50, 30, 20 split between the SP500, Rusell 1000 Growth, and Nasdaq 100. Perhaps, that makes it surprising that I am returning to Plaid, a smaller and thus more risky tech company. I think I made that decision with sound reasoning and thought sharing it would help others navigate their offers and futures.

Compensation

I have been very fortunate to receive a strong offer from Plaid. Compensation is an important part of any job - no one can pay rent in feelings, passion, or joy. Plaid has offered me a strong base salary, with a generous stock grant. While there are current headwinds against fin-tech compared to the 2021 boom, and strong tailwinds for AI companies, I believe that the compensation at Plaid remains strong. Furthermore, I am given my stocks at a lower implied valuation than the last round. Current tech stocks are significantly overvalued, and AI companies more so, and I think that Plaid is better poised for growth.

Based on the math, had I returned to Tesla, its stock would need to be 10x to match the TC I got with Plaid. Plaid's base is higher than the entire TC I would have been offered at Tesla.

Had I gone to a FAANG, like Google, its stock price would need to double to match my TC or Plaid's valuation would need to be cut by half.

Plaid is still a scale-up, and I am excited by the internal metrics I watch. That is not to say we have no challenges.

The Information recently wrote an article where they claim:

Plaid is a victim of circumstance. The fintech startup is working on a secondary share sale, led by mutual fund Franklin Templeton, at a valuation of $5.5 billion or $6 billion, I've learned. That's less than half the $13.4 billion valuation it notched at the height of the zero- interest-rate startup boom in 2021.

Being granted stock at that lower valuation insulates me from the risk of a lower tender offer raise and position me to capitalize on growth.

Growth

Plaid positions me better for personal growth. I watched it firsthand when I was interning there. They are not shy in promoting engineers who deserve a higher level. If you are willing to grow into the role, Plaid is willing to grant it to you. From my understanding, the average time to promotion for a new grad is around 1 to 2 years, but some hit L4 in 10 months.

When I spoke to Zach last year during breakfast and questions, one thing we both strongly agreed on is the strength of talent at Plaid. As a rough approximation, the top four schools our engineers come from are: U.C. Berkeley, Stanford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Carnegie Mellon. Not only that but as I wrote in a blog post for Plaid:

However, of my four internships, I found my team members at Plaid to have been both the smartest and most inclined to help.

And, I seriously believe that. I'll touch on that in the culture section.

Culture

The culture at Plaid is incredibly unique and I cannot wait to return. I still remember the gestures of kindness I experienced. Some examples (using initials to protect privacy):

WT: Bought me very nice Japanese Whiskey and sake, and upgraded my plane ticket home back to UCLA. Kept me company when I was alone in New York, responded to Slack messages all the time because he knew I needed someone.

TW: Took me to the Strand bookstore. When I was stuck on a technical challenge, he hopped onto a Google Meet and we worked through it. Similar to WT, he responded to Slack messages all the time because he knew I needed someone.

HZ: The best manager I ever had! He cared about my career growth and personal life and included me in the team onsite despite not having the allocated budget from Plaid to do so. Plaid has a reputation of having amazing ICs, but less strong managers. It is my luck to get what is considered one of the best leaders at Plaid. This is probably because he never stopped being an IC. Despite leading one of the largest teams at Plaid, he still asked me technical questions and helped me with my technical challenges.

HS: Despite being a high-level manager, he always had time to talk (and play ping pong with me!). He is also considered one of the best managers at Plaid. He helped me understand the business side of Plaid, and was always willing to help me with my career growth. He visited me at UCLA. Most of all, he bought me a small protein powder keychain that he also had.

EL: One of the strongest tech leads (or I think software architects I have met). Invited me over to his apartment for dinner. Willing to help me with any technical challenge I had. When I left Plaid, he gifted me two books: "The Mythical Man Month" and "The Phoenix Project" which he wrote, "Read this and you'll quickly ascend to E8 — this book is the I-ching of software eng."

MW: Certainly the coolest engineer I have met - I love that he let me rev his motorcycle! We talked a lot about my problems and he taught me how to get fit. I loved that our 1 on 1s were at the gym. Best stock picker as well.

Not Blind Loyalty

While there are many upsides for Plaid, I am not naive and I am not blindly loyal to the company. The most likely reason I leave would be if there is a doom spiral. Falling growth, leading to falling morale, leading to a lower valuation, leading to our best engineers and leaders leaving, leading to falling growth.

Merit is important. However, it is not the only thing that matters. Management and leadership need to have visibility into your work, and you need to be able to communicate that effectively. Your job is to make it as easy as possible for others to advocate for you.

When a manager is asking why you are most qualified for a raise, promotion, etc., in a meeting of their peers, they are also thinking would anyone think poorly of them for advocating for you.

Some chaos is necessary in life; it is the agent of change and the chance for things to be better. However, excessive chaos is widely damaging. I expressed that when I was at Tesla. I was isolated (no other interns in my team or division), overworked (60-80 hour work weeks, and frequently worked on Saturday and Sunday), and did not feel the backing or comradery from my team.

I always tell people that I do not recommend working at Tesla, and I still do not. The hours are long, the pay is sub-par for tech, and the culture (from what I experienced) is unforgiving^. I lost relationships that were deeply important to me, became very unfit (see my picture under the Tesla tab), and was a very unpleasant person to be around.

But, in my less productive moments, I think back and realize many of the challenges I experienced were a result of my arrogance and guilt. Arrogant that I could do 70-hour work weeks (including Saturday and Saturday), and feeling guilty if I did not.

My overtime pay was over $60/hour, that was at least a dollar a minute. My grandma, someone I look up to, would sometimes tell me about the challenges of living in China while walking me to elementary school. Saving and rationing food tickets, she lived in a scarcity-led world. Many do not realize how far China has come. For many Chinese, this is the first or second generation where life is significantly different than what life would have been like a millennium or two ago. She instilled that mindset in me, so it felt extravagant or even spoiled to not take that opportunity to work overtime.

This led me to be burnt out. I would take the 8AM shuttle from Sunnyvale to Tesla's Palo Alto campus, and then the 7PM shuttle back home every workday. Then, I'd shower and begin recruiting for next summer (I did this internship during the Fall, the prime SWE hiring time) until I slept around midnight. On the weekends at the Tesla dealership selling cars (they paid my overtime rate!).

I was miserable. I gained ~5kgs (~11lbs), which was ~7% of my body weight. I sabotaged my relationship. I was anxious, neurotic, and just unpleasant to be around. And that was because of me. I chose to accept the internship (in something I have little interest in firmware). I actively chose to do more overtime. I neglected to build social relationships in the Bay (I had many friends there that I could have reached out to).

So, when I came back to UCLA, for many months, I was haunted by this reality. That my life has fallen apart and it was because of my choices. I keep this quote on my website as a reminder that I am responsible for keeping excessive chaos at bay, for maintaining my sanity, and to protect what truly matters to me.

^ Tangent: To be clear, I have no problem working long hours to push things through. At Plaid, where I was salaried, and thus had no economic interest to work longer hours, I often came into the office on the weekends and stayed well past 9PM. The difference was at Plaid, my team was behind me, at Tesla they were not.

One of my biggest concerns has been the proliferation of noise in my life, and its effect on my attention span and ability to perform deep work. How addicted are we to constant distractions? How difficult do we find reading long pieces of text? I think podcasts are a good example of this. I started to get into it when I was in high school — starting with Hello Internet as a way to entertain myself while walking or doing mindless tasks. But, how soon that became a constant habit. I subvocalize, so I need to listen to my own internal monologue to think. I realized that if I kept letting other voices into my head, I could not hear my own.

Modern empires aren't built with tanks — they're financed by banks.