Random

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

I have always said that this club has had the highest ROI of anything I have done at UCLA. If I had one regret from college, it would be not doing more fun social events. My other regret is that I did not mentor younger officers more intentionally. Good luck - I truly believe each and every one of you will be successful.

I thought I would expand on that here 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. Ask yourself what success looks like, what college experience you want, and whether your actions are creating the life you want. An imperfect goal is still better than drifting.

2. Compare Yourself to Others

This is contrary to a lot of modern advice. Hierarchies of competence are real, and the market often reveals where people stand. Comparison can be unhealthy when it becomes vanity, but it is still useful as an aim point if you are realistic and disciplined about it.

3. Have a Better Network Than You Deserve

The greatest benefit of an institution like UCLA is the network of people around you. Meet people, be social, and be selective about the relationships you cultivate. The people around you shape the kind of person you become.

Many people know me as low-risk. My holdings are mostly in index funds, so returning to Plaid, a smaller and riskier company than a public giant, might look surprising. I think it was still the right decision.

Compensation

Plaid offered me a strong base salary and a generous stock grant. Being granted stock at a lower implied valuation than the last round gives me better risk-adjusted upside than many of the alternatives I considered.

The Information recently wrote an article on Plaid's valuation haircut. That lower tender valuation actually matters for employee upside if the company keeps growing from there.

Growth

Plaid positions me better for personal growth. They promote engineers who deserve it and are willing to let strong people grow into the role. The talent bar is high, and the average engineer is both smart and inclined to help.

Culture

The culture at Plaid is unique. I still remember the gestures of kindness I experienced: teammates helping me outside working hours, managers making time for my growth, and technical leaders investing in me personally.

Not Blind Loyalty

While there are many upsides to Plaid, I am not blindly loyal to the company. The main reason I would ever leave is a doom spiral: falling growth, lower morale, a lower valuation, strong people leaving, and then even lower growth. But I do not believe that is where the company is today.

It is because you do not play the game. You resist forming the social bonds necessary to be seen as a team member. Because you see them as trivial and unimportant, insisting that merit and merit alone is the only important metric for advancement.

Merit is important, but it is not the only thing that matters. Leadership needs visibility into your work, and you need to make it easy for others to advocate for you.

Sometimes your life falls apart very badly and you realize that it was your fault and that you knew it and ignored it.

I keep this quote on my website as a reminder that I am responsible for keeping excessive chaos at bay. My Tesla internship was the clearest example of that. I was overworked, anxious, and miserable - and a meaningful part of that came from my own arrogance and guilt.

I still have no issue working hard. The difference is whether the effort is sustainable and whether the team is behind you. At Plaid I often worked long hours because I cared; at Tesla the hours felt corrosive.

We will make the whole universe a noise. The melodies and silences of Heaven will be shouted down. But we are not yet loud enough.

One of my biggest concerns is the proliferation of noise in my life and its effect on my attention span. Podcasts, notifications, endless stimulation - all of it can crowd out your own inner monologue. Deep work requires silence.

To the parade commander falls the task of giving the last command on parade to British troops in Hong Kong - a slow march into a new order.

Modern empires are not built with tanks. They are financed by banks.