On November 10, 2018, I was invited to speak at National Taiwan University during the university anniversary and the chemistry department’s anniversary celebration. Because it was a public talk, I needed my company’s approval first: legal, policy, and comms all had to sign off. The event was scheduled for the day after my flight landed in Taiwan, less than 12 hours after I arrived, and it had been a long time since I last gave a talk, so I almost backed out. But then I thought about giving back to my alma mater and my department, and about sharing my experience with friends and younger students who might be interested, so I pushed through and did the prep anyway. Below is the talk I gave that day, shared here for friends who could not be there in person.
My Background
Thank you to department chair Professor Cheng-Chih Hsu for the invitation, and to Ms. Hsu from the department office for coordinating everything. It is a real honor to take part in the 90th anniversary celebrations of NTU and the chemistry department. I graduated with my bachelor’s degree in 2008, the year of the 80th anniversary.
After graduating from NTU Chemistry in 2008, I did my military service. In 2009 I worked as a research assistant at NTU’s Graduate Institute of Environmental Engineering while preparing my applications to study abroad. In 2010 I came to the US for a master’s in environmental science at Lehigh University. Later I worked as a software engineer at Hook Mobile, a startup in Virginia, then in 2015 as a software engineer at SolarCity, the largest solar company in the US at the time. In 2016 Tesla acquired SolarCity, so I spent about three months at Tesla. Since January 2017, I have been a software engineer at Facebook. I am also the author of the blog 「半路出家軟體工程師在矽谷」 (A Software Engineer Who Changed Careers Midway, in Silicon Valley), where I share my journey into software engineering, what I see and hear in Silicon Valley, and my notes on learning and growing on my own.
Six Things I Wish I’d Known in College
One: stay open to new trends. I joked at the time that I wished I had known about Bitcoin in 2009, when it was under a dollar. The real advice underneath the joke: stay open to new trends, because you never know what opportunities they will open up.
Two: build breadth of knowledge beyond your major. Back in college, apart from my coursework, I did not do much to broaden my knowledge. If I could do it over, I would read more widely and build knowledge across all kinds of fields outside my major, so I could understand my own inclinations and figure out my direction in life. That way, I might have started learning programming earlier and would not have needed to switch careers midway.
Three: do more internships and get exposure to industry. This might be the thing I most wish I had done earlier: intern in industry during every winter and summer break, starting from freshman year, and use real work to learn what kind of career I actually want to build. When I interned at the Greenpeace office in Washington, DC, I confirmed that I did not want to work at an NGO lobbying for legislation. When I was at the agricultural library, I confirmed that I did not want to work in a government agency, depending on uncertain annual budgets. Every internship taught me something about what I actually enjoy doing.
Four: it is okay not to work in the field you majored in. I switched careers midway myself, and I have learned that many college graduates do not work in their major’s field. Chemistry is no exception. We should keep an open mind and look for work where our skills and strengths actually matter.
Five: cross-disciplinary collaboration and new applications are happening all the time. The tech industry keeps disrupting many traditional industries. If you have new ideas and find a good entry point, there are wide-open areas where you can be early and make a difference. Of course, if you already have a passion for one field and want to keep going deep in it, that is a perfectly good path too. Professor Cheng-Chih Hsu, selected as a Top 40 Under 40 analytical chemist, is a great example. There is more than one way to get there: go deep in one field or explore across several. What matters is the choice you make and the effort you put behind it.
Six: the most important ability is the ability to learn new things. Improving your skills often requires lifelong learning. In college, we should spend more effort understanding and mastering “learning how to learn.” When your ability to learn is strong, whether you are digging deep into a technology or picking up new knowledge, everything becomes much easier.
Three Rock Bottoms
The First: College, When My Grades Fell Off a Cliff
Growing up, I was always near the top of my class and my school. When I took the college entrance exam, I did not really know what I wanted to do, so I basically filled in my choices from electrical engineering, physics, and computer science on down. Chemistry was something like my sixth choice. Once I got into the chemistry department, I learned there is always someone better. Many of my classmates were Olympiad medalists, and the gap between me and the top students in the class was so big I could not even see their taillights.
My freshman grades were still okay; I ranked ninth in the department. Starting sophomore year, with more specialized courses, my grades fell off a cliff: I dropped to somewhere in the 50s, in the bottom half of the class. Because I could not find any passion in my chemistry coursework, I tried to transfer into the dentistry program. The transfer exam admitted six students, and I placed fifth. But my freshman physics, chemistry, and calculus average was only 79.69, under 80, and the dentistry program would not round it up for me, so the transfer still failed. That was a huge blow.
At the time I often felt disheartened and considered taking a leave of absence to retake the entrance exam. Luckily, my girlfriend at the time, now my wife, talked me out of it. She told me not to run away just because things got hard. Otherwise I probably would not be standing here today. In the end I did not transfer or leave, but I scraped through most of my core chemistry courses with grades in the low 60s, and I only managed to graduate because general education and outside-department courses pulled my grades up while my major courses stayed weak.
The Second: After Graduating, I Sent Out More Than 800 Applications and Got Nothing
My master’s thesis was on modeling the volatilization of mercury in natural waters. Before graduating in 2012, I had not found a job. From my graduation in May through September, I sent out more than 800 applications and did not get a single job. When I was job hunting, I applied anywhere in all 50 states that looked like it had a chance. I even applied for a job in American Samoa. But I only got a few phone interviews, and I was rejected by all of them.
With no other options, I had to start from an unpaid internship: first nearly three months at the Greenpeace office in DC, then at an event at the US National Agricultural Library I met the Taiwanese director there, Dr. Yao-Ching Liu, and got an unpaid internship opportunity. That really was the lowest point of my life: I had graduated months earlier, burned through a lot of money, and still had not found any work at all.
The library internship had me working with data, so I started learning to code, and the more I learned, the more hooked I got. So I poured nearly all my spare time into learning. After about five months of studying, I got my first opportunity as a software engineering intern, at a startup in Virginia. It was more than 40 miles from where I lived, and I spent over two hours commuting by car every day. Three months later, I was hired full time and officially became a software engineer. Only then did that rough stretch ease up a little.
The Third: Starting Over in Silicon Valley, Moving Eight Times in One Year
After working as a software engineer at the startup for one year and eight months, I convinced my wife to quit our jobs, which both felt stable by then, and start over from zero in Silicon Valley. Friends who heard about our decision could not believe it. My wife also felt that the CEO and CTO of my first company really liked me; they were the ones who gave a chance to a kid who had switched careers midway, and now I was going to leave. Would that be wrong of me? But I knew my learning curve and pace had slowed down. I wanted to learn more and challenge myself while I was young, so I talked her into it, and together we went from barely breaking even back to zero income again.
Because I felt my programming foundation was still not solid, and I did not want to spend another two years on a master’s degree, I enrolled in a three-month coding bootcamp. At the time we found an Airbnb in San Francisco: a house with four rooms housing nine people and three dogs. Our room was much smaller than our apartment room back in Maryland, but the rent was far more expensive. Every day I left at 8 in the morning for class and got home at 9 or 10 at night, six days a week, for three straight months.
After I finished the course, many of my classmates found jobs within two weeks to a month, but I kept getting rejected by companies after interviews. To save money, we moved again and again: in 2015 we moved eight times in one year. We lived all over the San Francisco Bay Area, north, south, east, and west. The shortest stay was just one day; the longest was a little over a month. Back then we dragged two big suitcases around from place to place, always hoping that at the next place I would find a job and we could settle down. Fortunately, about four months after finishing the course, I found work: a software engineer position at SolarCity, the largest solar company in the US. At last we could rent an apartment instead of constantly changing where we lived.
My chemistry grades were not good enough, and I barely graduated from NTU. In Silicon Valley, my background is really nothing worth mentioning; so many of my friends and colleagues are CS graduates from famous schools, with impeccable pedigrees. Why am I sharing this seemingly rough life story with you today? Because I am an ordinary person. Along the way I stumbled plenty: many stressful moments, moments of self-doubt, moments when people did not understand. To become a software engineer who switched careers midway, I gave up countless nights and weekends to improve myself, hoping the gap between me and others would slowly shrink. People usually only see the glamorous surface. The hardship behind it cannot be fully understood without living it yourself.
Closing
Fellow students, your lives are just beginning. There is a saying in the software industry: “You are supposed to struggle.” Struggling for your work is part of the deal. And: “Anything worth doing is going to be difficult.”
My two personal favorite quotes are:
Whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t, you’re right.
If someone else has done it then you can do it too. If no one has then you can be the first!
Sometimes we sell ourselves short and others doubt us. But when you have done your research and done enough homework, you have to have confidence in yourself and stand by your choice. After all, this is your life, and your exciting next chapter starts with the decisions and changes you make today.
I am Brian, a 2008 graduate of NTU’s chemistry department. Thank you all for coming to hear my talk today.
This post is the text of my talk at National Taiwan University on November 10, 2018. It was originally published on my former blog, 「半路出家軟體工程師在矽谷」 (now offline, preserved via the Wayback Machine), and was lightly edited when it moved to this site.
