I started this blog in 2012, taking notes on my internships in the environmental field. After I moved to California in 2015 and started working in Silicon Valley, I began sharing my job hunting and interview experience. In 2017, alongside the blog, I also started a Facebook page.

So far I have published 95 posts on this blog, mostly about my own learning, job hunting in the US, observations and reflections on Silicon Valley, and all kinds of everyday life experience. Today I want to talk about why I believe everyone should write, or create content in any form.

Writing Started as Something I Did for Myself

I started writing to record my life and to force myself to internalize my experience and turn it into conclusions I could state clearly. When I go back and read what I wrote in 2012, or many of the posts after that, I sometimes cringe at my past self’s writing. That ongoing process taught me to sharpen my thinking, figure out what I wanted to say, and get it down in writing. I have always known I am not a writer, and my prose is not great. But my goal was never to enter these posts into a literary contest. It was to share my life experience in a way I find meaningful.

Many readers have told me, in comments or private messages, that a particular post encouraged them, that an experience showed them a different possibility, or that a livestream interview gave them a clearer model and method to learn from. Messages like these over the past few years have convinced me this is truly meaningful: every person it helps makes the time and energy I spent preparing feel well spent.

You Do Not Need to Be an Expert to Share

You might hesitate, or wonder whether you have anything worth sharing. You might feel that only someone at the very top of a field is qualified to share. But in reality, the world needs knowledge from every stage, every field, and every level. Elon Musk shares plenty of advice, but the gap between him and most of us is so large that his advice often does not translate into anything practical. I really like this analogy: Say you have just finished high school: you have a complete command of the middle-school subjects because you have just lived through them, so you can speak directly to younger students’ blind spots in their preparation and their anxiety about the future. The most useful help we ever get comes from people who went through a similar experience just a little earlier than we did.

Sharing Is Training in Itself

Sharing what you know forces you to reflect on your experience, distill your knowledge, and express yourself clearly. These benefits matter in every field. At work, I see top performers in many domains reflect, summarize, and share in an organized way, and none of them got there without long practice. Starting early builds a habit that strengthens your day job throughout your career.

The Unexpected Rewards

Of course, writing and creating bring many extra benefits. Through creating, I have met remarkable, interesting people I would otherwise never have met. My posts have also been republished by outlets like Crossing, Business Weekly, Business Today, The News Lens, and UDN. None of this was on my radar when I started writing, and all of it motivates me to keep going.

Start Today

So here is my sincere invitation: whatever your profession is, whatever topics interest you, and whatever your experience looks like, start today. Spend a little time putting together your first piece. You can publish it on Medium, start a blog, open a fan page, start a YouTube channel, and so on. Almost no one will see it at first, but if you keep going, the practice itself will bring you many benefits. And one day, your work might help someone who needs exactly that content at exactly that moment.

Creators I Recommend

Finally, let me share some creators I recommend:

工程師作家的轉行人生 (The Engineer’s Wife): My dear wife’s fan page. Besides sharing her journey from civil engineering to creative writing to software engineering, she explores many topics around women, marriage, careers, motherhood, happiness, and courage. Friends keep telling me lately: “Brian, I (or my friend) read your wife’s posts and really resonated with them!” I keep assuming the praise is for me, and more and more often it is for her. XD

矽谷阿雅 Anya Cheng: Anya started as a journalist, earned an MBA in the US, and built a brilliant career through her own hard work, eventually leading marketing for consumer products and technology at Facebook. She writes about marketing, living and job hunting in the US, and hosts many livestream interviews. My own livestreams were inspired by Anya, and my very first one last year was the two of us interviewing each other. I learn something from Anya every time, and her positive, optimistic energy always rubs off on me.

矽谷貧窮線下的掙扎: A personal finance blog by a friend. The content is substantive, and every post offers an eye-opening insight. You can tell from the research behind each post how much care goes into them, and the occasional humor in the writing will make you smile.

台灣工程師的矽谷故事: Winston’s blog. Winston is the author of the book Start Over at 30: It’s Not Too Late. I have followed his blog almost from the beginning, and I bought his book too; my dear wife even wrote her reflections after reading it! Winston is now a technical co-founder at a Silicon Valley startup. With no US degree, he came straight from Taiwan to work in the US and carved out a path entirely his own. He is a remarkable person.

我是有生產力的人: The blog of Scott, a former Facebook engineering manager who was, at the time, president of Grindr, the world’s largest gay dating platform. I found his blog after I started learning to code, and I have learned a great deal from his values, his approach to life and work, and his book recommendations.

vgod’s blog: A blog I discovered after I started learning to code, and have followed ever since. The author is a senior engineer at Dropbox. Many of vgod’s posts taught me, a career changer, a great deal; we have never met, but I deeply admire him.

鱸魚: A Silicon Valley engineer who writes beautifully. His research is organized and thorough, and his clear structure carries you from beginning to end. Every post leaves me in admiration. Another senior engineer writer I truly respect.

葉蒂芬／出走社會學家的音樂之旅: The second guest on my livestream interviews. A sociologist and musicologist who is now a user experience researcher in Silicon Valley, looking at many American issues through the lenses of humanities, history, and sociology.

Dr. Joyce Sun, CA Psychologist: The guest on my most recent livestream interview. A licensed psychotherapist in California and an expert on mental health, she helps us understand our various struggles through the lens of the Asian experience.

北加路人日記: Notes on a Taiwanese life in the US, parenting, and work, with plenty of Silicon Valley observations.

矽谷資深女工程師: Observations on Silicon Valley and women at work, sharing all kinds of Silicon Valley workplace news.

矽谷，Bonjour！: The fan page of the author of the travel book San Francisco Pocket Map, sharing travel and life writing.

Elsa Ho／國際職場與文化觀察筆記: Elsa has worked as a user experience consultant in Tokyo, Taipei, and Shanghai, and is now a user experience researcher at Facebook. Her writing covers cultures and careers in different places.

矽谷美味人妻: A well-known Silicon Valley food writer sharing all kinds of dishes and recipes, and lately her own vegetable garden too. Together with Dr. IC, she produces the “Silicon Valley Insight” podcast, offering interviews and perspectives on Silicon Valley.

Dr. IC: Author of the Venture Two Cents blog, focused on innovation and startups. Recently he has been producing the “Silicon Valley Insight” podcast together with 矽谷美味人妻， offering interviews and perspectives on Silicon Valley.

Chef Jim Chen 矽谷吉姆: Jim has a US MBA and worked as an operations executive at a medical device company before bravely chasing his dream: culinary school, then cooking at well-known San Francisco restaurants, including Michelin-starred ones. Jim now works as a chef at LinkedIn.

USA 美國工作及旅遊生活經驗分享: I have followed his writing on US work, life, real estate, taxes, travel, and fun facts since very early on. He publishes a lot, across many categories, and his blog is a knowledge station that broadens my horizons.

After writing all this, I notice that most of the people I follow are in Silicon Valley, and quite a few of them write for Facebook, my own company. My guess is that Facebook’s open culture attracts people with exactly these traits.

And if you want one big collection in a single place, Crossing gathers hundreds of authors from around the world, with perspectives across fields and countries, so you can find plenty of quality content in one spot.

Which creators do you recommend? Please share your list. I hope this post and everything I have argued above will inspire you to start writing, creating, and putting your work out there. If you already have a blog or a fan page, feel free to share it in the comments so more people can discover your work.

This post was originally published on my former blog, 「半路出家軟體工程師在矽谷」 (April 12, 2020; the site is now offline, and the full text is preserved via the Wayback Machine). It was lightly edited when it moved to this site.