Matt Chung's Site

Category: Mentorship

  • 20s for education, 30s for experience, 40s for career.

    20s for education, 30s for experience, 40s for career.

    In my mid twenties, I was blessed to receive some of the best career, and quite frankly, life advice. During that period of my life, I was working as a director of technology, leading a small group of engineers. But I was getting ready to throw in the towel. I lacked both the experience and confidence needed. So I reached out to my friend Brian, asking him if he knew anyone who could help me with “executive coaching”. Thankfully, Brian connected me with a C level executive: let’s call him Phil (that’s actually his name).

    Prod, provoke, encourage

    When I met Phil at the Jerry’s Deli located in the valley, one of the first things he flat out told me was that executive coaching is bullshit. Despite that belief, he essentially coached me and gave me some sage advice that now I get to pass on.

    Seth Godin once stated that “About six times in my life, I have met somebody, who, in the moment, prodded me, provoked me, encouraged me, and something came out on the other side”.

    Phil is one of those 6 people in my life.

    The best career and life advice

    The sage advice is simple and sounds similar to Nic Haralambous’s advice “Plan in decades. Think in years. Work in months. Live in days”. But Phil’s advice offers a different perspective, another angle:

    20s for education. 30s for experience. 40s for career

    This advice stuck with me and helps me (re) calibrate my goals and values. Of course, life takes its own twists and turns. But as the Dwight Eisenhower said “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything”

    What does that look like in practice?

    20s for education is NOT synonymous with school. It really means soaking up as much as possible. This learning might take place in school but not exclusively. Because learning can happen anywhere and everywhere.

    Fail and fail a lot.

    For us tech folks, this might be learning a new programming language, dissecting the ins and outs of your compiler, picking up marketing or public speaking skills.

    The list goes on and on.

    30s for experience. This is where the rubber meets the road. Where theory and practice intersect. This may mean you want to switch roles (like how I switched from being a systems engineer to a software developer) or switch companies so that you can apply all that hard earned knowledge that you acquired in your twenties.

    Finally, 30s will feed into your 40s, where you get to establish your career. Maybe working for a small company, where you get to wear a bunch of hats. Maybe for a large corporation, where you hone in or specialize in a particular niche. Or maybe as an entrepreneur, building your own product or service.

    Now what?

    I’m actually revisiting these words of wisdom. Right now. For the last six months or so, I’ve been overly focused on an upcoming promotion from a mid to senior level engineer at Amazon. Instead of chasing this new title — cause that’s all it really is — I’d rather redirect my focus and make mistakes, stretch myself and find opportunities that put me in a uncomfortable (but growth inducing) experiences.

  • Quotes from “My life story” by Veritasium

    Quotes from “My life story” by Veritasium

    During some down time this evening, I watched the below YouTube video clip filmed and produced by Veritasium and I absolutely loved hearing about his journey, especially about how becoming a father has fundamentally changed the way he views his time. Because I’m in a similar boat: My life looks nothing like it did a little less than a year ago, when my daughter (Elliott) was born. She’s a handful but worth all the sleep the deprivation.  I’m so thankful to have such a wonderful wife who thrives as a mother (seriously: mother of the year award) and has more patience than a meditating monk.

    Anyways, the video “My Life Story” spoke to me and here are some quotes that really resonated:

     I was looking for that well defined path toward a creative career

    I’ve searched for that linear path towards a rewarding and meaningful career and I think to some degree, I’m still searching. Ideally, I could blend my work as a software developer (my dream job just a few years ago) with creative writing.

    “I reached a breaking point .. I was 28 years old and I had spent my whole life up until then building up back up plans, and doing the things that were most likely to succeed …”

    I love learning and love challenging myself and love learning more about the craft of computer science: these are all things that motivate me to pursue my master’s in computer science. But on some level, I know deep down that I want to write and read and teach and mentor: the things that spark joy in my life.

    “Sometimes I think its a blessing not to know how bad you are. If I had known I would have quit. But I didn’t. So I kept working at it

    Working at Amazon for the last 4.5 years, I now realize what it feels like to work side by side with top talent. And had I been fully aware of the gaping holes in my skills and knowledge, I don’t think I would’ve applied to work where I do now.

    I’m all too aware of the survivor bias, that is if you look at the subset of people who are successful at a particular thing, well your kinda ignoring all the experience of the many more people who did not manage to succeed

    Yes yes yes. We often look at all the people who “succeed” and listen to their sage advice of “follow your passion”, overlooking the fact that many many people “follow their passion” and fail to see their dreams manifest.

    Having kids has also made me reevaluate the types of videos I want to be making .. and what I want to be doing with my time

    Although I don’t make videos but as a father, I’m constantly evaluating how I spend my time because I know, deep down, what’s going to matter 10 years or 20 years or 30 years is this: my friends and family. Not fortune or fame (although those things are nice as well).

     

     

  • Daily Review – Day ending in 2020/08/31

    Daily Review – Day ending in 2020/08/31

    Yesterday

    Most interesting part of yesterday was a 1 on 1 video Chime chat that my co-worker scheduled with me. What started off with me stepping through our code base (for a set of features I added to the dataplane) morphed into a lengthy discussion around mental health and burning out and the idea of feeling confident in our own abilities. They had shared with me that they were starting to feel physically ill and after paying visits to the doctor for a full body check up, they discovered their symptoms manifest from mental health issues.

    I’m very familiar with these feelings and can empathize.

    In turn, I shared that I prioritize mental health and well being above all else and that I attend weekly therapy sessions (for the past four years) to deal with very similar issues that they are encountering: learning how to set boundaries, learning how to believe in oneself (i.e. imposter syndrome). It’s not as if I’ve completely overcome and mastered these problems; in fact, I wrestle with these issues — every day — but I now have have tools and data points to support me.

    Although I love working as a software engineer, I sometimes wonder if I would pivot into a position or line of work where I can directly help people. It feels meaningful.

    Writing

    • Kept up with my writing cadence, publishing two small blog posts (a daily review and summary notes for the SPIN operating system structure)

    Music

    • Sang and played my own original guitar song I titled “Elliott’s in the house” for little Elliott while she was bouncing up and down on the couch while dinner, her mom guiding spoon fulls of avocado and noodles in her dime sized mouth

    Graduate School

    • Read first paper “SPIN”, performing a first pass on the paper (good to reinforce the learning material since there’s so much information packed into the lectures)
    • Finished watching lectures on “Introduction to Virtualization” (learned that with paravirtualization, less than 2% code modification is necessary to integrate nicely with the underlying hypervisor)

    Work

    • Represented my team at the weekly operations meeting for my organization, stepping through all the high severity issues that I encountered and how they affected our metrics
    • Finished a first draft of my design document, a paper that I am presenting to my organization today
    • Met with a colleague of mine and confirmed that he will be participating in my fireside chat that I am organizing on behalf of Asians@ Amazon (I’m on the professional and development committee)

    Family

    • Gathered all the necessary documents (e.g. 2 months of pay stubs, last 2 years of W-2, etc) to submit to our lender since we needed to send an offer in for a house by today and needed a preapproval letter.

    Today

    Organization

    • Plan day and week out by reviewing OmniFocus forecast events
    • Process e-mail inbox down to zero
    • Migrate sticky notes (written down while walking dogs in the morning) into writing tracker and OmniFocus

    Graduate School

    • Begin second series of lectures for advanced operating systems, lectures on “Memory Virtualization” (exciting stuff, I think)

    Work

    • Polish one pager design document for work and present
    • Review dashboard in preparation for organization wide, weekly operations meeting

    Family

    • Morning routine of walking dogs at local Northacres park, blending a strawberry and banana smoothie (wait: no much coconut milk so that’s out of the question), eating lunch together, bathing Elliott as part of her night time routine
    • Put together loan documents so that we can get a pre-approval for house that we are putting an offer in

    Word of the day

    insolent – adjective (adj) – showing a rude and arrogant lack of respect.

    My strict teacher does not tolerate insolent behavior in her classroom

    What are you grateful for?

    I’m glad I’m writing down what I’m grateful for because its so easy for me to get trapped inside my own brain, my own world, when work (on call specifically) feels like a tornado.

    • Jess being an amazing mom (so patient, so communicative) and leading parenting my example

    Feelings

    • I had lamented and avoided writing a paper at work and realized, after setting ink on paper for just a few minutes, I actually enjoyed the task but had to overcome my own fear of “not knowing enough” or “looking stupid” in front of my colleagues
    • As mentioned above in the summary, I feel good when I can help and serve others. Not in a purely intellectual way, but mentally and emotionally. This is important and perhaps will steer me in a new (or same or different) direction with my career

  • Putting your mentor on a pedestal

    Presenting at DevOps London ExchangeLast night, I presented (deckslide here) on AWS Lambda at DevOps London Exchange. I really enjoy public speaking, but it wasn’t always that way.

    In fact, I used to hate it – feared it.

    I vividly remember an embarassing instance in high school Spanish. My classmate and I had to do a presentation. I got up, and stood in front of the class for 20 minutes.

    That’s it. I just stood there. I didn’t say a SINGLE word the entire time.

    Fast forward to college. By this time, I really needed help with public speaking. My uncle suggested joining Toastmasters.

    I visited a few clubs and I wasn’t very impressed. But then, I discovered Sherman Oaks Toastmasters.

    I met Peter Bunce. He was very passionate about Toastmasters. He was very discplined. For 20 years, he rarely (if ever) missed the weekly meetings. His entire life was devoted developing the Toastmasters club.

    We used to get coffee and dinner. He assigned himself as my mentor. Honestly, I was hoping for someone else. He was tooeccentric. He didn’t encapsulate all the characteristics of my ideal rolemodel.

    Setting the right expectations

    I’ve always had unreal expectations from those who I looked up to. Peter was no exception. Him being a great speaker wasn’t enough for me. I had unrealistic expectations of what one mentor can offer – let alone any person.

    “If you should end up with a teacher who doesn’t seem right for you, first look inside.”

    —George Leonard

    A note to my mentor

    I sent Peter a message on Facebook this morning. But he’ll never read it.

    Peter Bunce passed away a few weeks ago. I wish that I had reached out to him sooner.

    If there’s someone who mentored you, be it informally or formally, or touched your life in some way, don’t wait to tell them that they moved you. Take a moment to reach out to them, to say thank you.