I didn't do a 2023 review as I was occupied with a project then. Now, at the end of 2024, looking back two years gives me greater perspective given that I've completed my MBA and started working full-time. Like in my 2022 review, I will cover meaningful things that happened over 2023-24, and significant lessons I had. This time, I'll also add my next year outlook.
And two more things: (1) at the point of publication, I don't have photos included as I'm still in the middle of my move; and (2) I'm using WhiteWind for the first time, which is a third-party blogging platform built on top of Bluesky's Atmosphere Protocol. I'll talk more about the latter in a future blog as it is rather revolutionary. Give me a follow on Bluesky if you haven't already!
Meaningful things
- Completing my MBA. Obviously, this has to be here. It was a great experience making many new friends and learning in a school environment once again. Amid all the celebration and fun, I am most thankful for the means to bring my parents over to Georgetown to witness the graduation. This might be their last time they would travel to the US in their lifetime, and I'm glad they were able to enjoy it along with two of my brothers.
- Being part of the McGowan Fellows Program and family. This was an opportunity of a lifetime, and it made a more significant impact on my mindset and personal development than the MBA itself. Getting to know and becoming close to nine MBAs from nine other schools has made a profound impact on my growth and well-being.
- Leading at the MBA Volunteers, Georgetown Consulting Club (GCC), and McDonough Military Association (MMA) in 2023. Giving back and paying it forward has always been a big thing for me. MBA Volunteers that year accumulated over 550 hours of service among 330 participants, and donated 306 articles of clothing and 852 sandwiches to the needy. At the GCC, I launched the inaugural Case Writing Competition, laid the groundwork for the McDonough Case Book, and revamped our website and resources. And at the MMA, I worked with servicemembers from the US and other militaries, handling tech and media matters at our events.
- Coaching Master in Management (MiM) students and my MBA juniors at their Leadership Communication courses. In particular, my MBA squad, Hoya 4, went on to do very well at the Executive Challenge, winning top team in their cohort. These experiences allowed me to practice leadership and coaching.
- Visiting Colombia, France, Spain, and Puerto Rico for the first time. Spain was where I did my MBA Global Business Experience, and I enjoyed learning about and experiencing Spain's business environment, culture, food, history, and geography. I also visited an old friend at his restaurant in Ibiza, and found my favorite Picasso piece at his eponymous museum in Barcelona.
- Landing a job at Antithesis. The story of how I discovered Antithesis was wild: I learned about them from a tech Twitch streamer, The Primagen. I don't actually use Twitch, but he posted on YouTube his interview with the founder of TigerBeetle, Joran Greef, where they talked about deterministic testing and Antithesis. Long story short, they were hiring, I had the requisite skills and background, and they were 15 miles away from where I lived in Northern Virginia, so it worked out.
Getting back to work after a three-year hiatus is a wonderful feeling. Working on actually challenging software problems while having brilliant and helpful colleagues at a rapidly growing start-up is exciting and sparks a lot of joy.
- Being healthy and alive at the end of 2024. I have experienced many new and interesting things over the past two years, and I'm grateful that I'm still here! There have been the occasional near misses, whether while traveling or driving, and bizarre incidents I avoided. I am thankful to God for protection and safety, and the grace to do all these in the past two years.
Significant lessons
It is important to go through life learning every day. Here are mine over the past two years:
- Embrace your past, and be grateful. When I left my previous job in 2021, I was partly disillusioned at the tech industry, and wanted to try something entirely different and more meaningful. My career hypothesis post-MBA was to get into sustainability consulting and contribute to the fight against climate change. While I did not land a job in anything sustainability-related, I learned a lot about it through career events and coursework. While I think the industry as a whole is doing God's work, I have also come to realize that I can be more of an impact if I used the tools and strengths already in my hands for the betterment of society. There is still a lot of value I have in my decades of deep experience in tech. Embrace, reframe, and build upon both your successes and failures, rather than ignore or abandon them, because there is nothing to be wasted in your past if you seek the silver lining.
- Embrace your present, and be comfortable. There has been a lot of talk about being present over the past several years. That is important, but for me, it was a rather recent discovery for me to look beyond the "physical" and "literal" present around me, to the second-order effects of "what it means" — inferring body language, tone of voice, thoughts and feelings, human nature, and what might happen next. This "reading between the lines" has been a lifelong challenge for me, and thanks to the coaching from the McGowan Fellows Program, the research in social psychology in coursework, books, and podcasts, and practice over the past two years, I've learned to become more aware and comfortable in various social settings, and ultimately be a better friend and person.
- Embrace your future, and be kind. I learned in a recent podcast that people often mix up discipline and habit. Habit is something we are accustomed to, and could even mean things like regular exercise, whereas discipline is "the ability to prioritize the needs of your future self ahead of your own present self". I had to come to terms with this directly in my current move — I had set-up certain things and put off certain things in my previous apartment that I now had to spend inordinate amounts of time to undo and do. Reflecting on this definition of discipline, it means that going ahead, I should always consider what my present actions would mean on my future self, and learn to be kind to future me. This nicely leads to my outlook for 2025.
C. Outlook next year
I'm not a fan of setting new year's resolutions, but I'm a fan of setting a yearly theme. And yes, my theme for 2025 is discipline. This means looking at what it means to be kind to my future self in various aspects of my life: relationships, finance, health, work, etc. While I don't have everything thought through to a T yet, I have ideas that I've been taking down and will implement in the months ahead.
For now, there are two certain things:
- I'll be heading back to Singapore for Lunar New Year, as usual.
- My company, Antithesis, will be hosting our first ever conference, BugBash 2025, at YoursTruly DC Hotel in Dupont Circle, Washington DC, on April 3-4, 2025. We have speakers from Anthropic, AWS, HashiCorp, Jepsen, OpenAI, and more. Come and join us if you're in tech and find out how we can make software more reliable. Early bird tickets are on sale right now! Visit https://lu.ma/bugbash2025 to get yours.
Wishing you an awesome 2025!