SF Series — People In Tech

Trieu Luu
Trieu Luu
Jul 30, 2017 · 2 min read

The battle for talents has become more serious in recent years. Indeed, San Francisco, Bay Area, and Silicon Valley have long been the dream destinations for engineers. If they make it to these areas, they indeed possess potentials as they “survived” rounds of interviews in the most competitive job market.

As software becomes mainstream on account to the rise of artificial intelligence, software engineers or developers occupy the largest percentage of the employment pie. The next category is the hardware field which is comprised of electrical, electronics, computer, and firmware engineers. Less popular realms are finance, investment banking, and accounting. Fun fact, there is more than 90% chance of running across engineers when you go outside or anyone who used to work in tech.

With such packed density, I have met a lot of engineers in various domains. One common personality, no matter what field they are in, among them is hard-working, enthusiastic, and driven. Hence, it is a completely normal phenomenon when they work “crazy hours”, around 50–60 hours per week. This only applies to young and fresh engineers, who occupy the majority of the labor. Also, they are significantly optimistic about embarking on the journey of creating the next invention and making the world a better place.

The only downside of surround around these people is the extreme practicality. Sometimes, I can easily recognize many layers of “masks” cover their “appearance”, which creates disingenuous atmosphere. They see each other as a potential node in their network, which is totally understandable in the quest of career promotion.

Overall, people are a unique factor in shaping the city of San Francisco. I will never find anywhere that enjoys, and even worships in the extreme case, technology to this level.

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