Sharing as a Christian ML engineers/Analysts
Reflection of 2021 and Entering 2022
My biggest hits and misses as DS/Tech Professional
During the two weeks holiday at the end of the year, I reflect on 2021 and plan for 2022. Hopefully my reflections could also be useful for you to think about yours.
First of all, to define success I first define my core values.
Prioritize core values
I have core values which measure how happy and satisfied I am. These values denote where I want to spend most of my time in:
- God and Christian Faith: To serve Him and enjoy Him forever. This means to work heartily for the Lord, to give thanks in every single thing, and to be the salt and light of the world. My other core values will be based on this belief.
- Family and Friends: To spend time with wife and family. My parents are not getting any younger and I realize that it is a great blessing to spend time them especially in the middle of busyness.
- Community Engagement: I believe that it is my duty to give back to the community and society. I put in efforts in writing, giving talks and developing aspiring data and tech professionals in Indonesia and Singapore.
- Personal Development: Goals to further improve myself, I have a goal to read more books and follow through important data science practitioners to learn more about tricks of the trades.
My biggest hits and misses in 2021
I identified my reflections into hits (things I do well) and misses (things I should improve more) based on my core values (in parentheses):
Hits
- Married a fellow Christian and best friend → (Value 1, 2)
- Migrated to Jakarta to be closer with family → (Value 2)
- Earnt promotions by serving the Lord and others in catching phishing abuse → (Value 1, 4)
- Graduated Georgia Tech Master Studies → (Value 4)
- Taught ~3k Indonesian Software Developers in ML at Google Bangkit. → (Value 3, 4)
- Recognized as one of top 1000 DS writers (received $500 bonus in both May and June) → (Value 4)
- Discovered new skills with tmux, stocks investing, graph mining, etc (Value 4)
Misses
- Slack on writing more frequently on Medium to help my fellow peers navigate DS/Tech career.
- Inefficient use of time with distractions such as Youtube, Instagram, etc. I discovered my average screen time per day is 4.5 hours.
- Too much Linkedin browsing which exacerbates my imposter syndrome
Identifying Huge Life Events and Goals in 2022
Relocate to USA Bay Area
I plan to relocate to the US Bay Area in March 2022.
Growing up, I always had a dream to go to Silicon Valley and watch the tech landscape there so it is amazing to have my dream come true.
So I am super excited to have the opportunity to develop myself better for larger future responsibilities. I am also super excited to find like minded peers and learn even further from them.
Please reach out to me if you are based in the bay area and free to catch up after my arrival.
Prune “Unimportant” Tasks
Moving forward, I would like to implement the following strategies to maximize the use of my time.
- High Impacts 20/80 Deep work: Am I using my morning to eat the frogs? Will the frogs potentially produce 10X impacts? Can I use my 20% productive time to build 80% impacts?
- Prune Meetings: Could I contribute to this meeting? Is the agenda clear and talk about the baseline? Would this meeting unblock my blockers?
- Batch Activities: Could I batch my analysis tasks together? Could I allocate my morning for all my deep work on writing design docs and codes? Should I archive important articles and timebox them (e.g: Friday Reads)
Over the end of the year, I have been thinking on how I could achieve this better. So I hope to be able to share more with you about this.
Write more
This is a habit which I want to develop and build in 2021 which is to write more. The idea is to learn and share knowledge with others. Writing has given me ways to great careers, achievements, while learning how to be a great engineer. So I encourage you to become a blog writer as well.
Overall, I would like to reflect on three types of writings:
- Design docs: Am I designing documents for the right peers and audience? How do I capture my intention better to drive actions? Have I worked backwards?
- Community engagement (Medium / personal sharing): Have I used the time well to write my reflections on being a better self/engineer?
- Networking and Social Media: Have I marketed my solutions well? Is there anything else I could do to drive actions?
Moving forward, I am living my life as a newlywed and relocating to the US. I want to expand my writing about ML Engineers and the tech landscape in Silicon Valley. All of this while sharing how to nurture a household based on Christian values.
Conclusion: The question I ask myself every year
To close this, I want to give a quotation from my favorite book: When Breath Becomes Air:
“You can’t ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving.” — Paul Kalanithi
The best way to reach your goal is to start and keep moving forward. As Jeff Bezo always said. “It is Day 1!”
What’s your end 2021 reflection look like? Please feel free to share with me.
Soli Deo Gloria.
About the Author
Vincent fights internet abuse with ML @ Google. Vincent uses advanced data analytics, machine learning, and software engineering to protect Chrome and Gmail users.
Apart from his stint at Google, Vincent is also a featured writer for Towards Data Science Medium to guide aspiring ML and data practitioners with 1M+ viewers globally.
During his free time, Vincent studies for ML Master Degree in Georgia Tech and trains for triathlons/cycling trips.
Lastly, please reach out to Vincent via LinkedIn, Medium or Youtube Channel
