Update: I’m back, professional changes and blog changes

TLDR; I have returned to this blog and will strive to post much more regularly, quality content.

This post has long been overdue as much has changed in both my professional and personal life from even a year ago. Given this is a publicly available blog, I’ll focus briefly on the former and dwell a bit longer on my vision/plans for blogging going forward.

The biggest change by far has been switching careers and moving geographically from my previous role as a Project Manager at the US Department of Treasury in DC to becoming a Technical Program Manager at YouTube/Google. In short, it was a dream come true. I’ve aspired to work for the Big Tech companies and furthermore, landed in a role that fit well with my background and career interests. While it’s not exactly a Product Manager role that is this blog’s namesake, it’s almost as good as roles at Google are fluid. It’s now been a little over a year since the transition and I fully plan to share some unique perspective (hopefully) on what it’s like to work here, how it’s different from public service and anything in between.

As for my blogging plans, I will strive harder — especially amidst the COVID-19 situation of home confinement — to first and foremost write more frequently. As for the specific topics or themes, they will remain mostly on my specific thoughts on specific companies (e.g. Apple) or industries (e.g. tech, finance) or could even be more general. For one I have an amalgam of hobbies or special interests and will plan to document my experiences on those also — akin to my previous reports on driving for Lyft and cryptomining.

To make it a bit easier to delineate posts, the titles will be generally formatted as the following:

• Thoughts, Tech — for musings on tech
• Thoughts, Financial — for musings on financial related, namely stocks
• Side Project — self-explanatory
• Review, Book — self-explanatory
• Self, Development — personal development, more on professional side

One specific side project in my immediate plans will have a direct impact on this blog: switching to self-hosting the blog instead of relying on Medium. I’ve found Medium to have been a good, no frills platform but find myself oftentimes handicapped by restrictions on post formatting and blog layouts. The bonus, I hope, is that this will also teach me on how to leverage the many cloud services (e.g. AWS, GCP) and the migration process from client-hosted to self-hosting.