How Life in Silicon Valley Changed Me
--
“The people who built Silicon Valley were engineers. They learned business, they learned a lot of different things, but they had a real belief that humans, if they worked hard with other creative, smart people, could solve most of humankind’s problems. I believe that very much.”
— Steve Jobs
About half a year ago, I moved cross-country from New York City to San Francisco for a job. I decided to jump headfirst to an unfamiliar place, where the only certain I knew was my insatiable curiosity to experience what life is like in the tech capital of the world. Ever since graduate school, I had always wanted to work for a tech company in the Bay Area.
This decision did not come easy. Months before my graduation in early 2018, I was able to secure a couple job offers for a data scientist position. Yet, I was also faced with a dilemma of choosing between an internship in the Bay Area, a full-time job in New York City, or another full-time role in Europe. Making the decision on which job to take exposed me to the following risks:
- Taking a full-time offer in New York City would mean a financial security and a guarantee to stay longer in the States. Without a full-time offer, I would only be able to stay for a maximum of 3 years post graduation.
- Moving to Europe would mean I might never be able to come back to the US (unless I go back to school), even if the company has corporate offices in the States.
- Moving to Bay Area for an internship position would mean an automatic loss of an H1-B visa submission for that year, since it is not a full-time position. In addition to this, I would also need to search for another job once the 6-month internship is over.
- Moving anywhere out of NYC would mean committing to a long distance relationship. This risk was the most challenging for me since I saw the potential for our relationship to grow into something more serious and that I wanted continue sharing my life with this person.
To everyone’s surprise, I chose what seemed like the riskiest option: leaving New York and the stability of a full-time income as well as the comfort of having my partner and friends around for a novel place I barely knew. Though I might not have chosen what made the most sense to everyone (ie. point 3 and 4), I am incredibly grateful that my partner fully supported my decision. This mutual agreement was absolutely important to me.
After a couple of months living in the Bay Area, I can confidently affirm that trusting our instincts and following what we believe to be the right course of action serve as a powerful guide in making sound decisions.
The past five months and a half have been a wild ride for sure. Living in the Bay is like bathing in opportunities to work with the world’s most talented engineers. All while getting spoiled by the beautiful view of commuting on highway S280 or the great outdoors on the weekends.
Having spent the last six years on the East Coast — with the last two in Manhattan — there are three key things how the Bay Area has helped me grow within my first few months of moving west.
1. Being a more responsible tenant of planet earth
Growing up in the tropical countryside of Indonesia, I was raised with some paradoxes of culture — one that is quite oblivious to the abundant beauty of greeneries, copious forests, and paddy terraces all throughout the country. I was not too familiar of the impact of drought with respect to severe climate change problems until I moved to California and later on took a trip to South Africa deserts.
I realized over time that as a country we often take our mother nature for granted. We burned lands for growing oil palm and pulpwood greater than the size of the Netherlands in the last 4 years. We don’t really teach kids or talk to peers about global warming since we grew up conditioned to think that it’s not really benefitting us short-term, especially financially. So we focus more on maximizing export profit margins in agricultural businesses, even if that means burning down the world’s greatest forests second to Amazonian.
To increase the shared responsibility of taking care of nature, we need to be more aware of our surrounding. The most effective way to collectively raise environmental awareness (and at scale) is through education.
Coming to California allowed me to see firsthand the risks of wildfires and threatened coastal ecosystems, which not only has changed my views of how we should treat our surroundings, but also my habits that are now more environmentally conscious.
At work, we use compostable and recyclable flatwares. At home, we separate our waste. I learned a thing or two about law systems that are useful and respectful to the environment across agricultural businesses and tech industries in Silicon Valley.
The Bay Area has consistently inspired me to become a more responsible tenant of planet earth.
Just last week, I even encountered restaurants in Palo Alto offering menus that might have been a bit too healthy for me: an all-natural, biodynamic meal options. What is vegan or vegetarian if we could get way fancier?
2. Being smart doesn’t mean anything if you are not humble or kind
“So I have to admit that today, even 12 years after graduation [from Harvard], I’m still insecure about my own worthiness. I have to remind myself today, You are here for a reason. Today, I feel much like I did when I came to Harvard Yard as a freshman in 1999 … I felt like there had been some mistake — that I wasn’t smart enough to be in this company and that every time I opened my mouth I would have to prove I wasn’t just a dumb actress.
Sometimes your insecurities and your inexperience may lead you to embrace other people’s expectations, standards, or values, but you can harness that inexperience to carve out your own path — one that is free of the burden of knowing how things are supposed to be, a path that is defined by its own particular set of reasons.”
— Natalie Portman, Harvard Commencement 2015
I still remember when I first came to San Francisco, I was a bit intimidated by the new faces I met — my colleagues at Tesla or friends I generally met at parties. Besides working for FAANG or other tech giants, they seemed to have serially curated recognized credentials in their lives, be it schools internationally known like Stanford, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Ecole Polytechnique (the list goes on…) or other personal achievements of being some Olympiad medalists from their country.
I’m still working through an impostor syndrome that I have constantly faced throughout my life, but maybe this fear is sort of telling me that I am on the right path.
When I see these high-achievers, I see indubitably strong characters developed from hard work and perseverance. It’s not necessarily about the prestige that made me feel somewhat lucky to be surrounded by these folks, but the character that comes with the hardship they had to go through.
They are easily among the most humble and down-to-earth individuals I have met. At work, coding alongside some of the brightest minds and being mentored by a PhD grad were some of my most treasured moments in the Bay Area — possibly my entire career journey to date.
Working at Tesla as a fresh college grad was challenging yet incredibly rewarding — both on a professional and personal level. Sometimes, it’s funny to think that these people who probably have the right to show off their intelligence (because they are definitely smart) are paradoxically the most private and reserved individuals I know.
Based on a study at Pepperdine University, the observed links between intellectual humility and possessing more general knowledge may be explained by the finding that intellectual humility was associated with more accurate assessment of one’s general knowledge. That is, knowing (and being willing to admit) what you don’t know may be the first step to seeking new knowledge.
It felt as if every day I am still learning new things from my colleagues. For all that and for all the challenges that I’ve seen within the tech industry, I am extremely grateful.
3. Strongly trained with the technical breadth and depth of knowledge
It is quite humbling to end up in such a dream place for any engineers, the Silicon Valley — or I would say an incubator for programmers on top of pretty hills and vineyards!
With my coding skills grew from 20% to 80% state of strength and fluency, I am now at a much stronger place technically than I was 20 weeks ago, or should I translate this to an average of 3% improvement every week? ;) With a depth of knowledge across different areas of data science, like time-series modeling, predictive algorithms, and end-to-end toolings, I feel like I am ready to face the world.
Overall, my first experience living in Silicon Valley has been incredibly rewarding. I thank my team at Tesla, my family for the constant support, my New York friends, and definitely my partner. I probably wouldn’t be here today without their support and I am certainly glad to have chosen this path. Despite the early uncertainties and doubts, I would have not changed a single thing since day one.
I hope this article can also empower you to take that leap of faith for a career you believe in, even if the options seem risky. Follow your guts and what you believe is the right thing to do, & don’t forget to enjoy the ride :)
