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Hello Fastlaners and Lane Changers,
My name is James. I'm 29 years old now and am originally from Taiwan and came to the US for master's studies around 4 and a half years ago. I'm currently a slowlaner working as a Software Engineer at one of the Fortune 500 companies. Being able to study computer science in the US and get a job at one of the big companies has been a long term goal for me since undergrad. I imagined how cool it would be to work on cool tech stuff in Silicon Valley where all my favorite tech gadgets originated from, and how great life could be with a 6 figure salary. Now that I have been in this position for about 2.5 years, something just doesn't feel right.
It felt cool to work in one of the big tech companies in the Silicon Valley, but that feeling faded out pretty quickly. After first year of work, all I feel now is I'm not working on something I resonate with, or I should say I really don't care about how the company does nor do I care about the 10 milisecond latency improvement of our software system. The vision of my company sounds boring to me as well. I do feel a sense of achievement once in a while when I'm able to deliver stuff. However, that's not what I'm looking for. I can't imagine myself doing the same stuff till I'm 50. What really was one of the F that moment was because of my promotion last year. I got very little salary raise while most people I know who got promoted got a much larger raise. I feel like I'm not valued appropriately, and felt like I don't have control over how I should be evaluated. Even if I switch to another company, I feel like I'm just going to repeat this whole process again. Plus, as a immigrant, I need to stay in the same company while my Green Card (something that grants me permanent residency in this country) is being processed. If I leave, I need to start the whole process again. Without that, I will have to leave the country in a few years. These are some of the reasons I want to look at pursuing my own business, because I don't want someone else to judge my value with something other than the actual value I provided.
I'm also a car enthusiast just like @MJ DeMarco, that's one of the reasons why his books resonates with me so much. I could understand all the car references he uses in the book, and since I know the guy who wrote this book loves what I love, he might also be sharing something I'd love to do
I got myself a nice sports car that I've always dreamed to own someday right after I got my current job. I am enjoying this car to the fullest, driving the crap out of this thing and going to car meets every weekend. Seeing all those insane super car owners out there really inspired me that someday I'd also want to be able to afford a half a million dollar car. But with the current job I have, I don't see that happening anytime soon or ever happening. I've been talking to those super car owners and most of them have their own business, which tells me if I want to be at their position, I really need to do my own stuff. I have always been talking about starting my own business "someday", but deep down my heart I felt like that's not possible for me. I lacked the belief. I have been trying to read books like The Lean Startup and Zero to One. They are good reads, but none of them really gave me the belief and urge to start my own thing. Until I picked up the TMF and subsequently the Unscripted this May. These books really blew my mind, and that was the moment when I stopped action faking and discard the reading list after these two books and actually started doing something about my business. Entrepreneurship is not something good to have, but something I have to do if I want the lifestyle I want. Now I'm super motivated and I know with proper belief and the commendment taught in the books, I have a much higher chance to succeed than blindly trying things out and see if it will work.
I have a mobile app idea that really excites me. In fact, I have been talking about that idea for a while, maybe for an year already. As I already knew, and further reinforced by the books I read, we need to create something that really solves people's needs, not something I think they need. I have always knew the concept of user centric design, but didn't really know the process. So I went ahead and took a UX Design course provided by Google on Coursera, and while learning, I tried to apply what I learned to my app. For the user research, I've carefully designed interview questions with open ended questions that may spark in depth conversation with interviewees and potentially validate my hypothesis. I've currently interviewed two people, and based on the feedback, it seems like I'm trying to solve a real problem. I plan to interview much more people to really gain enough information that can represent most of my target users. I also scrapped reviews of competitor apps and analyzed their strength and weakness. I'll continue to observe people's behavior and language being used in real life or online. My current plan is to do everything myself, and once I have a working MVP after the lengthy user research and building phase, I will evaluate the need to bring someone in.
I recently found out that while talking about starting my own business with my slowlaner friends, most of them aren't interested at all, or they show interest just to be polite. This also applies to my car hobby, people around me just don't understand my enthusiam in cars, and think I'm dumb to spend money buying impractical cars. It's only when I'm in car meets with folks that share the same hobby as me that allows me to comfortably talk about what I love as much as I want and they'll never get tired of it. That's why I'm here, I want to have the same experience with entreprenuership. "Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher!"
My name is James. I'm 29 years old now and am originally from Taiwan and came to the US for master's studies around 4 and a half years ago. I'm currently a slowlaner working as a Software Engineer at one of the Fortune 500 companies. Being able to study computer science in the US and get a job at one of the big companies has been a long term goal for me since undergrad. I imagined how cool it would be to work on cool tech stuff in Silicon Valley where all my favorite tech gadgets originated from, and how great life could be with a 6 figure salary. Now that I have been in this position for about 2.5 years, something just doesn't feel right.
It felt cool to work in one of the big tech companies in the Silicon Valley, but that feeling faded out pretty quickly. After first year of work, all I feel now is I'm not working on something I resonate with, or I should say I really don't care about how the company does nor do I care about the 10 milisecond latency improvement of our software system. The vision of my company sounds boring to me as well. I do feel a sense of achievement once in a while when I'm able to deliver stuff. However, that's not what I'm looking for. I can't imagine myself doing the same stuff till I'm 50. What really was one of the F that moment was because of my promotion last year. I got very little salary raise while most people I know who got promoted got a much larger raise. I feel like I'm not valued appropriately, and felt like I don't have control over how I should be evaluated. Even if I switch to another company, I feel like I'm just going to repeat this whole process again. Plus, as a immigrant, I need to stay in the same company while my Green Card (something that grants me permanent residency in this country) is being processed. If I leave, I need to start the whole process again. Without that, I will have to leave the country in a few years. These are some of the reasons I want to look at pursuing my own business, because I don't want someone else to judge my value with something other than the actual value I provided.
I'm also a car enthusiast just like @MJ DeMarco, that's one of the reasons why his books resonates with me so much. I could understand all the car references he uses in the book, and since I know the guy who wrote this book loves what I love, he might also be sharing something I'd love to do
I got myself a nice sports car that I've always dreamed to own someday right after I got my current job. I am enjoying this car to the fullest, driving the crap out of this thing and going to car meets every weekend. Seeing all those insane super car owners out there really inspired me that someday I'd also want to be able to afford a half a million dollar car. But with the current job I have, I don't see that happening anytime soon or ever happening. I've been talking to those super car owners and most of them have their own business, which tells me if I want to be at their position, I really need to do my own stuff. I have always been talking about starting my own business "someday", but deep down my heart I felt like that's not possible for me. I lacked the belief. I have been trying to read books like The Lean Startup and Zero to One. They are good reads, but none of them really gave me the belief and urge to start my own thing. Until I picked up the TMF and subsequently the Unscripted this May. These books really blew my mind, and that was the moment when I stopped action faking and discard the reading list after these two books and actually started doing something about my business. Entrepreneurship is not something good to have, but something I have to do if I want the lifestyle I want. Now I'm super motivated and I know with proper belief and the commendment taught in the books, I have a much higher chance to succeed than blindly trying things out and see if it will work.I have a mobile app idea that really excites me. In fact, I have been talking about that idea for a while, maybe for an year already. As I already knew, and further reinforced by the books I read, we need to create something that really solves people's needs, not something I think they need. I have always knew the concept of user centric design, but didn't really know the process. So I went ahead and took a UX Design course provided by Google on Coursera, and while learning, I tried to apply what I learned to my app. For the user research, I've carefully designed interview questions with open ended questions that may spark in depth conversation with interviewees and potentially validate my hypothesis. I've currently interviewed two people, and based on the feedback, it seems like I'm trying to solve a real problem. I plan to interview much more people to really gain enough information that can represent most of my target users. I also scrapped reviews of competitor apps and analyzed their strength and weakness. I'll continue to observe people's behavior and language being used in real life or online. My current plan is to do everything myself, and once I have a working MVP after the lengthy user research and building phase, I will evaluate the need to bring someone in.
I recently found out that while talking about starting my own business with my slowlaner friends, most of them aren't interested at all, or they show interest just to be polite. This also applies to my car hobby, people around me just don't understand my enthusiam in cars, and think I'm dumb to spend money buying impractical cars. It's only when I'm in car meets with folks that share the same hobby as me that allows me to comfortably talk about what I love as much as I want and they'll never get tired of it. That's why I'm here, I want to have the same experience with entreprenuership. "Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher!"
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