This is a now page, where I write things that I’d tell a friend I hadn’t seen in a year.

Updated 2024-08-28, from Suzhou, China

A friend once asked how long I’d give myself as an indie hacker before going to a 9-to-5 job again, I told him that I didn’t set a time limit for myself. Now, over a year later, we both agree—there’s no going back.

I’ve never lived more for myself than I do right now. Before this, I rarely took time off, there was a huge inertia keeping me in the daily work routine. I remember a colleague reminding me about expiring vacation days, and I realized I had days carried over from the previous year. Days after, just before they expired, I was visiting another country by myself for the first time.

At the beginning of my indie hacking journey, every day felt like a vacation, like how I’d always felt after quitting a job. Now, I’m building my projects at a relaxed pace. I’m not sure if this is good or bad yet, but it’s a lifestyle I hadn’t tried. I hope I can continue living this way.

Updated 2023-05-16, from Suzhou, China

When I was about to join Microsoft, I told some of my friends that this would be my last stop in my career spent working for others.

Because after that, I’ll had traversed corporate entities of different scales: startups from scratch, small businesses of dozens, mid-sized companies with and without stable cash, domestic and foreign giants in the industry.

I have much to share after resigning from Microsoft, but for now, the short story is that this foreign giant is very different from what I had imagined, in both positive and negative aspects.

Now that I had my curiosity fulfilled and experiences gained, I know they are only lopsided views, but no one will have them all.

Right now is the sweet spot for me to persue another goal of mine: working for myself.

I’m experimenting with this lifestyle to see if it suits me better.

The point is to do something I enjoy while contributing value to others, thereby earning the privilege of not having to do distasteful things solely for money.

Updated 2021-04-10, from Suzhou, China

It’s been a week since I joined Microsoft, I’m mostly happy about it so far.

As I expected, there are many required training for new hires, topics like unconscious bias are at the top of the list, which I regard as important, yet it’s rarely mentioned elsewhere.

I haven’t used Windows as my desktop, nor have I owned any device running it for a decade or so. Interestingly, when I received my workstation for work with Windows 10, I found myself skilled at both using and customizing it. One of my colleagues was surprised “why are you so skilled at using Windows, given that you are a Mac user”, “Guess I was a pretty skilled power user on Windows before I got my first MacBook” I replied. That’s when I realized how surprisingly smooth I adapted to the new Windows workstation.

I have to say Windows 10 is pretty delightful to use on a workstation with dozens of cores, tens of gigabytes of memory, a large SSD and a well-managed enterprise domain—all in the biggest enterprise cloud on this planet. I’m still shocked that I’ve written this, as someone who has been fully migrated from Windows to macOS over a decade.

Here are some good things I’ve observed at Microsoft:

  • The office is as quiet as a library most of the time
  • People call each other by first names, no fancy titles nor offense taken
  • Remote conferencing is smooth that
    • No laggy videos with pixelation or distorted faces
    • Clear audio—no more “Can you speak louder?”
    • Real-time transcripts on the screen
    • You don’t need to raise your voice or position yourself near the microphones to be heard online
  • The default view on calendars is “work week” which blocks the non-working hours on weekdays and the entire weekend

Although I’ve been working overtime every single day on my first week (I don’t have to if I don’t want to), I can see that work and life are both respected, IMO, compared to many domestic companies, the foreign ones admit that employees do have their personal lifes, and it is something that they should live with so they choose to respect it. Meanwhile, domestic companies may ignore this or even deny the existence of this by discouraging employees from talking about it without feeling bad or having presure.

I’m not saying that domestic companies are bad simply because they are domestic, the foreign ones are there for a longer time so they are more mature on employing, I can see that domestic ones are learning because happy employees soaked within a healthy culture is healthier for big enterprises, it just takes time.

People tend to think that the larger the corporations, the higher the salary. However, Microsoft has a reputation for relatively modest pay, before joining in, I received offers with salaries much higher than what Microsoft offered, guess I’ll have to pay for my willfulness in the future.

I prefer living in modern places over the old and outmoded. After moving to Suzhou, I found that I don’t enjoy the oldest areas of the city. The good news is that I’ve found a modern area that’s as good as, if not better than, parts of Shanghai.

Updated 2020-04-10, from Wuhan, China

Career

I work as a senior software engineering manager at one of Alibaba group’s subsidiaries in Shanghai, it’s a large company in China, and I’ve had great opportunities to work with talented people and strengthen my skills in cloud infrastructure. However, the company is still not top-tier in this field. While I don’t think working for someone else is the way out, I’d like to know how the top-tier technology companies operate.

Health

Since the outbreak of COVID-19 I’ve been staying at home for more than two months, everything outside was shut down, I tried to keep my muscle training at first, but I gave up quickly due to a lack of equipment and protein intake. Now I only use an elliptical trainer occasionally to keep myself energized.

Learning

Before I realized that I have so little time to do things I wanted, I was used to learning everything new and interesting to me, which is a LOT. This isn’t the only problem caused by my insatiable curiosity, to make my life easier, I’ve learned to put down things I don’t need the most. I’m still not quite sure if that’s the right thing to do.