Welcome

Yeah, I know, my last blag was almost two years ago. Starting from next Monday, my life will turn a news leaf and I don't even think I'll have the chance to slow down and give this blag the attention it deserves. If I'm really gonna write a blag again, this is the best moment. I know it's been a long moment and I kinda left y'all hanging, so let me break it down if you're still with me.

HKT

Today is my last day at HKT, let's start with that. I started working as an Assistant System Specialist (or as I call it, an ASS) there from last December. Throughout the the seven months I've been here, I worked on their ClubSIM project and helped build their push notification service and live streaming project. It's been a rewarding experience, I went through a lot, I also had a lot of fun. And I'm very grateful I got to have teammates I got along with and had fun with. I really enjoyed working with them and always had the chance to sharpen my skills and refine my knowledge.

I think one of the most amazing things I accomplished here was building a POC for the team to explore the capability of Redis. Starting from late April, I was kinda stuck in what I called the "Intelligent Push Hellhole" (It's a dark past I don't want to look back and go over, just take my word for it) and I hadn't been writing the amount of code I wanted to or was supposed to, so you wouldn't believe how happy I was that I got to make a POC and how much I valued that opportunity.

I decided to go all in and build it with everything I wanted to try. Instead of building the back-end with NodeJS, which is the easiest for me and something I'm very comfortable with, I wrote it with Golang as I figured it was the perfect chance to learn the language, hands on. I built the front-end with Vue, but sprinkled it with a lot of PWA fairy dust and added a music player to it as an excuse to play around with YouTube's API. I built the whole thing within a week and I'd felt the adrenaline I'd never felt for quite a while and literally poured my heart and soul into it (And after that I never worked on it again, cause I bounced back pretty quick and went back to be the lazy ass I've always been). You can check it out here: https://my-shitty-music.herokuapp.com

However,  what I treasured the most here is everyone I got to work with and talked to, who'd been super helpful and share my sense of humor. The most important of all, I learned how to take ownership, commit and be agile (if you know what I mean)

Georgia Tech

While working on a full-time job, I've also been low-key doing a master's degree program, albeit slowly. Georgia Tech is a school just like HKUST, but ten times worse, still, their Computer Science Master's Degree is considered as one of the best in the world. Beyond doubt studying there is something that would never happen to me.

First, I have to state this loud and clear: I am too cool for school. I hated my days in CUHK, as I had to learn everything myself, and the stuff I learned are not practical at all, it was a waste of time. Three years to get a piece of paper, gosh! Foxan (my colleague at SnagR) told me about applying for this program. As a long time fan of Udacity, I already knew Georgia Tech having been collaborating with them and offers their master's degree program online. Foxan was like, "Dude, it only costs you a quarter of the money, and it's even cheaper than getting one from CUHK. And you can do it online!" I was starting to tilt my head went " Mm..." 

So I checked out the application process, as it turned out, it was very similar to the normal ones except I didn't need to take GMAT. I decided to give it a swirl. Miraculously, in October 2017, I got in.

My first semester was pretty great. I took a class about Info Security (CS6035) and a class about Knowledge-based AI (CS7637). I found the assignments quite challenging and interesting and I actually learned a great deal. I kinda bombed an assignment in Knowsledge-based AI so I only managed to secure a B. As for the other class, I aced it.

My summer semester had been a train wreck though. Since the whole experience was awful and I didn't quite get along with my mentor (Eric Lanni) and professor (David Joyner). I ended up having to withdraw. Since the semester is not over yet, so I will probably address this later instead of right now.

Overall, I like studying in Georgia Tech, I know I still have a long way to go, but I'm still very passionate about the program.

I also want to take this opportunity to thank the three people who were kind enough to write the recommendation letters for me:

Milton, a close friend of mine and an very experienced engineer who used to work for Microsoft and T-Mobile.

Bonnie, my mentor at UW. She taught me a lot and what I worked on actually spawned into a research with her. She's now a professor in Biola University but still keeps mentoring me, thank you.

Wenling was my advisor in ASM and his background was Physics and he has two master's degrees. I respected him and he had the patience to tolerate my ignorance and short attention span. He helped shape me into the person I am now. I value his words about me.

Farewell to SnagR

I started working for SnagR in Sept 2016 and had my mind set on at least staying there for at least two years before making my next career move. For the whole year I spent in SnagR, I really learned a lot and my knowledge on almost everything was strengthened, thanks to SnagR's laid-back management style and the working ethics of my colleagues.

I think my greatest achievement there was I succeeded in convincing the whole company to switch from KnockoutJS to VueJS. I still remember when I was still rotting in FoxGlobal (now known as UBeing Mobility Ltd, or Posify? Whatever, screw Gary Lam) SnagR gave me a project to finish to evaluate if I was legit enough to nail a second interview. I had to learn KnockoutJS and how to use Visual Studio 2015 in a week. Everyone inside the company used Knockout. Therefore, I had to demo and prove how VueJS was so much better in performance and memory and how many LOC (lines of code) it could save us. I never thought I could pull that off because though the switch though optimize our platform more and makes it easier for future development, would take a lot more time. But my colleagues were pretty cool about it and quite impressed by my stand.

Before leaving the company, my legacy also included designing the whole infrastructure of the SnagR's website, which is now capable of supporting different domains (snagr.com.fr, snagr.co.ul, snagr.nl, blah blah blah) and different languages and serving over five million people.

Needless to say, I really enjoyed my time at SnagR, especially they let you come in to work at 12pm and leave work to play Foosball at 6 (yeah, you heard me right. With lunch time included, we only worked six hours). And then SCMP called me and wanted me on board since they had a new CEO now and they were seeking people who know ReactJS and VueJS and could also handle full-stack work. And then I also received a phone call from NISI (Non-invasive Surgery Innovations). I never thought I would pass all of their interviews and got a job offer. The offer was far from ideal and I actually had to take a pay cut with even more working hours and fewer day-offs. However, Steven Chu was in there. When you had the chance to work with/for a Nobel Prize winner, you wouldn't pass on it. You. Just. Would. Not. Pass. On. It. I decided to take it.

The rest of August became a nightmare. SnagR just gave me a pay raise trying to make me stay instead of going to SCMP. They really hated me for bailing on them a second time, so I had to say and do a lot so they would see things my way. Fortunately, I succeeded and everyone liked me again, heheheheh!

NISI

I chose to work for NISI not only because of Steven Chu, but also because I thought I could actually help people suffer less and less prone to diseases caused by surgeries. On one side, working there was amazing, I met people from different fields, robotics, electronics, biology, medical. The people workin around my cubicle all have AT LEAST one PhDs. Working with them made me feel a lot smarter. I felt like I was finally cool!

And working here sort of indicated a complete career shift. Instead of making websites, I went back to write C++ and do image processing, it was ASM all over again. I was starting to take a deeper look at different kinds of neural networks, convolutional and recurrent. I also had to learn how to do complex computation on a GPU level. I was haunted by Fourier Transform again... still, I liked it.

Working there has been rewarding and I was grateful I could work with a lot of amazing and extremely smart people. The working hours there were kinda demanding, but I handled it pretty well, until Georgia Tech knocked on my door. Since there was no way I could handle both work and school, at least not in NISI, I eventually chose to leave and tried to find a job that wasn't as intense and flexible.

My boss really liked me, I guess it was because compared to the Dr. This's and Dr. That's around me, I felt like my education was a bit lacking and I had to do more to compensate. He tried really hard to make me stay and proposed different ways to see if I could work part-time. But I was really firm about it, they finally let me go, which began my one month of job quest. Finding a job near Christmas was hard, but after interviewing over ten companies and a week of contemplation, I finally landed on HKT, and you know the the rest.

Self-Driving Car

I was done with Udacity and Google’s Android Developer Nanodegree in August 2016, then I spent another year hashing project after project in their Self-Driving Car Nanodegree. I wouldn’t say I really mastered all the technology, but I still had a lot of fun finishing them. And in December, I could finally say, “I made a self-driving car!”

I remember I told Indy by the time I finished this “degree”, she could go around and say she knew someone who actually learned how to make a self-driving car because he didn’t want to get a driver’s license. It finally happened!

The last project I did required me to work in a group of five and wrote a full-blown software that could be deployed in Udacity’s own self-driving car, Carla. Here’s the project details and the code we wrote, check it out, watch the demo! It represented our hard work this whole year.

If you're interested to learn more about the Self-Driving Car projects I built along the way, check this out too: https://github.com/kevguy/Self-Driving-Car-Projects

EFHK

Last but not least, EF. The last time Entrepreneur First reached out to me was early last year. They wanted me to apply for their cohort in Singapore, things were going so fast that I still vividly remember I kept squeezing the time to prep and write the essays when I was visiting Carmen in Seattle and Indy in San Francisco. I didn't get in so I already forgot about it, until they reached out to me again and said they are having their first cohort in Hong Kong. They simplified the application process enough that I was willing to apply again.

Fast forward to May 7, I was wandering around Berlin with Chris and eating wursts when EF gave me an offer. To be honest, I wasn't as excited as you expected, cause I really never expected to get in. Also, I was on vacation, I didn't want to think about this kind of things, regardless, I was very happy about it.

I decided not to do anything rush and postponed the deadline for making the decision. That was a really tough decision that I had to make, as you will see later. Therefore, in the meantime, I asked for opinions from the people I trust, and here are some I wanna share:

Milton thought I was in a win-win situation, so no matter I chose to do it or not, my career would still be alright and exciting opportunities would still keep opening up for me.

The next day we flew to Copenhagen to meet Simon and Youseff. After helping me understand some of the details inside the contract, Simon considered it an amazing opportunity and I should accept it.

At the time, I was also in talks with ExpressVPN about a backend position. So there were millions of things to think about and I was starting to be overwhelmed, but Indy managed to simplify it for me: I think you should forget about everything, risks, careers and all, simply contemplate which opportunity you are more excited and want to do.

Yeah, I also graduated from college.

The person who gave me the biggest push was Spencer. He's a recruiter friend of mine and we became quite good friends because of his unique background and our similar opinions on lots of things, and we met only like a couple months before, and he was also the one who hooked me up with ExpressVPN. Can you believe that? He gave an objective analysis on the options that I had and what kind of person I was. And he assured me he would support whatever decision I made, even if it meant I might not proceed with EVPN. The most amazing thing he did was a week later when I came back to HK, he called me and suggested me to go to EF instead, he gave me another thorough anaylysis and concluded it by saying "I just don't see why you shouldn't go there and give it a try." So I did.

Of course my parents helped too, particularly that they never give me any pressure or force me to do anything blah blah blah, most importantly, they trust I can always make a decision that they can always be proud of.

So on last Sunday, I went to their Kick-off Day and met all the people who're also in the cohort. To be honest, I felt much more excited about the program and at the same time, increasingly intimidated and anxious by those people, cause they are freaking amazing and all of them had done way more impressive things than mine and way smarter than me.

I feel like starting from next Monday my life will completely change and I will encounter the steepest learning curve I've ever had. This is possibly the first I feel uncertain and anxious about something. Indy is right, I feel very excited about it, more than ever, Spencer is right, this is really something that I should try.

Kev