A year in review - 2020

5 months later, I still vividly remember my last day at Amazon. I knew very well from the week before what the outcome was and what would happen on that very last day. But I was just a navie kid (I still am), wishing on a shooting star. I cried as it happened …

Ending 2019 with all goals accomplished, I started 2020 with a complacent attitude and gradually lost momentum for work. My self-satisfaction “allowed” me to become less and less disciplined, and my workstyle was getting closer to random bursts of energy when deadlines came rather than a systematic plan. The less disciplined I become, the lower the momentum, the harder it was to get back. At one point, I had no plan whatsoever for myself and got bored with almost everything. Day by day, I lost the passionate old me. As I started my internship at Amazon with almost zero momentum, a rusty and sluggish brain, I tried to revived the 2019 me. Predictably, I had a terrible start: I took too long to ramp up for the project and made some silly mistakes here and there. Until today, it still gets me embrassed thinking back of that time. The revival process takes time, but the internship is a race against time. It wasn’t until the 8th week that the old me was back, and that was definitely too late to turn things around. Consequently, no matter how much more hours I put into work, I couldn’t compensate for what was lost in the first 7 weeks. I was stressed as I was angry at myself and at how things happened. I couldn’t understand how I could let the first few months of the year went by without any meaningful work. The stress turned me into a jerk at home, and I became an annoying kid and got mad frequently. Even a few weeks after the internship, I still couldn’t sleep without self-reflecting on what’s got into me. Misfortune comes hand in hand with opportunites. There are two invaluable presents that the internship gave me: one is to always have a working plan for every day, two is the determination to improve myself.

I suffered from a mild burnout and imposter symdrome afterwards, thinking that I had no skill and was totally a fraud. Somehow I kept going forward, partly because my sub-consciousness believed I could do much much better and partly because I was hungry for “success” more than ever. Throughout my journey, I was lucky many times but never without tremendous effort. Our own effort creates luck for ourself. I started an accelerated plan to polish the rusty skills and didn’t start my job finding journey until early October 2020. One of the trickiest parts of landing tech job is the tech interview. I hadn’t done one leetcode question until I started applying for jobs, and thus, my leetcode problem solving skill also became kinda rusty. I started working on one problem everyday, then two problems everyday. But as I became busier later in the semester, I couldn’t maintain the same progress. Fortunately, my childhood friend - an MIT student herself - also applied for job and helped me with mock interview. She is a person with incredible positivity and a great sense of humor, and after every mock interview section with her, I felt even more motivated. I landed interviews at several good companies thanks to having Amazon on my resume, and the first final on-site I got to was with a big tech company. In one round of the on-site, I had one question that I wasn’t familiar with, and I did horribly. Inevitably, having one “No” is enough to reject me. I was disappointed, but the built-up momentum kept me going forward. There is a pattern that I found in any interview that I failed: I wasted too much time trying to recall from memory the data structure or the algorithms that can be applied rather than focusing on the problem at hand. Why can’t I just be 1000% present on the conversation and problem itself? Let’s clear my mind and not recall or memorize anything. Let’s just look at the problem with a fresh mind and think out loud what small steps can be taken toward solving the problem. Not letting the disappointment to cast self-doubt, I continued solving practice problems with this strategy in mind. In a phone interview a week later, I again got a quetion I never had before but was able to got to the optimal solution. Long story short, I finally passed the Apple on-site, the most intense and most interesting on-site I ever got.

2020 is a year of self-reflection for all of us. Covid-19, other issues in the world (BLM and Presidential Election in the US, flood in Central Vietnam - where my hometown is) all have deep-rooted causes, but we were all too busy to fix them until they burst. Hopefully, these lessons would lead to better versions of all us in the future.

It was almost dawn when I finished this blog. I had plan for this blog way back in October 2020 but didn’t know how to start. I got emotional when listenning to an old song on the radio and started writing. My writing has become awkward after a long time not writing any blog, but I still need to write this, because the year of 2020 wouldn’t be completed without this blog. For many years later, I will reread this blog to remind me to keep pushing forward and never ever settle!

Special thanks to my family and relatives, my friends and colleagues. Thank you for being with me in this journey. Without you, the amazing 2020 would never happen!