a few photos from survival school

Dusk during student expedition.  There was crypto-bionic crust (a type of algae) everywhere in our campsite.  If you step on the crypto, you destroy 90% of it in a single footfall, and it can take up to 200 years to grow back.  We tried to step in each other's footprints.  A lot of missteps and profanity that night.

After hacking through backcountry for hours, breaking out into a scene like this is awe-inspiring.  

This was the day I came up with the "door" innovation.  We were each making a "tent" out of our rain poncho.  I had my group tie our light wool versa-cloth to each end of the tent, to form a door.  Having the entire tent enclosed sealed in the heat.  

The next day, I overheard other groups telling each other about the tent door idea.  By the next night, most groups were doing it.  As I walked through camp, I saw a bunch of tent doors.  It was a very visual illustration of Viral Marketing and Word of Mouth Virality.

This structure was used to dry jerky from our sheep.  The jerky was excellent.

We crossed this stream at least 20 times on the last day.  The water varied from ankle-deep to waist-deep.  Our hiking boots got wet with each crossing, which was conducive to blisters.  Thankfully it was the last day.

We were given two days' worth of rice near the end. We didn't eat any until the last night of the trip. My cooking groupmates asked me to cook the rice, since I'm Asian.

I carefully washed all the rice. Then we learned slowly and horribly that you cannot cook two meals of rice in the pot meant for one portion of rice. Half of it burnt and the other half was still raw.

I spent 30 minutes scrubbing out the pot with a stick. My groupmates went hungry that night.

It was the lowest point of the trip. Later PJ asked me how bad I felt about it, on a scale of 1 to 10. I said 9.5.

friendship

I had started to feel that friendship is mostly determined by spending a lot of time together. Proximity and unexpected encounters and shared interests.

But then Sha-mayn came to visit this Monday through Thursday, and it reminded me how you could be on opposite sides of the coast, and only see each other a couple weeks per year for the past six years, and you could still feel extremely close to the friend.

Me to Sha-mayn yesterday: "You are so in-demand. Every time we're in the Google cafe and need to walk 100 feet, it takes forty minutes because everyone wants to say hi to you. And every time it's your birthday, Facebook has an outage due to all the people writing on your wall. But you're my Google BFF. That's pretty awesome."

Bachelorette night.

On the topic of people living far away, I miss my brother. I have a dream that one day he'll move back to the Bay Area, and also my parents will come live with me after my dad retires.

Hosting Product Design Guild this Saturday

Minted is hosting Product Design Guild this Saturday!

If you're in San Francisco, and you're a great UI designer, come hack with us!  It will be fun.

Here's the Facebook event invite.

Post survival school musings

It has been a week since survival school. I am getting readjusted to the feeling of being surrounded by walks, and the luxury of running water available at all times.

I realized that I do not want to have dinners at restaurants any more, unless it is a local organic place like Plant or Chow or one of these Ferry Building places. At other restaurants, I end up mindlessly consuming so much unhealthy food, and then feeling weighed down after.

Survival school 14-day field course

I am in Provo. Survival school just ended this morning.

Killing and processing the sheep was emotionally intense. Solo turned out far more liberating and creative than I expected.

Twinsies!  I am wearing the same shirt style and shorts as another student.  He is an actor who played Ziggy in The Wire.

At base camp, preparing to embark.

Laying out my blanket pack on the first day.

On the last day, two of the students ran after our shuttle van, to be playful.  I miss our little community!

The other students blew me away with how incredible they are. Not merely in athletic prowess (there were so many marathoners and pole vaulters and super hikers) but also in attitude toward life. I felt like the frog in the well, who did not realize how big the sky is, and how many amazing pursuits people could have.

Survival school round 2

Driving in the van to start my 14-day field course at survival school!

In my course is a VC, a 19-year-old college student studying industrial design, an AMD chip engineer, an actor, and a few others we haven't yet met.

Weather forecast is sunny with daytime temps around 90. Here we go!

Luck

Recently I was asked how I started programming. Telling the story made me reflect on how sometimes what appears unfortunate on the surface turns out to be a stroke of luck.

When I was 5, my parents decided to buy me a video game console. They were both very busy (my dad getting his PhD, my mom working multiple jobs), so I had a lot of spare time. Nintendos were all the rage, but my dad bought a Radio Shack system, either because it was cheaper or due to his unfamiliarity with popular trends.

We only owned four games, so after I had played each of them hundreds of times, I got tired of them. It turned out that the console had a BASIC interpreter if you turn it on without a game cartridge. It came with a book with short programs at the back. I started typing them in and it would draw cascading lines and circles on the screen.



We did not own a memory cartridge, so I had to re-type the whole program every time. I also did not know how to touch type, so it would take an hour to type a 5-line program. But I had hours of time every day, so I would do this often.

When I was 8 or 9, the local school offered an introductory programming course, and my dad signed me up. The first day resembled the scene from Karate Kid where the kid discovers to his shock that he has internalized karate without realizing. The teacher handed out a syllabus with an overview of conditionals, loops, gotos (remember this was BASIC), and I knew it all already. I remember being confused. Programming is a challenging school subject, so how could it be the same thing I had been doing for years on my video game console?


I went home and announced to my dad that we can drop the class and get our money back, because I magically knew all the material already. He must've thought I was joking. He insisted that I keep going, even though I learned nothing new from that class.

A couple years later, our family friend (a CS grad student) saw that I knew the fundamentals and taught me LISP for fun. I wrote little adventure games for my brother; "You see a book that says TOM. Read / take / north / south?". Then Pascal and C in high school, the unforgettable euphoria of my first program which drew a circle using trigonometry, and eventually realizing at 16 that computer science was my life calling. There has never been a moment of doubt since.

Last year, my dad mentioned wistfully that he wished he could have given me more material possessions as a child. "You never wore designer clothes growing up," he said, "Kids love McDonald's, and I couldn't take you very often. And you only had that cheap Radio Shack game system with so few games."

Work gong

One of the lead graphic designers at Minted brought in a gong. This has given me a lot of joy in the past week.

Here is our engineering intern ringing the gong to celebrate the launch of an improved data deployment system. He is using a plastic bowling pin, as we do not yet have a proper gong mallet.

Starcraft tournament

I had incredible fun playing in an entrepreneur Starcraft tournament last night, hosted by an ex-Googler friend.

Our former Minted intern Maverick was kind enough to be my 2v2 teammate, even though he is platinum league and I am an unranked noob.

I caused us to lose the first game by Zerg rushing the enemy Terran instead of the enemy Zerg. I did the six pool correctly but chose the wrong opponent.

Our second opponent ended up placing second overall, so we were outmatched from the start.

It was fantastic! My only regret is that as the only female player, I felt a need to represent, and then I promptly caused two losses. Ah well, next time I will get a new laptop and practice my APM!

The winning team was Maverick's classmates from University of Waterloo.  At one point, they played against their classmates who became the third-place team.  They wrote "uw represent" at the start of the match.

At one point early in the night, I was talking to "Hat-guy", Maverick's friend from the winning team.

Me: "What league do you play in?"

Hat-guy: "1v1 or 2v2?"

Me: "2v2."

Hat-guy: "Master's!"

Me: "That's great.  1v1?"

Hat-guy: "Master's!"

Me: "Why did you ask me which one I meant then?  Did you just want to say Master's twice?"

Hat-guy: [beaming] "Master's!  Third time."

...

During the match, when they were doing the initial build order, the two opposing teams typed out messages to goad each other, such as "Tell me how your day was." and "it was allright."  And then "What's euler's formula again?" in the middle of the match!

I texted my brother many updates throughout the evening.  At one point:

Me: "I am such a noob!  I didn't even know what a baneling is."

Brother: "That explains a lot, lol"

Ephemerisle

This is my third year at Ephemerisle.

On Friday evening, we had a time-critical issue on the server, so I spent a few hours on my laptop from inside the white dome.

It was so peaceful sleeping on a floating platform, surrounded by twenty friendly fellow festival-goers.

Mom's visit

My mother stayed with me for 25 days. I just dropped her off at SFO on Sunday. As she walked into the airport terminal, I felt a wave of sadness, and wished she could stay.

We have evolved to an equilibrium where we get along very well. She cooked me breakfast and dinner every day. We both got addicted to "The Office" and watched the first seven seasons together. I felt motivated to tidy up the apartment and buy flowers and furniture to make it a more pleasant environment.

katy

Wow, Katy Perry looks really different with vs without makeup. Also, this highlights how we pretty much have never seen her without makeup in public. Kudos to her for being in a movie without makeup! That's great confidence.

ideal networking event

Over skype:

Me: Tonight I went to the ideal networking event.

Melissa, my work BFF: Was it held on a houseboat with cuddling [referring to Ephemerisle]?  Or ideal for a different reason?

Me: HAHAHA.

...

The event was free pedicures, with prosecco and finger sandwiches!  It was sponsored by SecondMarket, and held within walking distance of the Minted offices.  I chatted with various founders and lawyers, who were very witty.

Goodie bag: champagne, chocolates, nail care kit. Ideal!

I bet they had a meeting to plan this event, and one person said, "Let's corner the market on female networking events. Let's invite all the female execs, and give out pink gift bags with pink ribbon and nail kits!" And another person said, "That's really risky. What if it backfires and we look foolish? Pink ribbon?"

It totally worked! Any time that someone would like to host a networking event involving champagne and pedicures, I am in! 

Mother's Day

My mom is visiting me while my dad attends a college reunion trip in China.

One side benefit of my mom's stay is that my brother sent a pretty bouquet of flowers to my place for Mother's Day. Yay!

I gave all my paintings to my mom as my Mother's Day gift. She is going to hang them at home!

Christy Turlington at Minted!

Yesterday, Christy Turlington came to visit Minted.  Minted is working with her non-profit Every Mother Counts.  

Last night we held a press event announcing the launch of wall art on Minted. We're donating 50% of the proceeds from nursery art and children's art in May and December to Every Mother Counts.

Mariam (Minted founder/CEO), Christy Turlington, me.

Christy is an amazing speaker -- very natural.  She talked about her own childbirth experience, and how it inspired her to realize that women in developing countries often experience social pressure to avoid medical attention during complications in childbirth.  Women die unnecessarily in childbirth.

She talked about difficult topics, like how some countries ban abortion, even if the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest.  When people have seen such tragic events, sometimes their sense of indignation comes out so strongly that the audience wants to shy away.  But Christy said it in a way that elicits empathy and makes people want to help.

You can help by spreading the word about Every Mother Counts!

Letters to a Young Engineer: How to Decide Where to Work

[Oftentimes throughout my life, I wished that I could time-travel and ask my future self for advice. I felt sure that in five or ten years, I would know exactly how to handle the thorny situation facing me. Usually, it was true. A handful of years later, I knew precisely how to address the issue, but I could not tell my younger self.

What a tragedy that this supply and demand could not be connected between my past and older self! Instead I will write out the advice I would've given myself, in hopes that other young people may find some benefit.

I am naming it after the book "Letters to a Young Poet", because I like that quaint title.]

---

Dear Younger Self,

Deciding where to work is a momentous decision. There are so many factors: the responsibilities of the role, the team you'd be working with, your manager, compensation, risk profile of the company.

Let's say you're deciding between several appealing companies. (I'll write a separate post about how to get yourself into a position of having multiple companies bidding after you.)

Here are the most important factors that I've boiled down:

1. Imagine that when you wake up tomorrow morning, you'll start work at this company. How do you feel? Excited and a little nervous? Dismayed and wishing you could postpone it indefinitely?

This is the first branch in the decision tree. If the answer is that you're not happy about going into work, you need to scratch that company off the list. It's a non-starter. I don't care if the company is super-popular or has 10 Nobel Prize winners that you revere. If you're not excited, you're not going to do your best work. Then those 10 Nobel Prize winners will see you as a non-phenomenal colleague, and that's the reputation which will spread about you.

When you think about companies in the abstract, it can be hard to differentiate between your feelings for them. But when you force yourself to think of the concrete reality of getting out of bed tomorrow to work for a certain company, your body will tell you how you feel. When I think of a happy company, I feel light, and my back straightens itself. When I think of a company that's not a good fit for me, my shoulders slump subconsciously.

There are a million factors that go into whether you'll enjoy working at this company. As stated in the book How to Decide, when trying to gauge an emotional matter, making a pro-con list is actually liable to lead to the wrong decision. Your brain can only handle six or seven variables. Your intuition can handle a lot more. Just let your intuition tell you how you really feel about working at this company.

2. How well do you align with the company's ideal candidate for your role?

This will determine how much you succeed at the company. If you are far off from the company's ideal, you will spend a lot of effort contorting yourself to fit that ideal. If the company expects solemn suit-wearing individuals, and you are a bouncy Tigger who loves pranks, you will waste a third of your mental power repressing your natural exuberance, so that you'll be taken seriously. You will waste another third attempting to learn how to be serious, but you will not be able to do it as well as the people who are naturally born that way. Now you only have one-third of your brainpower remaining to do your actual work. The people who are naturally serious will be able to outperform you, even if they are actually only 80% as good as you.

No fit is perfect, so it's to be expected that there are parts of you that don't mesh. But it should feel natural. It should not feel like you are trying every day to act like a vastly different person.

If you force yourself to contort, you will also grow increasingly resentful at the part of you that's being repressed. You'll grow depressed. Don't do it.

3. Fair compensation.

If you feel underpaid, it will be difficult to give the job your all. If it bothers you to the point where you're not able to do your best work, you end up with the same problem as in issue #1. If your compensation is fair, there won't be any obstacles, and you can fall completely in love with your work.

Note that I said "fair", not "the maximum". Since stock options have high variance, it's difficult to gauge which package out of a few companies will end up being the most valuable. If you over-optimize, you may end up being penny-wise and pound-foolish, like my former colleague who told me not to refer him to Google pre-IPO because he wanted to stay for his $20,000 bonus from Microsoft.

Since your projection of future value is likely to be inaccurate, it's better to optimize for the other factors, as long as your compensation is fair.

4.The job should teach you things that you find valuable.

In a great job, you'll be growing quickly. You'll look back every year, and realize that you can now handle things that would have been very challenging for you a year ago. This will enable you to do increasingly amazing things.

Only you should decide what is valuable. Do not let any single person or set of people sway you on this. Some people will urge you to get an MBA and learn more about business. Others will hold MBAs in contempt and tell you to focus on scalability or mobile or programming languages or whatever their favorite subject is. You need to survey the land and learn enough to make up your own mind.

5. Appreciate the product.

This is what gets you past the rough patches, when you have to stay at work late again and your sweetie is annoyed, or you feel temporarily misunderstood by your manager. You need to have an appreciation for the product.

For me, it's very rewarding to help Minted's indie designers around the world. These are incredibly talented artists and graphic designers who find their voice through Minted, and are able to build a name for themselves as well as earn royalties. Last year when I was at a Career Fair, I was describing our community to a university student, and tears actually came into my eyes because I was so moved. It makes me laugh to think of it now. That student surely thought I was crazy.

You don't have to be as crazy I was, but it's good to feel appreciative of some aspect of the product. Sometimes people work on enterprise software despite feeling like they are just iterating on a boring product, or they guiltily work on toolbars that make revenue by tricking people into accidentally using a different search engine. Living with that cognitive dissonance is a high cost to pay every day.

...

You may have noticed that I put a lot of optimizing around finding an environment to do your best work. This is because I believe that world-class work has a way of reaping you unexpected rewards (fodder for another post).

I also didn't talk specifically about your manager or your colleagues. Those are very important, and they are covered by points 1, 2, and 4. If you enjoy your colleagues, that's one factor which will make you excited to go to work (#1). If they enjoy you, you will align closely to the ideal (#2). If they are stellar, you will learn a lot from them (#4).

If you do all these things, you will end up in a place that makes you happy and allows you to do your best work. This means that even if other aspects don't go as well as you planned, you will not regret this time, because you were happy and accepted.

Good luck.

Niniane

---

To the young engineers reading this post, Minted is hiring! Email eng-jobs AT minted.com with your resume.

Or if you want to go for a super-early-stage startup with just a few people, email me and I can connect you with those too.

Funny Shirt Contest at work

I hosted Funny Shirt Day at Minted. There were 22 entries! We each did a little walk to show off our shirt.

This shirt says using keyboard keys: "I AM [ALT] OF [CTRL]"

book

I saw this book in the Marketing area at Minted today.  I snapped a photo and sent it to Tom, with the subject:

This book should have my name on it instead.

Tom wrote back:

What do you mean?  It looks right to me...

He even mimicked the font and matched the perspective skew!

OMG WAT

new era of cloud 9

Every day for the past three days, I have had a long conversation that shocked and amazed me.

The first was with a woman who is raising two kids on her own (one adopted orphan baby and one natural born), while having started several successful startups. Her companies are highly successful. I always hear people saying, "Raising a kid by yourself is hard" and "Starting a company while having a baby is tough" but she is relaxed!

She cheerfully talked about how it doesn't actually feel that difficult. Not in the hollow-eyed manner of someone trying to convince you that their life is perfect, but in an actually genuine and honest way.

I was so floored by the conversation that I completely forgot all sense of decorum or "playing it cool". The last five minutes of the group dinner and walking to our cars was filled with me obsessively stating how we must hang out again. I came home and immediately emailed her, added her on Facebook, and posted on her wall.

Now I know how stalkers feel.

The second conversation was with a writer. I've cut back a lot on public writing, mostly because I experienced a lot of criticism a couple years ago from someone close to me. But talking to this writer made me remember again how exhilarating it can be to share ideas with the world. Good writing is a thing of beauty, and watching it emerge can be wonderful.

The third conversation happened today, about 3d graphics and art, with someone who I deeply respect. We talked about SIGGRAPH and GDC, and how Blizzard spends months making detailed prototypes, which they then chuck away on the path to creating an even better prototype. 3d graphics is also about creating works of beauty. Sharing this wonderment was really inspiring.

...

Typically, awe-inspiring conversations only happen to me once every few months. So I don't know how I'm so lucky that it's been happening daily for the past three days. I feel like I'm winning the lottery every day. I wonder how long this can continue!

I also have conversations this good with Melissa, the cofounder of Minted, but she's working in Shanghai at the moment. Maybe I've entered a new era where every day I can have a conversation like this, and it becomes the new normal.  That would be an amazing world to live in!

a nice quote about love

From a graduation speech.

I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.

Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the truth worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.

Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn’t happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.
You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.

You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.

inspirational cat

of peaks and chairs

Today I sold the chair and ottoman. It tugged at my heartstrings when the woman carried it out of my place! But she said her husband will love it, and that she will give it a good home and will treat it with love and care. So I felt good about that.

Also I'm going to climb Half Dome in mid-August with a bunch of cool people! Yosemite only gives out a few hundred climbing permits per day, chosen by lottery. A dozen of us entered the Yosemite lottery to maximize our chances, and five people got permits. Each permit allows guests, so we will all be able to go.
 

Next Sunday, I'm going to climb Mount Diablo! I hope it's not going to be like the time I climbed a Seattle peak with five Chinese women who were gym cardio addicts. Halfway through, I could not keep up and offered to go at my own pace, to stop holding them back. But they refused! They insisted on going at my slow pace the whole time. It is sweet, but was also a lot of pressure.
 

chair sentimental attachment

Many people have told me that this chair is the most out-of-place piece of furniture I own.  When my brother was living as my roommate, he polled all of his guests, and half of them said that this chair was the single worst item in the house.

I put up an ad on craigslist, and someone wants to come buy it tomorrow.

Suddenly I am overwhelmed with emotional attachment to this chair!  I've had so many good memories of sitting in this chair!  I don't want to sell the chair!!!

But even I can see that the chair is in fact out of place.  

Dilemma!

Plants!

Our tech ops manager baked these plants.  They're oreo cupcakes, with green apple licorice.  What a fun surprise!

Steinbeck quote I just read

"There are several kinds of love.  One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance.  This is the ugly and crippling kind.  

The other is an outpouring of everything good in you -- of kindness and consideration and respect -- not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable.  

The first kind can make you sick and small and weak, but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn't know you had."

-Steinbeck, A Life in Letters

soccer at work

On Friday, 9 of us from Minted went to play soccer in the park across the street.



My college friend Jordan, who works next door at another startup, walked through the park and said hello to me.  I shouted back, "Can't talk now!  Watching soccer!"  It felt really nice, like a community where you're bumping into your friends, and having fun pickup games.



The marketing team turned out to be uniformly good at soccer.

There were three ladies sitting on the lawn, just behind one of our goals.  At first they flinched and ducked whenever the ball came within 20 feet.  By the end, they were completely unfazed even when the ball nearly hit them.

Painting!

management advice overheard in chinese restaurant

Six or seven years ago, I was eating in a chinese restaurant.  I overheard a conversation that struck me to this day.

The speaker was a woman in her late 30s, eating at another table with a companion.  They seemed to know the owner.

She said, "Ping used to be a waiter here at this restaurant.  The owner really takes care of his employees. He gives them good food to eat for the meals.  When they're sick, he visits them at home with medicine.  Then Ping was offered 10% higher salary by another restaurant, and he quit and went to work there instead."

"The other restaurant didn't treat him well.  They wouldn't let the employees eat the nicer food.  When he's sick, they didn't check in on him at all."

"After a month, Ping called up this restaurant owner and asked to come back.  The owner declined.  He said, 'I treated you like a human being, but you don't treat yourself like one.  Don't come back.'"

...

I was struck by how much we undervalue feeling loved in our job.  All those gestures of caring clearly mattered a lot more to Ping than the 10% salary, but he didn't consciously value them until they were gone.

I also was surprised that the owner is so relentless.  Ping is sorry!  If you take him back, he'll probably be extra loyal, now that he knows the grass is browner on the other side.  Why shut him out?

Maybe the owner already hired replacements and now has no open headcount for Ping.

easter eggs at Minted!

Glittery princess egg!  The owner refused to use this egg in the egg cracking contest.


SF Giants egg.


I asked our admin to buy some dye kits and eggs.  She hardboiled 60 eggs two nights in advance.  Then she bought all these treats, dyes, decorations and set up the entire table.

It is very amazing when you can give a one-sentence description, and the person executes it beyond your best dreams.


Homer Simpson egg!  This was creative.


Coloring the egg with a sharpie.

I also officiated the egg cracking contest, an ancient Greek game where you pair off, and tap your opponent's egg with your own egg.  One egg will crack.  I officiated and I also won the game, which was a bit suspicious.