Since high school, I have seen myself as 1. good at computer stuff, and 2. getting good at people stuff.1 Hence I pursued a dual degree in computer science and business administration.

My sophomore summer, I interned as a Software Engineer at Google, and I turned that into an Associate Product Manager (APM) Internship junior summer. Noting the prestige of the APM program, I saw myself as a Product Manager, in the intersection of computer and people stuff.

My senior year, I failed to convert full-time. After the disappointment wore down, I considered 3 possibilities:

  1. Randomness: perhaps by chance I could've matched with a bad team or bad host for my internship
  2. Dissatisfaction: perhaps my dissatisfaction for emails, documents, and meetings translated into my performance during my internship
  3. Incompetence: most severely, perhaps I just didn't have the right skills for product management

To protect my ego, I dismissed 3. And I couldn't really do anything about 1, so I internalized 2. I shifted my view of myself to accomodate the opportunity of Software Engineer once again.

So my senior year I recruited full-time for software engineering (SWE) and product management (PM). I had to deal with rejection for the first time in a few years, getting rejected by the Salesforce PM, Snowflake SWE, and Affirm SWE applications. Humbled, I returned to Google, as a Software Engineer. This time, though, less attached to the Googler name as my identity.

  1. Note the negative space. I still don't feel good at fitness, aesthetics (e.g. visual art, music), and nor navigating ambiguity. Though I am working on it. ↩︎