Musings on "The Search" and other ramblings

I'm reading John Batelle's "The Search" right now, about 1/3 way through it. I don't think there is any self-respecting techie who can read the story of Sergey and Page and not get completely fired up. It's basically every wannabe entrepreneur's wet dream come true. Reading through history of all the incredible innovation that came out of Stanford, from Excite, to Yahoo, to Google, to god knows what's next, it reminded me what it was like being there at that time. The electricity in the air, when there was a startup job fair every other week, competiting ads in the Daily with ridiculous offers, business plan competitions getting more hype than March Madness (well, almost. we sucked after I got in), free t-shirts everywhere, and everyone trying to score that coveted internship. It reminded me that at one point, I had that same passion, that same fire of wanting to change the world. To be a part of something from the beginning and believe in it so much, that I was willing to eat, breath, and sleep it. I suppose I am trying to recapture that kind of passion in my life. Do I still have it? Do I still have what it takes?

This also made me think about how things turn out in Life in ironic ways. I remember when I was applying to college, I actually really really wanted to go to MIT, and I was bitterly disappointed when I was waitlisted. Stanford was my top choice too, it probably would've been a toss-up between the two had I gotten into both. But now in retrospect, I would not give up going to Stanford for the world. That was absolutely the best place for me, to be there from '98 to '02, witnessing the bubble grow and then burst and to take in that atmosphere. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that had a tremendous impact on my development as a person. But I would never have experienced this had I gone to MIT. Sigh, why can't foresight be as clear as hindsight?

So that was a long winded way of convincing myself, maybe something that I'm bitterly regretting now may turn out to hold something else for me in turn? Or maybe not :) But I guess that's all part of life.

As I've said previously, things are now in motion and accelerating at a breakneck pace. For the first time, I have zero cycles left at work, which is rare for me since my upperbound is literally every waking minute. While it's not all work, I'm still exhausted. I went home at 5am last night and had to pull myself up for work at 9am...almost reminds me of college again :) Maybe I should be careful what I wish for.

It is nice to be firing on all cycles again. I have to say, I was refreshing my knowledge of basic bayesian statistics last night. I swear, I could hear the gears grinding and groaning as I was slowly firing up that dormant machine upstairs again. It definitely took a while, at first I couldn't even remember the theorems. But man did it feel good when it all came back. It's nice to know I've still got it, at least some of it.

It's also been frustrating trying to prove myself to skeptics who doubt my business acumen or management ability. I understand their concerns, but at the same time, it really is not rocket science. Especially at the product level. Sorry if I sound full of myself, but if I've more than proven myself to be smart enough to completely pick up being a PM in a field I did not study, I find it difficult to imagine I could not do something similar. Yet another challenge of professional working life I supposed. I find that often the hardest part is not doing the job, but rather "showing" that you can do the job. They sound the same but are actually quite different, and this perception management part probably frustrates me much more than actual execution itself.

Sorry, I wish I could be less vague, but there is no access control on this blog. I really wish blogger had that feature. :(