How do birds navigate the sky?

Really, how do birds navigate the sky? I'll let you ask your AI chat to find out more about it, but here's the part that struck me from the answer that Gemini gave me:

Internal Compasses: Some birds also have tiny, iron-rich mineral crystals (like magnetite) in their beaks or upper nasal cavities. These act like microscopic compass needles, sending nerve signals to the brain about the strength and angle of the magnetic field.

I literally used the phrase "internal compass" as a metaphor, when I said that birds were flying with their instincts. It turned out they do have internal compasses. Not only that, they also have the ability to recognize the Earth's magnetic lines.

Birds don't understand any of these, intellectually. They just know, and they just fly.

How do we navigate life?

Last week, I received a question in my emails:

Looking back at your own journey, what do you think helped you most in becoming the kind of person who was ready for opportunities like Apple and Google when they came along?

This question reminded me of Steve Job's Stanford speech, about connecting the dots. I started to connect my dots.

So how did I get ready for opportunities like Apple and Google? The truth is, I never was ready.

Today I want to share my story about how I joined Google. It's a long story and requires some patience. If you are in a rush, go ahead and close the page. If you decide to stay, here's my story.

BASIC

The story starts with a Nintendo Famicom.

When I was in elementary school, my parents got me a Nintendo Famicom, well, a Chinese knockoff version. I wasn't so much into the games, but got fascinated by the BASIC programming software that came with it. I knew nothing but just punching those example codes from the manual, and type "RUN", and I'd just enjoy that satisfaction seeing the code doing the magic on the screen. That was my first memory of "coding".

(in the pic: after I moved to Japan I got hold of the Japanese version of the manual for the BASIC programs, and a whole set of the Nintendo Family Basic hardware/software.)

Then I somehow magically found a very old textbook in my home, about BASIC programming. Neither of my parents knew anything about computers, and the book was old and definitely not bought. I had no idea even till today, how that book appeared in my home. I tried punching the code from the book into my Famicom, but unfortunately it didn't work. After all, the Famicom wasn't a "real" computer, and that book wasn't written for it.

This was where I got to understand a little bit about programming. It was fun.

English

Maybe punching English-like code on a keyboard activated something in me, I showed a very high interest, or "talent" if I may say, in learning English, from a young age. Into my high school years, this interest turned into a real passion.

It was a time when DVD wasn't very popular or accessible. We watched movies on "VCDs" that came with only Chinese subtitles for English movies. I somehow became obsessed with memorizing the lines and scenes, and acting it out with my friend. Not for shows, not for learnings, just for fun. My vocabulary was limited, so I would replay a clip hundreds of times, and make blind guesses on the possible spellings, and flip through my dictionary, just to find the exact words in the lines.

(in the pic: the very dictionary I used)

Below is a scene I remember memorizing, from the movie Matrix, but honestly I can't repeat it without the script today.

As you can see, we've had our eye on you for some time now, Mr. Anderson. It seems you've been living two lives. In one life, you're a respectable, tax-paying program writer. In the other, you are guilty of virtually every computer crime we have a law for.

Back then the cassettes and CDs sometimes would also come without the lyrics, I would play a song on repeat forever to just understand what the lyrics was, and so I could memorize it.

I became known in my class for "memorizing the dictionary", because my classmates saw me flipping the dictionary all the time. It was fun.

Broken IT Dream

Also in my high school years, I got my first computer. My memory with BASIC on the Famicom came back and I wanted to seriously learn about programming. I tried reading about C/C++, couldn't understand a word of it. I tried Visual Basic, it was based on the same BASIC language, but my young mind couldn't comprehend how to stitch the UI and the code logic together. I gave up, and I thought, let me study hard, get into college, and learn Computer Science, and get into the IT industry.

But as it turned out, because of a few inexperienced science subject teachers, my whole class suffered on our math, physics, and chemistry, almost the whole class gave up on our science grades. I had to choose to go for a literature path for my college entrance exam, and that changed the majors I could choose in college, and killed my dream of becoming a CS student and getting into IT.

I majored in Korean in college eventually. I chose it because I thought I was already good at English, and it would be fun to learn another language. I didn't know a thing about Korean, at all. I didn't think it matter so much what I learn in university, so I'd rather pick something fun.

It turned out to be very fun. I got the chance to go to Seoul for a year, as an exchange student, in a Women's University. First time being abroad, by myself, first time in a multicultural environment. Funny thing, during the year when I was in Seoul, I became known among my international school friends about being good at fixing computer problems. I guess that was me hoping to fix my broken IT dream.

Though, I didn't study hard enough, and my Korean kinda sucked when I graduated.

PowerBook G4

My first laptop was an Apple PowerBook G4. Second hand. I was guilty lying to my mom saying there was a big discount so I could buy a really expensive laptop at a much lower price. It was still very expensive.

It was a time when most of the web services and applications were not compatible with Mac OS. Nobody around me was using a mac. But I just felt in love with it. I could spend days and nights just opening every application I could get hold of, learning every shortcut combination I could find.

(in the pic: my PowerBook G4)

The laptop didn't really increased my productivity, but it was fun.

Web 2.0 & Javascript

In my college years, it came Web 2.0. I did some blogging, I learned some html and javascript. AJAX was a new thing back then, I thought it was cool. I played with it and implemented some UX effects on my blog pages. But that was it. I got all confused when learning how all the asynchronous calls were made, and I never figured out.

So just like BASIC, I learned a bit of javascript, and I gave up.

Unofficial IT Guy

After graduation, I didn't give up my dream of getting into IT. I applied for roles at any IT companies I could think of, I would guess I had applied for something at Google, too. But without a CS degree, without any working experience in the industry, nobody wanted me. On the other hand, I applied for roles at whatever Korean companies that operated in China, after all I studied it in college, that was the only "leverage" I had. The banking job was what I got.

As a graduating student, I was so curious about office life, and there was no other place than finance industry to offer a more authentic experience of that. But I soon found out, it was killing my passions, putting out the fire in my heart. Extremely routine work, compliance, rules, paper works, numbers. Everything was killing me.

I tried to find my own joy in the job. I became the unofficial IT guy for my office, I fixed everyone's computer and network, I designed digital workflows to avoid doing the stupid routined work. I even optimized how I check and stamp a bulk of 100+ transaction slips, to be the most efficient. The job wasn't fun. But I found my joy in it.

Eventually I knew that it wasn't my career. I had to go. So I quit, without a next job. I went home.

(in the pic: me and my Korean bosses, at our year-end party 2008, a very different working culture, I guess 😆)

I Just Sell Phones

I still wanted to get into IT, so spent my next 6 months at home just looking for IT jobs. China's major portal sites, game development companies. Still, no hope.

The job I got at Apple, I didn't consider it IT at all. It was nothing fancy, it was retail, sales on the floor. In some's words, "you're just selling phones". I took the offer because the seed that my PowerBook G4 planted in me: I loved telling people about how much I love macs.

The job turned out to give me way more than what I expected. I smiled to every single customer, I surprised them by demoing how a simple gesture on the trackpad could do a task that required multiple clicks on a Windows PC, I learned how to approach and talk to a customer who is a total stranger, and get them to share with me about their work, their life, their passions.I later moved into the SMB sales team in the store. Lead generation, client acquisition, relationship management, customer service, process management, solution consultations, a whole new set of things I never learned before.

I also had a desk and an office room now. It was exciting because I again became the unofficial IT guy for our team. This time, it wasn't about fixing the computer or the network anymore, I was the IT guy who built tools.

I learned some Ruby on Rails and built a call-tracking tool to track the team's outbound calls. I learned some python and built an internal people directory for the store of 300 staffs to put the faces to their names. I learned FileMaker and built a tax invoice management system that help the team to track all the invoices we issued to customers. Most of the things I learned, never became useful again in my next decade of career, but I am glad I learned them.

This wasn't an IT job, but I made it one. I didn't do these for promotion, I did them for fun. I loved solving real life problems with technologies.

When with Apple, I also had a business trip to the Silicon Valley for the first time. My colleagues and I went for a nerdy tour in the valley, we got to the Google campus, I rode the gBike, and got asked by the security to get off, not knowing just a couple years down the road I would be back and would actually ride those bike, with a Google badge on me.

(in the pic: me as an Apple employee on the Google bike.)

Google

You would figure, at this point, my resume was a mess, I was completely lost.

Majored in Korean, worked in a bank, never properly studied programming, wanted to get into IT but now selling phones. What the heck was I going to do for my future? What was next?

So when I applied for the Google opportunity, I was a million lightyears away from believing I had a tiny chance to be considered. But it somehow turned out to be where all the dots lined up.

I wasn't an expert on anything the team wanted, but I was one who had a little bit of everything they needed. I had no idea how they picked me, but a few hints I thought to share with you:

• the role was a "Solution Consultant", that was almost exactly what I did in the Apple SMB sales team;

• the hiring manager asked me where I learned my English, he was impressed that I never lived in the states;

• one interview question asked me about the difference between Java and Javascript, I just knew enough to answer, from my limited Web 2.0 era blogging experience;

• and after I finally joined the team, one responsibility of the role was to write code with VBScript, a scripting language that was based on Visual Basic, and BASIC, you know, the language I played with on my Famicom.

• this is unlikely why they picked me, but even the Google office, was just 200 meters away from the Apple Store I worked in.

You ask me today how I got into Google, I'd say it was pure luck.

I feel lucky to have lived every story I wrote here today, whether it was about embracing or giving up. Because without any of them, I wouldn't be at Google, and wouldn't have the amazing years there. I feel lucky to be in the right place at the right time when the right opportunity came up.

You can't connect the dots looking forward

But if you look back, it was very clear.

That's what Steve Jobs said in this speech. That's how I feel now, too.

How did i get into Google? I had no idea.

"I just followed my instinct, my passions". It's easy for me to tell you that today, but it was impossible for me to say this at any point of my life where I did it. I didn't know.

How do we navigate life?

So here's my answer to the question:

Don't try to prepare for an imaginary perfect opportunity. Let your instinct lead the way, it knows. Everything you do today, will eventually bring you there. It may or may not be Apple, or Google. When it appears, you'd know it.

This one is a long story. Thanks for reading, thanks for hearing my story.