Here’s something I never thought I’d say: "this is my last week in Silicon Valley."
This post is a personal one. Rather than sharing insights on Blockchain or Javascript, I’d like to walk through my inner journey the past few years. It’s a journey that’s left me itching for change — and driving down to Los Angeles to set up a new home base is a big one!
How I landed in Silicon Valley
I moved to Silicon Valley during the summer of 2012, a little over five years ago. I had just graduated college and serendipitously landed here because of a new job offer. I was eager and anxious to start my career out here and frankly had no idea what to expect. As it turned out, I lucked out — Silicon Valley is one of the best places in the world for entrepreneurs, engineers, and anyone bold enough to try and change the world through technology.
…This was a stark contrast to life in my New Jersey hometown, where most people went to the community college, pursued 9-to-5 jobs, and settled into comfortable lives by their mid-20s. There was very little space there for thinking big, or taking risks, or creating your own career path. So, landing in San Francisco was the best kind of culture shock imaginable. Suddenly, I was surrounded by technology and innovation and immersed in a community where challenging yourself was actually encouraged. The next three years of living in San Francisco had a path-altering impact on my life, as I began to learn that crazy ideas aren’t “crazy” for those of us willing to put in the work and take a few risks.
First challenge: Goldman Sachs
That first post-college job was as an analyst at Goldman Sachs, where I was able to learn how tech company financials work at a fundamental level through working with CEOs and CFOs preparing for IPO rounds and acquisitions. This was hugely beneficial when I later moved on to working with some of those tech companies directly, and planted the seeds of my interest in solving problems with software.
After a year at Goldman Sachs, however, I realized that a career in banking was not what I wanted long term. I wanted to go back to being an engineer as I had been in college. So I decided to go going against the grain and say goodbye to a “successful” position. Where was I off to next?
Second challenge: Andreessen Horowitz
Well, I was on the brink of leaving to join as a systems engineer for a small industrial startup in the middle of the country. But after a random cold email followed by a long series of unexpected events, I got an offer to join Andreessen Horowitz on the deal team. It was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up — and thank God I didn’t.
I spent the next two years at Andreessen Horowitz, where I worked with and learned from the pioneers of the web, like Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, Chris Dixon, and many others. I saw thousands of companies come through the doors — I saw their ideas, their teams, their challenges and their strengths. I learned the ins and outs of building a successful technology startup, and on the flip side, learned the common mistakes that lead to failure. Most importantly, I met incredible entrepreneurs who inspired me to also become like them one day.
Third challenge: returning to engineering
When I left a16z, I made the transition to software engineering. I was young and wanted to go out and just build stuff for the world. You could say that I had “entrepreneur envy” — I was eager to build products day to day, and eventually start my own company. I’ve written about my experience extensively in the past.
This transition was nothing short of amazing. I was learning and growing at a break-neck pace. I was passionate and excited by my work. Frankly, I was having so much fun being an engineer that not a single day felt like “work”.
But beyond just loving my work, I also felt empowered. Empowered to do things I never thought were possible before. Because being an engineer gave me freedom. Freedom to build anything I want, whenever I want and wherever I want. The freedom to learn how everything works at a fundamental level. The freedom to teach and empower new developers. And most importantly, the freedom to be a creator and literally, create something from nothing.
When things started to feel different
It was only after I left Andreessen Horowitz to return to an engineering track that my feelings about life in Silicon Valley started to change. Thanks to the freedoms of the developer lifestyle, I started to travel more and meet engineers from all around the world — Paris, London, India, Vienna, Australia, Berlin, Tel Aviv, South Africa, Argentina, South Korea — and I started to see that Silicon Valley wasn’t the only place where world-changing engineering, technology, and innovation was happening.
What I once thought was only something I could find in Silicon Valley, was starting to appear in every city I visited. Early seeds of technology and innovation were being planted in places like New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Berlin, Tel Aviv, India, Switzerland and even South Africa.
This isn’t exactly a surprise, since one of the Internet’s core functions is to make access to knowledge available everywhere. I personally taught myself almost everything I know about programming on the internet (outside some fundamentals from Hack Reactor), for free. And I’m just one of thousands of learners using the Internet to access information that used to be limited to elite colleges like Stanford, Berkeley, or MIT.
These days, techies aren’t limited to Silicon Valley if they want to find funding and a community. Many other cities with active and relevant tech scenes have their own unique cultures, art, cuisines, and activities to offer.
Looking back, when I left Andreessen Horowitz to pursue this path, I set out a three-part roadmap for myself:
1) Figure out what I like developing the most.
2)Get really good at it.
3)Use those skills to have a positive impact on the world.
I spent the past two years learning many different areas of programming (e.g. web development, mobile development, distributed systems, etc.) and various application areas (e.g. machine learning, blockchain, etc.). I purposely stayed broad and exposed myself to as much as possible, and learned to code things that interested me most. Eventually, I fell in love with blockchain development.
My fascination with blockchains started when we first made the investment in Coinbase at a16z, and ever since, I’ve been keeping up with the technology and eventually joined Coinbase as a software engineer, which helped me further dive deeper into the space. After Coinbase, I continued to tinker and teach myself various aspects of blockchain, and now I’m at phase two, where I’m focusing on getting really good at it. The next step is to use my skills to “build a world-changing company or something else entirely”.
Leading the path I want to lead doesn’t require me to be in Silicon valley anymore. I don’t need to be here to follow my personal roadmap. Having the freedom of an engineer to learn and grow as an entrepreneur, writer, and speaker has opened me up to a whole new world. It made me realize that I can be an engineer, entrepreneur, writer and speaker from anywhere in the world.
** “If you set goals and go after them with all the determination you can muster, your gifts will take you places that will amaze you.” — Les Brown**
What I’ll be working on
As some of you may know, I’ve been heavily focused in the blockchain space for a while now. I hope to share more details about my next project in the coming months.
In the meantime, look out for more updates from me, whether it’s posts to teach you blockchain, videos for my #AskPreethi series, or pictures of me sitting on Venice beach with my laptop being a nerd and coding 😎
#AskPreethi Series : https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWKjhJtqVAbnUeereoJWjWOhlcWUynq_Z