I wonder if I have been consistent about personal branding. Mostly I avoid commerce, and focus on civilisational issues.
Consistency is also an arbitrary component of the brand. Inconsistency is possibly on brand.
1. In college, avoided all commercial subjects, with a preference to study those in industry.
2. Entered the workforce. Did not aggressively ladder. Had at least one funny interview at Binafikir having been briefed that " accounting knowledge was not required ", but was then asked only about my opinion on financial statements. I declined to participate, they declined to ask further questions. Lady who briefed me has since retired from Big K having followed Azman all the way.
I literally slept through accounting in Form 4, until they let me drop it. I was a science snob, and did not consider it hard. I later taught myself financial statements two jobs later when helping some folks raise money for their company. Trivial.
3. I have many interview stories with employers who expected more than ( the laziness I presented above ). All in all, I feel that I have been consistent about my (lack of) ambition in commerce, while maintaining it too easy.
Arrogance is on brand.
4. My first interview out of college, I told the strategic planner that I thought marketing was easy, a matter of selling stuff to dumb people; was offered an internship, declined. An interview for sales, I attended with their friend's boss, boss said, "you're going to leave", I said, "of course, how long do you want me to stay?" One of them replied, "we don't like people who are thinking of leaving." I did not impress them - they did not impress me. This was before BF.
I had 4 jobs in 3 years.
5. 4th year after college, I was trying to DIY my masters level study at home. Figured I could learn something also by being a bartender - ended up on Changkat. Not for long - 6th job I was PM at a web startup, but I ended up learning web dev hands on. Did some gigs after that.
6. 6th year after college, did a short stint in tech public relations. Then made my second attempt to DIY higher education : spent half a year learning functional programming and dabbled in stock warrants.
Making money with active trading seemed too easy. I was afraid I would not properly understand commerce, as I hadn't done a corporate job really for very long. ( insert funny mechanism : ) I made myself go back to employment.
7. 8th year after college, I helped some guys set up a hipster coffeeshop. They were sooo slow, and the pay was less than my travel expenses. The next year, I had four jobs in sequence, across a 10x pay range.
8. 9th year after college. I succeeded in a hit job, and dislodged the chap who had hired me to help clean up a huge mess. Then I resigned, and somehow managed to raise money to open another coffeeshop. That kept me busy until the 15th year after college - learnt a lot, but lost money.
9. I worked two jobs to get a sense of normalcy, until my 17th year after college. Both my bosses had been disciplined by their boards. It was a good time for me to get back to studies, after 10y in commerce.
10. The markets were good, so I raised my study targets. I thought a couple of years off would be enough, but there has been so much to catch up on in studies. I have now retargeted to study for a decade, until the 26th year after college.
Who will hire me then? I don't know. Maybe I will not live that long.
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https://www.threads.net/@_jerng/post/DGuxK9ozsRT
A weird story thread for you. I was born in Kuala Lumpur. Attended a public Chinese primary school in Sentul. Then a private middle school for three years, where I got to hang out with rich kids. Dad worked for the church, so fees were free.
Then moved to Seremban, a small town, and attended a public Malay secondary school for two years.
Oh I also got to do third grade in Mrs Johnson's class at Wilmore Elementary School, in Kentucky, when dad studied for a doctoral degree.
Seremban was annoying, so I ended up learning about cultural anthropology, and wrote about it for my college admissions essay.
After SPM I started the A Levels back in KL, but got into a liberal arts college, and bailed to the US. ( Bates.edu : anyone went to Bates here? ) I think I got in because my relatives had attended, and the college liked building legacies. Not sure if I made it worth their money - haven't even made enough to attend reunion in 20 years.
The funny thing was, I'm such a snob that when I finally got to college after aiming to do so for 9 years, it seemed like all the kids there were really mid. So I decided to spend time on my own, studying whatever I had to, so I wouldn't be mid, like the majority.
I also made a point to hang out with more international students because I figured I had more to contribute to them than to Americans. This I admit was a gamble. But it is what it was, and so I'll roll with it.
Super privileged.
This was a half million Ringgit windfall living arrangement, and I wasn't sure I'd ever get a better deal for the rest of my life, so I just focused on enjoying the environment while it lasted. Clearly I knew nothing about commerce ... and to-date, I am reluctant to prioritise material laddering, because it seems off brand, and I know how to enjoy myself by just sitting and thinking about things.
Anyway ...
... being a intellectual snob, I found a lot of institutional structure to be "dumb". Mainly, there was no educational objective except to run kids through the system and send them off to work thereafter. Super vague. No architectural nuance about who learnt what, and how that was optimised. Very free market.
So by the end of my second year, I had given up interviewing professors, and decided to DIY studies in the library. Fun.
Later, I did get to "work" on a committee that administered a redesign of the general education program. A fun gig.
Along the way, something else happened.
I had been casually concerned with the question about whether conscious experience could be mapped to discrete structures ( "digitised" ), for a few years. So during the free time I had to study, I eventually got to the point where I'd figured out how to map all my own mental events ( the spatia qualia / phenomena, not the temporal computation ) to signals, and since I knew we know how to digitise two dimensional signals, I figured I had understood how to quantify first person experience.
It was a bit mind-blowing, so as a matter of risk management, I figured I'd probably have to think about it for 20 years to see if I'd changed my mind. ( I haven't ... I still think I am some sort of enlightened asshole. )
It was also kind of obvious eventually that unless I wanted to teach meditation and phenomenology, there was no more work to be done here.
Then I spent 20 years studying commerce, in the Malaysian context.
At some point, I figured I could go and learn how to talk to machines, so that I could implement my understanding in a medium that others might be able to appreciate.
But I was in no rush, and treated myself as a retired person from before the day of my college graduation. After all, I had already accomplished a state of mind which was beyond what I had considered before. I was able to be happy or unhappy on demand, so life has been very chill since college.
Which brings me to the present, about 20 years later.
Ok lah, so now you know why my feed is full of these crap STEM chats, shitposts about dating, and random Malaysiana.
Catch you around, later, if you haven't unfollowed this fool.
It is time for a nap. Writing helps me sleep.
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https://www.threads.net/@_jerng/post/DG4E8NlTpth?
Career adventures :
- attend college ; professors don't actually design college
- work at think tank : much tank, not so much think
- work in consulting : country manager gets fired and sues the firm
- work in funds management : programming not highly employed
- work in startup : founder reneges on staff comp
- work in bar : this is not bad
- work in startup : founder calls staff asshole upon negotiating contract
- work as contractor : client likes work, won't pay price
... cont >
- work in public relations : principal leads client to deviate from global, global smacks client
- proper sabbatical 1 : yay
- work in hipster coffee : client pays just enough to cover costs
- work in systems integrator : three years of accounts missing ; audit impossible
- work in finance app : client not happy, CTO declines to comment
- work in incubator : milestone is getting the hiring manager fired
... cont >
- run independent cafe : partners turn off social media
- work in restaurant group : entire senior management layer quits or is fired
- work in e-commerce : there are three CEOs ; court cases pending
- proper sabbatical 2 : yay
... all I can say is, unemployment is very peaceful, educational, and socially productive, except for sporadic temper tantrums from neighbours.
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