Finding my way back to building
— views
Loading counts…
From a university project and a guitar to rediscovering the joy of building useful software.
There are many reasons I left my job to start my own company, but the most important is simple: I want work I can stay passionate about. For me, this journey is about more than success or failure. It is about being myself.
My first project at university
Thirty years ago, as a third-year university student, I built my first real software project with my roommate: a publishing system for a citywide computer-supplies advertising catalogue. We shared the single computer assigned to us, starting by learning FoxPro and building everything from the screens for entering catalogue items to the laser-printer controls. We argued and laughed, worked into the night, then headed back to the dorm.
After a month, we delivered a working system and earned 800 CNY, about US$100 at the time. I used my share to buy a guitar.
What stayed with me wasn’t the money. It was the joy of delivering something useful to someone who needed it. A year later, the customer came back and asked me to adapt the system to a larger page layout. I completed the change in just one hour and was paid 500 CNY. They even invited me to join their company. Their trust meant more to me than the payment.
Learning to care about the details
In the 25 years that followed, I worked at different companies and learned so much from the people around me. Not just technical skills, but how to care about every detail that matters to customers.
I worked on services used by millions of customers, running on large-scale cloud infrastructure. I carried a pager and woke up in the middle of the night to respond to critical customer issues. I learned how seriously to take protecting customers’ data, reducing their costs, and bringing them value.
I also worked on AI infrastructure, helping customers accelerate model inference and reduce costs with custom ML chips.
I devoted myself to my career and left my guitar behind for 25 years.
Finding that passion again
In early 2026, before I’d had much time to enjoy the power and speed of coding agents, I realized that my daily work had shifted entirely to talking to agents. I found myself missing the joy of coding and wondering whether I could still call the work mine. I found myself too far away to hear customers’ voices.
I want to find that passion again. I want to devote myself fully to building useful products shaped by my own observations and innovations. I want to know who they serve and hear directly whether they make a difference.
I’m on the right path now, building valuable tools for my customers and picking up my guitar again.
