Diary - Looking Back on 2022

02 Jan 2023

A retrospective — something I always wanted to do after stepping onto the developer’s path!!
2022 was full of milestones that mattered in my life, and 2023 feels like it will be a life completely different from the eight years of university life I’ve lived so far. I thought I should look back on what happened last year and write down what goals I want to live by this year.

Looking Back on 2023

1. Life as a visiting researcher at UMD

   A wonderful opportunity came up, and I got to spend about seven months as a visiting researcher at the University of Maryland. To be honest, I was supposed to go half a year earlier, but visa processing got delayed by half a year because of COVID. In the end, though, I think it worked out really well. I was able to wrap up the research I had been doing (Blind spot detection through sound) before heading to the US, and I got to start the completely new research I had wanted to do. I started research on drone control using reinforcement learning, and while I couldn’t finish it perfectly during my time in the US, I’d give myself at least a 50 out of 100 for bringing it to a close as my graduation thesis.

   

   
   Honestly, what I felt at UMD was less about the research itself and more about the cultural difference between the US and Korea. The US is used to showing yourself, whereas Korea is used to hiding yourself. Especially in the open-source contribution I did with the Petting Zoo team, it was a group of people brimming with confidence, pushing their research forward and asserting their arguments. But when it actually came down to coding, there were situations where I was the better one… I believe balance matters in everything. The point is that it’s important to hide a little and reveal a little, appropriately. Living in the US, I became more comfortable with showing myself. Talking to strangers, explaining my research, sending the first email — it was a great experience in that I developed a proactive attitude of moving first.

   The second thing was that the industry-academia collaboration structure of US labs was astonishing. Every single one of my labmates had worked at a company at least once, or was doing an internship alongside their studies. Personally, I think this is a structure that’s hard to find in Seoul National University labs. (KAIST had quite a bit of it!!) Since I’m not the type who digs into one thing relentlessly, I thought a structure like this — going off to work at a company during the PhD, or being dropped into different environments — fits me better. So I gave up on doing a master’s/PhD in Korea!! Because if I have to do a PhD, I think doing it in the US would suit my personality better. I don’t know when that will be, though…

   The third thing was that it was pretty lonely. When I did my exchange semester in Switzerland, I wasn’t really lonely. I was close with my dorm friends, and I hadn’t left anything behind in Korea. But I realized that living abroad while leaving my girlfriend in Korea is just too hard. Honestly, it’s an experience I never want to repeat. If I have to go to the US, whenever that may be, I decided I would absolutely go together with her. I hope my girlfriend’s startup wraps up well soon so we can live in the US together.

   I met such great friends and such a great professor that I was able to adjust well and come back safely. My labmates like Khalid and Sharan were great, but if it weren’t for my Korean friends at UMD, I think I would have been truly lonely. Junsu, Charles, Pilgyu-hyung, the two Jihyes, Seontto-ppae — there are so many friends I’m grateful for. Overwhelming gratitude!!

2. Conversations with Professor J

   When I had come back to Korea and was preparing to study abroad in the US, I got a text message. It was from Professor J, who had been researching robotics and reinforcement learning at USC. It was one of the labs I had wanted to go to, so I was genuinely shocked to get a message saying he wanted to meet me first.

   

   He had been appointed as a KAIST professor this year, and the offer was whether I’d consider coming to his new lab as a PhD student. In the end I declined, but it became an enormous turning point for me. Because I was able to figure out what I really want. When my first two-hour meeting with the professor ended, his last question was this.

   “It wasn’t bad just now, but the meeting didn’t seem super exciting to you. Is it possible that you actually don’t want to do a PhD?”

   The insight that comes from experience is really something… I had been agonizing over whether a PhD was right for me or not… and I got seen right through. My mind went blank. Thankfully, he didn’t end it there but generously gave me advice so that I could make my next decision. After a total of more than five hours of meetings over two weeks, the conclusion I reached was going into industry.

   Research scientist vs. Software engineer
   The final question that let me make a decision on my dilemma was this. Do I want to become a Research scientist? Or do I want to become a Software engineer? Honestly, I hadn’t even realized these terms existed before. I didn’t know exactly what roles companies hire for either, and I just vaguely thought going into R&D would be comfortable. But in the US, they hire by distinguishing the two roles. (Of course Korea does too, but somehow I never heard about that kind of role distinction in college, so it felt unfamiliar.) According to Professor J, the two fields could be distinguished as follows.

   If you want to solve problems set by others, you should be a Software engineer,
   and if you want to set the problems yourself, you should be a Research scientist.
   If you can answer the question above, it becomes clear whether you should go to grad school or to a company.
   Don't choose simply because you think a Research scientist gets better treatment and better work-life balance.
   Rather than "it would be nice to do this," choose based on "it would drive me crazy if I couldn't do this."

   
   

   Actually, when I graduated college and was heading to grad school, I once told some club seniors at Company N about the things I wanted to do.

   “I really want to become a jack-of-all-trades doctor. The kind of person who, when someone asks them to make something, can just whip it up.”
   “Just hearing that, it sounds like you should open up some machine shop lol”
   “Is that so… maybe I shouldn’t go to grad school”
   “But grad school isn’t bad. Once you’re done, it turns out to help.”

   Honestly, I had known since back then that I was an Engineer. So this time I made up my mind to truly become a Software engineer.
   Professor J’s offer was really sweet. He’s a professor strongly connected with Google, has a great research track record, uses only English in the lab while trying to follow US culture, and believes the professor’s primary purpose is to guide each student well and raise them into a good person. It was a short, five-hour meeting, but it had a huge impact on my life. He’s someone I’d like to succeed big someday and go visit.

3. The job hunt and landing one

   The job hunt wasn’t as easy as I’d expected. Company N, the one I most wanted to go to, rejected me at the first document screening. “Was I a person they’d just drop without even an interview?” — that thought tormented me, but I later found out that Company N actually wasn’t hiring due to internal circumstances. (Maybe that was just a consolation…) Writing the cover letter, preparing for interviews, putting together a portfolio…. The one saving grace was that I had been building my CV and portfolio in advance. This was a huge help in cutting down the time. There surely wouldn’t have been enough time to pull off the job hunt plus a paper revision while writing my graduation thesis.

   The hardest part of the job hunt was that there weren’t many companies that wanted me. There weren’t many companies generating revenue from the things I’d done so far (autonomous driving, robot control, reinforcement learning, etc.). I’d heard that people apply to like 100 companies during a job hunt, but I couldn’t do that. Applying to a mere five companies was all I could do, and of those, I got to interview at three. There were moments where it felt like the door was narrow. As you do a master’s and then a PhD and your specialty gets more and more refined, it feels like the number of companies you can go to keeps shrinking. So if you graduate from grad school without properly leveraging that expertise, the companies you can apply to just dwindle. If you’re going to grad school thinking “I’ll probably get a job easily after grad school,” it’s better to throw out that thought right now.

   I’ll briefly jot down reviews of the four companies I ultimately interviewed at (the initial three + one that suddenly reached out via Wanted). That way it’ll serve as feedback later.

   Company S
   They evaluate a person with just an hour and a half of interviewing? Because of that, I wonder if you can pass with thorough preparation. (I failed, though…) In my case, I think the problem was loyalty. I hadn’t clearly organized why I wanted to go to this company. The important thing is that the reason to go to this company shouldn’t become the reason not to go to other companies. The questions the interviewer asked me were things like, “Why not Hyundai Motor? Why not Naver?” The intent of these questions is to explain what your criteria are for choosing a company, and among those, what makes this company the best — not to explain the reasons for not going to Hyundai Motor and Naver.

   Company M
   It was a really good company. The CTO personally took part in the interview, and honestly I thought it was the company that fit me best. It was a company focused more on Engineering than Science, yet not far removed from the latest research trends either. The process of scheduling the interview, and the way they tried to communicate with me during the interview — it’s hard to explain precisely, but I felt it was comfortable and a good fit. I got a final offer, but I gave it up because the salary was a bit lower than my current company.

   Company F
   Actually, the result still hasn’t come out. It was a job position in autonomous-driving path planning, the field I’m most technically confident in, so the interview itself went very smoothly. The thing is, I couldn’t decide whether I’d keep doing autonomous driving. Since I’m someone with a lot of interest in new things and always wanting many experiences, I started my job hunt having resolved not to go into the autonomous-driving industry unless the salary was very high. (That’s also why I didn’t apply to Hyundai Motor.)

   SKT
   This is the company I currently work at. What I liked most was the two-day interview. It was honestly grueling but also incredibly fun. The science high school admissions process has a two-day interview, and I got to feel that sensation again. You have to invest this much time to really get to know a person. Honestly, I think all eight team members implicitly knew who would make it. And everyone I’d guessed made it. I could feel that rather than trying to hire someone with a particular skill, they were trying to hire good people who learn well and adapt. That’s why it’s also a company I’m excited about in terms of what work I’ll get to do.

   

   Until the very end I agonized between Company M and SKT. MakinaRocks was a genuinely attractive company, and it felt like I could grow a lot there. But I think what I need right now is to learn how an institutionalized system is structured. So in the end I chose SKT, a large corporation. I’m grateful to the many people who gave me advice along the way.

2022 was a year when so much changed. The part that changed the most and got the most sorted out was my answer to the question, “What kind of life will I live?” From a young age, I believed that one’s job can’t define a person. This happened back in 2015, during my Dream Class days.

Me: “Teacher’s dream is to work at CERN in Switzerland”
Kids: “Wow, that’s so cool~”
Teacher A: “My dream isn’t that cool. My dream is to live happily with a good wife who’ll welcome me home when I get back from work.”

I thought this was genuinely cool. After that, my dream became getting married to my closest friend and the person I love most, having a daughter, and living together in a house with a basketball court.

As the time to get a job approached, I started thinking about my career. What job will I have, what work will I do, what field will I become an expert in. The last conclusion I reached was the answer I don’t know. It’s funny, but this is the single most important word that describes my life.

I don’t know. I have no idea about my future, and I can’t plan my future. And precisely because of that, maybe I can live by choosing fun and enjoyable things? Fortunately, I’m pretty quick-witted, sharp, and highly adaptable. I intend to live doing the work I want to do and the new work that comes my way. I researched for more than two years and lived in grad school. I want to go somewhere new. So I decided to go to an institutionalized large corporation on the opposite extreme. I plan to be here for at least 2–3 years. After that, if something I want to do and that looks fun comes along, I might leave without hesitation.

While I spent this year agonizing and wavering and changing so much, I’m truly grateful to my girlfriend, who stayed by my side without wavering. As the CEO of a company, she often seems to have a hard time running it, but the way she keeps growing without collapsing is so cool and admirable.

Goals for 2023

I joined a new company! Whenever I mention SKT, everyone says isn’t it a dream job, and while the work-life balance is good, there’s also a rumor that it’s called a developer’s graveyard because your dev skills don’t grow there. What I want to learn at SKT is the structure of an institutionalized system. I think I’m starting to get the hang of how to solve problems on my own — how to study, how to do research, how to reach conclusions and present them. But I don’t really know how to solve things together. I could learn from the ground up, but wouldn’t it be faster and more accurate to learn within an organization that’s currently producing big results? At SKT, I’ll experience, feel, and learn how to gather people and get them moving toward a single goal.

Another important thing is not to slow down on self-development. I’ll continuously do Deepest activities and follow up on deep learning research trends. As for basketball and tennis, I should now spend some money learning and building my skills. At the company too, I won’t fall behind and will constantly absorb the things I can learn. If I live each day having fun, then even a future where I know nothing will somehow flow in a good direction.

“You can only connect the dots by looking backward. Please get out of your comfort zone and experience as much as you can.”

Lastly, let me not forget that, above all, people matter. Building relationships that don’t fade with time — like my high school friends and my Encuba friends — is the most important thing in life. Friends you can contact anytime without it being awkward, friends you can crack jokes with over a beer — maybe those are more important than a career. I hope I can make friends like that at SKT too.

Let’s go for 2023 too!! Let’s not get sick!!