Beginning

I'm in an interview. The first time I interviewed, I was incredibly nervous, but now I'm already looking for my fourth company, so I'm much less tense. If I get rejected, that'll be disappointing, but at the end of the day it'll just be one more rejection among many. I've become someone who knows, at least a little, that one experience of success and deep immersion can wash all of that away.

Maybe because I've built up actual work and experience now, I hear questions I've already heard before. The companies that rejected me in the past had been curious about similar things. Technical topics I'd thought through enough to answer smoothly.

Then the interviewer suddenly asked me what I'd learned over the years. You've worked at several companies and were also an extremely early member of a startup, so what did you feel and learn? And just like that, I froze.

I worked hard. I went through new things. I learned a lot, whether from work or from people. Maybe I even accomplished something. How could I possibly fit all of that into a few words? Even if my experience is shallow, it's been more than three years since I started working. I spent nearly a year at a startup growing like crazy. There's no way I could easily melt onto the tip of my tongue the mind that was forged by moments so overwhelming they made my vision go blank. At the very least, I don't want to think of my own time that way.

But after saying all that to myself, I realized I couldn't immediately think of what exactly I'd learned. I felt ashamed. I had definitely changed a lot. But what had I actually learned that was new? Had I gained any kind of new knowledge that I could confidently write on a whiteboard, like, "Before, I didn't know what differentiation was. Now I've learned it, so I do"? In the end, I rambled at the interviewer and gave an answer with no real substance.

I got rejected. Was it because of my stupid answer? I don't know. Looking back, it's hard to imagine that even if I'd delivered one piercing line of insight, the interviewer would have been so impressed they decided to hire me on the spot. If there was a problem, it was probably everything. I know now that there are very few cases where one cool line can turn the whole game around.

The place that rejected me was a company I really wanted to join. To soften the disappointment, I ordered my favorite pizza. As I laid out the table, I noticed books piled on the floor about the history and principles of computers.

Right, I had these too. No one cares about that kind of thing anymore. Actually, even before all the boring talk about AI whatever, people hardly cared about this stuff in the first place. I'd forgotten, but there was a time when I read those books alone. I dreamed of becoming a great engineer someday and smugly saying that this or that knowledge of computers was what led me to success.

An absurdly long stretch of time seems to have passed since those books. I remembered telling the CEO of the startup I worked at earlier this year, "By the end of this year, I hope we've both become something we couldn't have imagined at all." Before that, I told the team lead at my previous company, "Even if I'm working at some random restaurant five years from now, I hope I'm on some path that the current me could never have imagined." The year isn't even over, but it already feels like that wish and promise have come true. And somehow, it felt like I'd made a wish on a monkey's paw.

The sweetness of the pizza filled my mouth and my stomach, but I still felt bitter. Thoughts from the past, from when I was more certain about myself and the world, came back in a muddled order. The interviewer's question—what did you learn during that time while those thoughts gradually faded inside you?—was still vivid in my head. I was still fumbling. But I didn't want to call my time foolish. As I swallowed that time down with cola, the things I'd wanted to protect started coming back to me one by one.

Of course, I don't know the right answer. I'm scared that the waves of a changing world might swallow me whole. But even so, I think it would be a sad life if there weren't even a single fragment of an idea I wanted to hold onto. I've come to have feelings I want to protect, no matter if someone truly great showed up and laughed at me for them, and so I'm leaving them here for my future self, however clumsy my writing may be.

Because I want to do work that moves people's hearts

I wrote this as if it were some deeply personal confession, but in the end it's still a reflective post written for other people to read. This kind of post is supposed to talk about ups and downs anyone might have gone through while puffing out its chest and saying I was a little different. To do that, I probably need to talk about what I held onto and what I was looking toward instead of just drifting through that time.

So now, like an interview, I'll try to sound confident. I'll make my story land in people's hearts if I can. As intensely as possible. Let me do my best.

I want to do work that makes people insanely excited. Realizing that I was making content that could shake someone's heart and light up their eyes made me so happy I could barely stand it. Numbers and results are great, but what I want to observe is joy. I know I'm the kind of person who would gladly throw myself into that.

One day last year, I went to a concert. I think it was Lee Seung-yoon's performance. I shouted with the crowd and jumped around like crazy. Popo Fireworks Time-¹ And suddenly, while bumping into the people around me, I had this thought: I don't want to cut even a single minute or second from this performance, from this moment. In this stupid world where everyone keeps babbling as if everything can be done several times faster and several times more efficiently, I wanted at least this moment to be preserved whole.

I thought that I wanted to do work that gives people moments like that. Not work that replaces or reduces things people hate doing, but work that gives them something they love so much they want to savor it completely. If I were loved for that, I'd be fine living on instant noodles.

I believe in the power of that. A moment that genuinely brings joy to others gains power of its own, beyond the person who made it. It can fully move even people I could never have reached otherwise.

Even Elon Musk, if he watches anime, has to choose from works made by people with far less money and influence than he has. Musk was so moved by Fullmetal Alchemist that he put Edward Elric in his profile. Fullmetal Alchemist is one of the most important anime of my life, but objectively there's no way Hiromu Arakawa has more money than Elon or is more successful than he is. And yet the content she created pierced even the heart of the richest man in the world.

That's the kind of work I dream of. Work that moves emotions no matter how great, smart, or superior someone may be. I'd love to play even a small part in bringing joy to people.

And because I've come just a little close to that, I know how thrilling it is for me. The platform I helped build had countless people on it. Every time we posted an announcement, people hit like, praised us, or hurled criticism. Whether they were students or office workers, men or women, whatever their age, they were all being affected by the place I'd worked hard to build.

People far beyond the reach of me as an individual laughed and cried on top of the foundation I made. No one knew who I was, but I felt secretly proud and burned through countless dawns. If work this enjoyable exists, of course I want to keep doing it.

Not being afraid

There were people who succeeded in shining like stars, and people who fell like meteors and went dark. Most failed, and only a few succeeded. But all of them kept moving, constantly, as they burned themselves up.

Lee Gi-moon, Krafton Way, p. 9

Dreams are nice, but maybe I should also write about more practical differences in values and perspective. Over time, I became someone who isn't overly afraid of things and who holds fewer illusions about other people. I now think we're all just people, and no matter what anyone does, that's where they start. And even if we're different, I don't think that matters so much right away.

I was once a founding engineer². A founding engineer is an engineer who joins a startup at a very early stage. So what does the model founding engineer look like?

According to many articles, they're versatile and technically brilliant. Rather than avoiding ambiguous requirements, they're comfortable with them, and they get involved in customer support and hiring too. They have strong business sense. Even under brutal deadline pressure and market conditions, they always deliver. They're basically superhuman.

I spent about ten months as the second member and a product engineer at an AI content startup. I put time into engineering, but like many early members, I was involved in plenty of other things too. By definition, I guess I really was a founding engineer. The rest of the team thought of me that way too.

So was I perfect as a founding engineer? Not at all. Since that was the role I'd been given, I did try to become someone worthy of the title. But most of the time, I just did whatever was in front of me, because I thought that's what had to be done. Our platform always seemed to be on fire, and I loved it enough that I wanted to grab water from anywhere and pour it over the flames. In the process, there were times I fell short, times I was wrong, and sometimes times I did well too.

Of course, I did my best. Maybe I wasn't the best engineer in the world, but among all the engineers in the world, I loved that product the most at the time. I started as a customer, became a contributor, then quit my original job and officially joined. I was the first engineer to bet my life on it, and while I was there, I threw my whole life into it. Looking back, there were many minor technical mistakes and small moments of laziness. But when it comes to the bigger direction, I still don't know how I could have poured more of myself into it than I did.

That much lets me say this more confidently now. Behind titles like founding engineer or whatever role at whatever place, there are just people. Just as I was part of a fairly promising startup and at the same time foolish in some ways. I've come to think the same is true of other people too.

To begin with, no one starts out already possessing everything needed to match some title. Even people who've built multiple unicorn companies didn't succeed every time. Right, I was an inadequate early member and an inadequate founding engineer. Then who is enough? Is there some special breed of "enough" people? Before they achieve something, no one is enough.

I admire people who are greater than me and people who've succeeded. It is my wish to stand one day where people like that—people I once met—stand. But even if they're far ahead of me, I know they are not something from an entirely different world.

Wealthy CEOs, impressive VCs, and the PO everyone wants—all of them got tired late at night, had ordinary hobbies, and ate ramen like I did. It sounds so obvious that it almost deserves a scoff. But actually seeing those ordinary sides in front of me and hearing them directly was different. Whatever I do next, I now know that the people running ahead of me once stood where I stand now. We're on the same human track. At least, that's how I try to think.

On obvious words and actions

"Couldn't that be a lie? Couldn't he just be saying it to get on your good side, Kwonma?" It was a weak thing to say, something he normally wouldn't have, but Geom Mu-yang seemed determined to reveal his honest feelings. "Of course, that could be true." "Then why did you believe him?" "Because Young Master Lee proved it through action. He came to Donggwonmun and rose from Baekgwon to Heukgwon." "If it's just about martial talent, that wouldn't have been difficult!" To the agitated Geom Mu-yang, Kwonma asked calmly: "If it was so easy, why didn't you do it?" Geom Mu-yang couldn't answer. He knew too. What Kwonma was talking about wasn't merely martial skill. When action follows, belief gains weight.

Jang Young-hoon, "Absolute Regression", Episode 248

What was I supposed to say I'd learned during that year at the startup? Even after thinking hard about it later, I couldn't come up with an answer that felt truly new, uniquely mine, and honest at the same time. I read a few founders' memoirs too, but they didn't give me the clarity I wanted.

In the end, the only thing I could come up with was that it had been a period of finding balance and finding my place among obvious truths. At best, I could say I tried not to be someone who's all talk.

People are selfish. When you try to do great work, people can clash hard. To succeed, you have to take risks. You have to outperform others. You have to increase productivity. You have to actually execute what looks like the right answer and prove it with results. You have to make technically correct choices. You have to prioritize based on immediate impact and work from the top down.

Everyone knows these things. But so what? You could just as easily bring out the opposite set of instructions. Still, you should show consideration to the people you're working with. If you try things, sometimes you'll fail. Everyone has weaknesses. If you move quickly, of course some things will be missed. Some decisions need to be made with long-term perspective rather than short-term metrics. These are all broad claims that are hard to argue against, because you can't really refute them with just one or two examples.

It's hard for any one person's position or argument to be completely wrong. Somewhere between opposing claims, there is probably a path of truth for that particular moment. I don't know exactly where it is either, but over time I learned that it doesn't emerge just because people vaguely repeat general principles.

Because it's a matter of practice. Nobody doesn't know that regular exercise is good, and yet most modern people don't get enough of it. More than arguing over what's right, or what the numbers or data or results say, what led to bigger outcomes in the end was the look in our eyes that said we're all a little crazy anyway, so let's at least try something, and the will to choose even one garbage option and push it out while there was still time to think. What defined us wasn't what we said, but how we acted in reality.

I made a lot of wrong decisions. I argued a lot at work. It was emotionally draining and deeply stressful. There were many moments with no visible results. The obvious and rational ideas lodged in my head scolded me, asking what I was going to do about that. But now, whenever that happens, I think about how meaningless it is to say those things in a startup, a place practically built out of irrationality.

Because pushing forward through mistakes mattered far more than moving ahead while faithfully preserving all the nice principles. Because people are the ones doing the work. Because while pointing fingers and talking about AI or data and cracking the whip may sometimes be necessary, what helped much more in practical terms was clapping, saying let's at least try something again today, and showing each other that we believed in one another.

And I know that even this realization, which I arrived at through countless nights and tears, turns into just another shallow generality once I flatten it out into writing like this. My small lesson was learning to peel back that layer of generality. Looking back, it was all just a repetition of obvious words and plausible events. The only difference was that knowing something and living through it are wildly different things.

I was not made by respectability

In the end, we are our choices. Build yourself a great story.

Jeff Bezos, 2010 Princeton commencement address

I spent a long time thinking about what made me who I am. It was still vague, but at least one thing was clear: the numbers, achievements, and successes I proudly listed on my resume honestly didn't come to mind at all. What came to mind instead were foolish choices I normally wouldn't have made, lonely dawns, and the time and emotions I let wash over me. I am the pathetic choices I've passed through.

Every now and then, someone or something would appear and dump all kinds of emotions over my head like a bucket. Whenever that happened, the rational economic man I'd liked reading about as a child ran far away from me. By doing things I thought were pathetic and thinking thoughts I never imagined I'd have, I became myself.

If you ask what I felt, it was this. So this is what infatuation is—the feeling that lets you endure each day because you want to see someone. So this is what love is—willingly accepting inefficiency just to see someone a little sooner, hurrying out and waiting on a wooden subway bench, swinging your legs, and finding even that enjoyable. So this is what it means to be crazy—being so smitten that you feel like no matter what background or conditions they had, even if they'd simply dropped out of the sky, you'd still have fallen helplessly for them. And as you get older, you realize you're not a hero and that there is very little you can do in this world, yet because you still want to protect things and accomplish things anyway, that's what a dream is.

I've tried to put it into words like this, but feelings like those were never the kind of thing you could explain in the first place. Even if you gathered every writer and genius in the world and had them explain it with beautiful language, it still wouldn't work. I too read many books and pretended to know dreams, love, and emotion, but the real thing quietly arrived one day and broke me apart, showing me that I hadn't understood at all. Only then could I say, ah, so this is what it really is.

As I was thinking this, the cigarette smoke from E in my memory swept my thoughts away. I can still see the blurred night sky shimmering beyond the smoke E exhaled while loosely wrapped in a gown, sitting up on the window frame. Were we arguing that day about whether to spend the night out together? And then did we break up after that? Maybe not. The only thing strangely vivid is that awkward arrangement, one person on the window frame and the other sitting on the bed. What we talked about no longer feels that important.

At some point, E told me to remember them as someone who had this older girl who stupidly liked me so much. Or maybe they said, almost spitefully, that I'd end up remembering them that way. However it was said, I can't deny that it turned out pretty close to that.

The time I shared with the person sitting on that window frame—the air of that moment, the sensation of it, even the smell of cigarettes that strangely didn't bother me only then—all of it mixed together and shook my existence heavily. Times that made me like someone, or hate someone, and laugh and cry, only to pass by and become forever unrecoverable.

From all those countless moments I passed through, emotions flowed into me. There wasn't a single thing in that flow that everyone would applaud as admirable. And yet my heart was always getting soaked in it. And by the time that uncomfortably soaked heart had barely dried, I had already become a different person. I don't know if there's anything I can cleanly say I learned. But if there's anything good in me at all, it surely began in those late nights when I trembled with feelings like that.

Protecting choices, taste, and belief

Everything I've written so far is just my thinking. I know my thinking can change, and there is plenty of room for debate. There is no right answer. Even as I write this, countless objections to my own words keep occurring to me.

I could give examples. I said we're all just people, but it's also true that some people are clearly exceptional from birth. Work that shakes people deeply can often be reduced to numbers too, and there are formulas and theories for it. Many people have dreams completely opposite from mine. In the end, the world looks at achievement, not at my pitiful self or my flimsy wishes.

I could pursue flawless logic by trying to counter all the expected objections and strengthen my case. I could even go around asking others to teach me how to respond to those objections. But what good would that do? I'm cynical enough myself, but I don't want to become someone who tells me—the one person I shouldn't say it to—that the world is cold and dreams are something to give up on. Everyone gradually learns, as they grow older, that many opinions exist and that reality has its limits. But it's exactly because I still want to protect something in that kind of world that it becomes a dream, and a belief.

I saw news about the Harvard president saying this or that. Someone at Anthropic said something that sounded impressive and gave some grand lecture about the future. But we're living in an era where even those authoritative statements fail to predict anything properly or take responsibility for anything. Since nobody knows the answer, there are fewer and fewer things that feel like rules you simply have to follow. Which leaves only your own taste and belief. Even deciding what you should do and believe is itself a matter of taste.

Apparently one of the 2026 Fields Medal winners is a yuri fan. He said that if AI ever becomes able to solve every math problem, he'll go home and write yuri novels. If he came up to me and asked, Do you like yuri? what would I say? I'd probably say that I enjoyed Botan³, but that it's not my favorite genre. And if he insisted that yuri is the greatest genre, I'd naturally answer that I don't particularly agree. He may be great, but I'm not him.

I want to live thinking that way about the things I believe too. No matter what extraordinary person appears or what kind of era arrives, I want to pay attention, of course, but still live confidently enough to say what I believe as well, as if that were the most natural thing in the world. The world has changed, so give it up. That person is greater than you, so step aside. This doesn't seem to be the trend, so let it go. If I keep filtering things out and giving them up like that, there won't be a single piece of me left.

Even so, days of dreaming

Yes. It's incomplete. Like everyone's life, my past life was like that and my life now is too. It's different from what I hoped for and different from what I expected. I might run down the stairs and break a toenail, and right now I'm going through a terrible voice change. Maybe a rainbow isn't always a rainbow. Even so, when the monsoon comes, I will dance in the rain. And when this voice change ends, when this period of growth comes to a close, the songs I sing now will become much more beautiful.

Lee Eun-yong, We Are Not a Joke, p. 73

Before writing the ending, I read through everything again from the start. I'm wondering how to wrap this up. Because I know that even though I've tried to move in the direction of what I've written here, I haven't actually lived exactly that way. More than anyone, I know how much I've been swayed and changed along the way. I don't know what's left in me now, and many of the standards I used to follow have become blurred. Even the great developers I once looked to as role models seem uncertain now.

And above all, I absolutely do not want to end with some empty conclusion like, in a changing world, we must continue to adapt flexibly.

To be honest, I had imagined writing a reflection that began by tracing far back into the past and ended on a grand note. The kind where the version of me who once swelled with dreams reading startup biographies would have achieved something similarly great and now speak with a full heart. I secretly wanted the path I'd walked to form that kind of elegant symmetry. Someday, I wanted to become like the great old men of Xerox PARC or Intel or Google.

So where did that imagined greatness go? I turned thirty. I don't want to say anything trite like I've become more pathetic than the dreams I had as a child. I want to stay optimistic enough to believe that someday I may become even greater than what I once dreamed of. But even if the day comes when I burn through my remaining time, achieve great success, and write the kind of reflection I once wanted to write, I know it still won't have that neat symmetrical structure. I haven't lived by consistently pursuing one distant light.

I keep looking back, wondering what I should say in the end. No matter how much I look, there isn't anything I've accomplished in some impressive way—only beliefs of my own. I believe there is still something I can do as a developer even if I'm not writing code. I believe in the power of human emotion. I'm curious about what people get excited about, obsess over, enjoy, and what kinds of things make their hearts tremble with emotion. I want to recreate that with my own hands too. I dream that if I keep following this path, maybe one day I'll be able to do something magical.

There are resources everyone treasures in roughly the same way—time, life, youth, the future, things like that. I think what you choose with those things, and where you invest them, shows who you are. Even while trembling, I lived by throwing those precious things toward what I love and believe in. Looking back on the past year, I have nothing to say except that I ran with that dream. That's how my resume was made, and from it I learned what I could learn and lost what I had to lose.

Honestly, worries often wash over me too—what if it doesn't work out? I've been talking as if I'm full of confidence, but the truth is I spent countless nights awake not just with passion but with anxiety. When that happens, I think about what I would want to say to my past self.

When I remember the day I walked out of the hospital a few years ago, I think I was grateful for everything. The soup wasn't thin rice porridge but seolleongtang, and it tasted so good I nearly cried. I was grateful for each side dish. I promised myself that I would leave behind on that operating table my worn-out mind, the postponement of the present for the sake of the future, my life, and my flimsy achievements—and never look back again. Compared to living as myself, even the death that had come right up to me seemed like nothing.

If the current me, or the future me, could send something to the me from that time, would I really want to send some shallow news that I'd made a bit of money or achieved something? The me of today doesn't want that. Even if I had to give up countless things, including things I don't yet know about, I hope I could still say that I never once ran away from my dream of bringing joy to people. I hope I can laugh and say that I spent ten hours a day thinking about what makes people go crazy. I hope I can tell him proudly how much I was able to move people's hearts.

Compared to the lowest point I've ever hit, whatever comes will still be bearable. I believe in myself enough to think I can at least keep earning a living and eating the kind of meal I was once infinitely grateful for. So now, no brilliant closing line comes to mind. I only hope that going forward too, I keep my beliefs and keep dreaming.

Footnotes

1. Lee Seung-yoon, "Fireworks Time" ↩

2. https://nephtyws.github.io/story/what-is-a-founding-engineer/ ↩

3. The manga Kamiina Botan, Drunk Appearance Is a Lily Flower ↩