Why?
So many people have
asked me what made me decide to leave my job at Microsoft and go to Taiwan. The
main reason I made this decision comes
down to two words: Comfort Zone.
Work
After graduating in
2013, I moved to Seattle to start working at Microsoft in the same year.
Over a little bit of two years, I have been through major and
minor re-orgs (post for another time) and grown a lot as an engineer. However,
as I came back home for Christmas in 2014, after a year and half at Microsoft,
I realized that I was learning things that were no longer interesting to me.
When I got back to work, it became abundantly clear that my career and what I
was learning would take multiple years to fully master and I wasn't passionate
enough to put in that much time.
Life
Outside of work, I
had also started to stagnate. Although I had a great group of friends, again, I
felt too comfortable. I very rarely, if ever pushed myself to meet new people
or proactively tried to develop the relationship. That's not to say that hanging out with my friends
was a bad thing, but there were a few instances that it was painfully obvious
just how bad I had got at developing new relationships (stories for another post).
Options
So basically I knew
I needed a change both from a work and a life perspective. Thinking
about it, I came up with a couple of solutions:
- Changing teams at Microsoft
- Switching companies in Seattle
- Moving to a different part of Seattle
- Moving away
Although the first 3
were all appealing, I felt like they would only be band-aid solutions; it would
be too easy to fall back into the same patterns in work and/or social life. Thinking about
the last option was the scariest and most exciting; I would naturally
have to break out of my own comfort zone and push myself in a new environment
(why specifically Taiwan are for a future post).
Timing
Once I had decided I
was going to leave, I started to think about the timing. At the time when I had the idea to move away, it was Christmas of 2014. After coming back and a couple of milestones
at work, it became clear that barring any financial concerns (which I will get
into another post), there were two major breakpoints that I could leave: 1.
Windows 10 (July 2015) and 2. Windows 10 Update (October 2015).
As it got closer to the first date, I realized that I should stay until the
second one; the reason being that there were loose ends and still a bit more to
learn. I formally quit my job at the end of October 2015, 10 months after I
first had the idea of leaving.
Finishing
Even though I knew I
was leaving, I wanted to make sure I left the team in a good state: I completed all my tasks to a high standard; I wrote better
docs so that handoff would be smoother; I talked with my teammates about anything unresolved and then summarized in e-mail. So when I finally told my boss I was
going to leave, I left feeling like I had left the team in a good spot and not
just that I bailed on my responsibilities. Visiting my old team before going to
Taiwan 6 months later, I was really happy to hear that they managed to integrate my work
without many problems.
Conclusion
In all honesty, what
it all boiled down to, was that I got too comfortable. I started noticing I
wasn't pushing my comfort zone both in work and in my social life. After making the
decision to quit and move away, I worked hard to make sure I left in a good state. Even
after breaking my foot and staying in my bed for basically 6 months/half a year (story
for another time), I still felt that leaving my job and moving away was the correct decision
and the reason I am in Taiwan now.
