How it started - My Story before Rich Data Engineer
Every business has an origin story, and they are often emotional ones. I am sharing the moment when something clicked in my brain. But I was furious at first.
This is a chapter from the Rich Dad Engineer book.
It was 2016. I was furious. I was sad. I was walking my baby girl in the stroller. I walked fast, sweating, with my laptop hanging in my shoulder bag.
It was a "Bring Your Daughter to Work" day. I worked for the startup as a software engineer since it was operating behind a garage door – it wasn't a garage of someone's house like in the Google founders' story. But our startup was so early, small, and broke that it rented the cheapest office available in Mountain View, California. It had a garage door because the building used to belong to a repair shop.
Four years later, the startup had survived many crises and had grown to have 300 employees. The last fundraising round was $50 million. The office relocated to a prime location in San Francisco, a significant update from the repair shop in a sleepy suburb. It meant a long commute for me because I hadn't relocated to the city like my younger coworkers, but I remained loyal and proud of the company we built together.
The startup was my life. Then my daughter was born, and she became my life. I wanted to show her to everyone in the office, whom I regarded as my family. We were young when our journey began, and our lives have evolved together with the startup's growth.
"Look! Can you believe? I'm a dad now!" I wanted to say to them.
After the fundraising, many new people joined, and my manager was one of them. I called him and I excitedly told him that I was bringing my daughter to work. Then he said,
"Don't."
Don't get me wrong: He was a good manager. He was a nice person and focused on the success of the team and the company. He was professional, but he didn't share the "culture" we had when we were small. He was a coworker, not a comrade.
Steam came out of my forehead as I hung up the phone with him. Feeling completely defeated, I headed back to drop my baby at her daycare, and then took the train to SF. Alone.
I told myself on the train. "I get it. It's a workplace. We have priorities. He may have said OK if it weren't today. The timing did not work out. It's work. It's work..."
But it wasn't just work. As young team members at a small company, we didn't separate work and personal lives. We brought life to the work just as the radical founder CEO encouraged us to do. Outsiders called it unprofessional, but such a culture bonded us so strongly that we were unbreakable. Such unity was essential for the early-stage startup to overcome numerous seemingly insurmountable challenges.
But that day, I realized the company had become too big for me. And it was the day I began searching for a new place.
💡 Before sharing how I took my next step, I'd like you to close your eyes and recall a moment when you had to compromise your personal values to prioritize your work at a company owned by others. How did it feel? Did you tell yourself to grow up and accept what it was because there was no other way?
The episode threatened my integrity as a father and a professional. Instead of "growing up", I started to question everything, including the startup I used to love. I wanted to make both life and work work. That was when my journey started.
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