2020 Was A Wild Ride

During our team bonding at Salesforce, we were asked to draw a picture for the year 2020. I drew a rollercoaster. There were some amazing high points and some crushing defeats. But looking back, I am so grateful to realize there is a group of people always cheering for me the whole time.

2020 has been definitely a wild ride, but also a memorable one. I cannot feel more ready and more excited for next year and turning 25. Here is a quick rundown of my 2020.

January 2020: Lunar New Year in China and COVID-19 Lockdowns

It has been 9 years since I last went back home for the lunar new year in China. Incidentally, I arrived when China was in the midst of a pandemic, so my family and I ended up spending the new year stuck in our homes due to the lockdown. When I landed in China, I was actually experiencing a fever but luckily I arrived before a mandatory 14-day quarantine was implemented. If I had arrived two days later, I would have been stuck in a Chinese hotel instead for my whole trip. After my visit, I flew back to America and was able to land back in SFO right before Trump closed the border as well. Woah…talk about narrow escapes :D

February 2020: Birthday and Volunteering at Rwanda

I officially turned 24 in late February, and I spent 10 days in Rwanda teaching English, computer, and business classes. It was my first volunteer abroad experience. I signed up to teach computer classes to a group of around 15 local Rwandans and I totally did not realize that basic computer knowledge was actually very hard to explain. Like how do you explain what the Internet is anyway? I was there to pass on knowledge but I gained even more from this trip abroad. It was an eye-opening experience to see the Rwandan people strive to learn, work, and live a good life despite their conditions. The strong sense of community in which people will even have self-organized loan funds has left an everlasting impact on me. It really shows how resilient a country can be after a genocide that happened only 16 years ago.

March 2020: Struggles at Work and at Home

I joined the Platform UX Flow Builder team at Salesforce in Nov 2019 but only fully onboarded around early March 2020. Getting thrown into a huge project like Flow Debugging without a design lead was extremely difficult. I was running into circles struggling to make major design decisions that could impact many releases. For the first time in my life, I truly felt like I did not know what I was doing. I spent countless hours on a header design back and forth because every small detail touches every part of the experience. I worked overtime on weekdays and weekends but still felt clueless. I was drowning.

Outside of work, the coronavirus cases were starting to spike all over the world like crazy. On March 17th, San Francisco went to an official lockdown. San Francisco’s residents are banned from leaving home except for essential activities. It felt like a scene from a disaster sci-fi movie. Facial interactions were replaced by virtual ones. Small businesses vanished overnight, and people panicked globally. It was just utter chaos. People hoarded toilet paper while others stocked as many hand sanitizers as possible.

Salesforce rushed to implement the new WFH policies. With some reimbursements from the company, I slowly set up my home office. Colleagues were posting pictures of all sorts of working from the kitchen, in a corner, in between walls. Zoom calls and doom news were on the daily schedule.

April 2020: H1B Lottery

When it rains, it pours…is what the saying goes. I got an email that I did not get the H1B lottery for the second time. If I do not get it next year, I would have to leave the country by July 2021. It felt like my entire world was collapsing as I have spent the majority of my youth in the US since I moved here at the age of 15. I found it amusing and extremely ironic that my future was controlled by some lottery totally decided by luck. All my future plans took a 180-degree turn. I was scrambling to put together my backup plans: whether it was moving back to my homeland, moving to a different country, or going back to school. I was truly devastated.

May 2020: Status Set Back to Single

While I was suffering from the loss of confidence as well as constant stress at work, I was also anxiously researching immigration and grad school applications outside of work. Too overwhelmed, I simply could not maintain a relationship. Furthermore, my boyfriend’s own immigration status at the time was not helping either. I was grateful for his support along the way, but I hated myself. I was constantly debating over love and reality and being maniacally unstable. I called it off. It was not a bad breakup but the worst part was that I felt like I surrendered to life instead of fighting it. I wrote in my diary that I hope to stay single for a while to find my path again.

June 2020: Graduate School Prep and Therapy

It took me about 2 months debating whether I wanted to actually go to a master’s program or not. I think that going back to school is a waste of time and money, but I needed to prepare for the GRE just as a backup plan. I spent 2 hours every day memorizing vocab words for a whole month and doing practice exams on weekends. Every day was a fight. I was too anxious to be motivated to do anything but I knew that this had to be done. But every day I struggled to get myself out of bed to finish all the needed tasks, so I got even more anxious. It was an infinite loop. I started to feel that I was not my normal self. I called Kaiser and arranged therapy sessions. I felt suicidal in late June and called my mom and my therapist to talk about it. They both yelled at me. I have always been a happy and confident person. I would have not never dreamed of having severe depression. But it was the first time I learned that everyone can be so close to mental health issues even when you could be a totally normal person just stuck in a not so great situation.

July 2020: Manager’s Sabbatical and Debugging Beta

In July, my manager went on a 2-month sabbatical. I took over one of his projects called App Processes back in May. I was actually quite worried that I would be helpless without him. But surprisingly I slowly found my own rhythm. Debugging, the project used to torture me day and night to the point that I would dream of it was finally shipped as a Beta version. I was finally swimming after what felt like drowning for about half a year. Our principal designer was stepping in for my manager while our skip level was still out on maternity leave. I was trying my best to shoulder some of his managerial tasks. Through mutual support, I started to find my stride and value at work.

August 2020: Liftoff

After the Debugging Beta launched, I got to present Debugging in the Salesforce’s Q2 Quarterly Business Review before our Chief Design Officer and many executives. My talk was only slotted for 4 minutes, but all the executives were so excited to see the work released that they went on a 10-minute discussion. Sounds cliche, but seeing all the encouragement from the Google Meet chat window, I really felt that all my hard work was paying off.

My journey to grad school was progressing as well. I stuck to a very strict schedule specifying what I should do for each hour on the weekends, and the result paid off. I received a fantastic score of 326 out of 340, hitting 94% on the verbal reasoning section which I believe was my weakest section.

I was soaring now.

September 2020: Work-Life Balance

When I finally felt like things were turning for the best, I was brought quickly down to Earth. Salesforce had its first layoff in more than a whole decade and one of the designers on the team was let go. A 4-designer team shrank to 3. Then one of the designers and her boyfriend both got COVID. After recovering, her boyfriend got some more bad health news so she had to go to the doctor with him all the time. So then a 3-designer team shrank to 1.5 in terms of real bandwidth with the principal designer also stepping in for our manager.

Finally, our manager got back from his sabbatical. But within one week after his return, he decided to step down and returned to an individual contributor role. The principal designer also in the same week informed us that he decided to switch teams. Our skip level just returned from maternity leave. It was just a hot mess. I was the only fully operational designer for about 2 months and was covering 8 out of 11 scrum teams and presented in the PM meetings 4 times in a row.

Around mid-September, I finally was feeling that I really needed a vacation. I reconnected with my old college friend and went on a camping trip to Mt Rainier in Seattle with a group of four people. This was my first backpacking trip, never have I ever thought that I would be able to hike from 8 AM to 10 PM in one day with a full backpack and sleep in the woods for 2 nights. I was lying on the ground like I didn’t give a shit anymore by the end of the trip. It was a marvelous vacation.

October 2020: New Relationship

In some ways that I won’t reveal publicly (haha), I got reminded again that maybe it was time for a new relationship. To be honest, I haven’t really stayed single for this long since I was 15. It was a very productive period of being single. I found my path again at work and outside work. I was developing new hobbies like taking care of plants and starting to put on nice clothes just for myself. I took care of myself enough that I finally felt like I was ready to take care of someone else.

I then met Alex, the biggest sweetheart. He bantered a lot and did not express his feelings towards me all that much at first. I also thought we were too similar, so I was not really into him. But then after a huge incident, I started to fall for him.

On our 3rd date, I pulled a list of questions like “how we are going to buy a house”, “how much savings do you have”, “what happens if I had to leave the country”, and he answered all of them gracefully. The following day he asked me to be his girlfriend, and I said yes.

November 2020: Road Trip and Wisdom Teeth Removal

While at work, I got my first negative 360 feedback that made me want to quit after how much I have gone through this year. I was working for 16 hours straight due to some last-minute urgent requests and crying at work due to another last-minute ball drop incident. I wanted some time away to just cool down.

I told Alex of the stress at work, and he decided that a road trip would be the perfect getaway. So Alex and I went on a trip to Vegas and Zion National Park even though we knew each other for less than two months. I really appreciated how similar we were on the trip. We were both good at timing, adventurous, and liked photography. We had a blast.

In November, I finally got my wisdom teeth removed after rearranging the appointment 3 times. Alex’s mom took great care of me and is like the nicest lady ever. She cooked me porridge, bird's nest, and abalone for my wisdom teeth recovery. I sent photos to my mom and she was so glad that I was getting spoiled here when she cannot be around. It was cute.

December 2020: Dreamforce Announcement & Jobs

The product I took over from my manager called App Processes got rebranded to Orchestrator and was announced on the Dreamforce stage. It was one of my proudest moments. From a team of three, one PM, one ENG, and me, to a team of 10 engineers, we gained traction so quickly like no other. I also did two all design org presentations in two weeks: a 50-min one on Debugging and a 10-min one on Orchestrator. It was a ton of work but eventually, I got some amazing recognition from our SVP and also gained some leads for Orchestrator (call me a saleswoman).

Lastly, I participated in this Linkedin China mentorship program back in April, and I have mentored about 20 people throughout the year. In particular, I stayed in close touch with this one girl who became my study buddy. She graduated during COVID and had a terrible year getting kicked around jobs. She was also suffering from depression throughout 2020 as well. I tried to be available both as a design mentor and as a friend sending her self-care gifts. After many months of interviewing, she finally got quite a few strong offers in December after everything she went through this year. I could not be more proud of her. I cannot put in words how much I was in joy knowing that I truly can make an impact on someone’s life by helping them launch their career.

The Whole Year

There are also many things I did throughout the year that I would like to highlight:

• Finished 24 books despite 3 months of not reading a word after the lockdown
• Mentored ~20 designers and around ~80 volunteer hours donated
• Took 2 Coursera classes and gained certifications
• Officially hit 100 dishes that I can make with some of them invented by me
• Organized 4 virtual bonding events and sent 9 boxes of snacks around the U.S.
• Became a new plant mom and taking care of 10 indoor plants
• Continued my Japanese Tea Ceremony studies virtually and mastered 2 new tea temae
• Saved almost half of a down payment for a house this year with returns on investment :-)

A New Beginning But Also Continuation

Like I said earlier, 2020 has been a roller coaster ride full of ups and downs. But looking down, I found that people were supporting me the whole way. After all, I was thankful.

I cultivated many lasting relationships at work. I learned and grew both my technical and soft skills with all the coaching and sharing from my amazing colleagues. Our sense of humor carried us through the bad days to the point that I even saved a whole folder of fun bantering screenshots. I met so many amazing designers and young talents through the mentorship program. Through giving back, I found more meaning in my professional life and was able to keep going during hard times. I fell in love with a great guy whose actions always speak louder than words and makes me laugh all the time. I also learned to love myself first before loving others. And, my family, even though afar, have helped me through the bad days, and shared my good days. I am also so grateful for all the nagging I have received since I was a kid so that I could have the strengths to persist in order to finally blossom.

Full of gratitude, I am glad that my 2020 has been a year full of learning and growth. I am looking forward to the next great year!

Happy new year, everyone!

P.S. Huge thanks to my persistent and dedicated editor and boyfriend Alex Leung. He gave up near the end because I got tired of revisions and yelled at him :-)