So I quit my job in SF and booked a one-way flight to Shenzhen to hack on hardware. I do not have hardware experience nor do I really know anyone in Shenzhen. Thus, some friends (and family) have reasonably been concerned about or looked at this move quizzically. However, it has also hit some kind of nerve.

I would like to document here why I have made this choice and what I hope to get out of my time in Shenzhen. Writing is thinking so this helps me as much as I hope it can help others who are thinking about taking similar leaps.

Shot by yours truly on Sony A6700 (10/24). Yes, it really looks like this.

Why now?

The bigger question to ask is why I'm quitting my job. Simply, I think your 20s are a very compressed and valuable time and it has always been apparent to me that if you want an extraordinary life you must do extraordinary things.

I graduated from my undergrad at Waterloo this year, and perhaps it was just the feeling of being a full-time employee, with an indefinite time horizon, but I had a strong sense I was not taking close to enough risk. At 23, there is objectively no better time to do something crazy. I've lived and enjoyed the fruits of university, and I have complete freedom to move my entire life on a whim. Things will only get harder with time, as one accumulates responsibilities.

So now is the time to increase my variance. To make the highs higher and the lows lower. When young, one should cut the safety nets, and raise the ceiling as high as possible. Some thoughts:

1. Shenzhen is the best place in the world to iterate on hardware.

I want to work on hardware. And if you want to do something well, you should learn from the best in the world. Shenzhen is very clearly the hardware capital of the world. I need not litigate this point. It makes the vast majority of consumer electronics and has a behemoth of an industrial base.

More importantly though, this hardware ecosystem has blessed Shenzhen with insane prototyping speeds. There are countless stories I've heard from friends about how an iteration that would have taken months in the US takes mere days in Shenzhen. Need I say more?

Things are simply cheaper and faster in Shenzhen. It always seemed crazy to me that, the best path in a hardware project often involved waiting days for parts to ship literally across the Pacific Ocean. If you care about saving time you should go to the source. I want myself to be the bottleneck and nothing else.

2. I want to stir the pot

I think it's important when starting a new chapter of life to start from a fresh slate. You need to remove yourself from a familiar environment to give your brain space to from new neural connections. What better way than to live in a foreign country, make new friends, and put yourself out there. It is in such fertile environments that wonderful and unexpected things happen. Gotta serendipity-maxx.

3. I want to get on a pulse on what young technologists in China are like

I feel like I have a good sense of what young technologists are like in North America (being Canadian, having lived in NYC/SF) and even to some extent Europe, where I spent an exchange semester in Switzerland.

But I have absolutely no idea what technologists my age (and otherwise) are like in China. What do they care about? What is their vision for the future? What do they dream of? It seems a reasonable bet that China and America will continue to both be major players in technology. As a responsible technologist, understanding this seems like a good idea.

Corollary: make friends.

Shenzhen is just cool man

It is by far the most tech-forward, pro-progress city in China. EVs, drones, and robots abound. I will say that I especially like the urban design because there are plants everywhere and it's very green while being dense. Truly Frutiger Aero out here. Also, because Shenzhen is so new, almost no one is a true local, having come deliberately from elsewhere seeking new fortunes. It feels kinda like a dual to SF.

Elevated terrace above my makerspace in Nanshan district.

Plus, China probably has the highest quality of life per dollar. Things are insanely cheap for how nice they are. There's very tasty, cheap food everywhere, always open late. You can find every kind of dessert, tea, and coffee. If lived in 4-star hotels the entire time here I would still pay less than I do for rent in SF. You can easily get by spending a fraction of what you would in California.

Anyway, they definitely have some sauce in Shenzhen so ya boy is out here trying to figure it out. I have gone East to learn.

These days, imbued with the agency of the internet and AI, I think there are few things a sufficiently motivated human isn't capable of.

You are probably underestimating yourself right now.

Not sure how this adventure will turn out, but I'm certain that looking back on this moment, I will have made the right choice to yolo it.