2022–2024 Years in Review

12 min readFeb 5, 2025

Years go by in life where it feels like nothing remarkable happens. My early thirties felt like that. A blur of partying, playing soccer, traveling, and agency life in New York City. A lot of enjoyment and a lot of grind. From what I remember, it also felt like my wheels were spinning career wise, despite making more almost every year, as well as my emotional growth felt arrested, but I can’t say I was that focused. I was definitely living a certain New York City lifestyle where you have grown-up professional disposable income. It feels like a Disneyland for adults, except you never really grow-up to your potential or semblance of emotional mental maturity.

Then there are years where everything changes, internally and externally. The pandemic years and real challenges. But with it, comes exponential growth.

2023 was the year I hit all of the professional goals I had set out to when I finished college in 2008:

To spend a year traveling the world on Remote Year
Get two masters degrees — one at USC and one at UCLA-NUS
Serve on a board and be able to give back as a mentor and financially
To live and work in SF, LA, NY, and Taipei
Have the ability to invest in businesses and causes I care about
Additionally, I joined the UC Davis Cal Aggie Alumni Association Board of Directors, an organization I volunteered for years

I’d like to tell people you an achieve your goals. However, it might take you longer than you think. It might be harder than you think, but some of it might also be easier than you think too. I wrote that looking back, I haven’t pursued or defined my career based on the best titles, brand names, or even highest salaries, but I certainly looked for interesting experiences and going to the unfamiliar and challenging. Heading towards “mid-career” and middle age, I’m glad I’ve stayed true to the pursuit of interesting experiences in different places.

What I wish I had learned earlier was how to ask more for help, draw boundaries skillfully — especially with myself, and cut toxic people and situations loose faster. Learn to discern when feedback is meant to help you versus when it’s meant to be self-serving for that person who might be projecting their own agendas and insecurities. Don’t tolerate people or a situation that wants to make you small, but also assume good faith and/or incompetence before malice first.

Most people who are successful will tell you they got a lot of pushback. For me, a lot of it was racist and sexist too, including a lot of specific comments about being Taiwanese — “it’s one of those places like Ukraine that will get invaded” said a particular person who also kept insinuating I reminded him of his mean Chinese mother. I also worked with someone who was investigated by an HR firm because she made racist remarks and implied she owned her employees of color. When I was looking for a job in Taiwan, someone monikers himself as a “local foreigner” hire expert implied I couldn’t get an expat package (after doing a bit of research — guy is resentful he can’t get one) and as a Taiwanese American who cares about DEI, I’d never be able to work in the local culture.

Maybe to account for all this in detail is a distinct schadenfreude and vindication because I also got to see people who were jerks or unethical fail over time.

So in my 2022–2024 years in review, the advice I’d give to juniors is, play the long-game, because you will eventually see what happens to most of the people who play the short-game or are terrible people. You will feel relieved at having dodged a bullet for moving on or not playing that game. You don’t want your self-respect, personal dignity, or your reputation among industry peers sullied by these types of people.

Lots of people talk about a big game but never make the play. My dreams weren’t that big and were oddly specific, but not everyone gets what they started out wanting. So many people my age who give up and settle and want to drag you down with them. Even when I fell in the mud a few times, I didn’t get stuck. Be careful who you tell your dreams to.

And I will always be grateful to the people who believed in me, gave me opportunities, and supported me.

A key goal for 2025 and beyond is to work, play, and live with people and an environment, or create that environment, where I don’t have to make myself small for people and where people are strong and good enough that they aren’t threatened by someone who’s a bit different. I want to be proud of the people I work with and what I’m working on. I also want to fight for liberal democracy in Taiwan and the US and causes I care about.

And now I’m back to the same format as previous years.

Professional Notes

As mentioned, I completed an Executive EMBA at the UCLA-National University of Singapore program. I wrote about the experience extensively here And reflected on it a year later. TDLR: one of the best, if not most challenging experiences of my life where I met some of the best people, ever.. It’s not for everyone, but it’s paying off dividends for me.

When I finished my EMBA, I continued my start-up journey and got a significant raise at my previous role, which should be a good signal to people considering an EMBA. I also had more opportunities come by way in terms of jobs and other opportunities.

About a year after, I left the start-up and took a job at a company I had never heard of and moved back to Taipei. My role is to work with OEMs on certifying integrations, building a great developer experience for them, finding areas for product co-development, and making those opportunities into reality, eg. experimental Edge AI applications on chips with low computing power and market expansion into APAC. It’s been great to work in Chinese and English across our global teams and partners — mostly because it feels like I’m doing something I’m uniquely suited and valued for.

Above is from a professional talk on setting boundaries in Taipei.

Personal Notes

Moving back in Taiwan and after an election in which the world placed its projections on Taiwan and in the last several years visiting the invasion of Ukraine, the assaults and murders of Asian women in New York City, Hamas assault on Israelis followed Israel’s flattening of Gaza, I can’t say that recent events haven’t changed my seriousness toward life and my identity and place in the world.

In some ways, I’ve become more radicalized, yet I use that world carefully as I’ve generally fallen apart and distant from traditional US progressive politics. I remember saying to people we’ll miss Pax Americana when it’s gone, and now we’re in that world. Not longer living surrounded on four sides by water and allies makes me feel very differently about the importance of American military and economic power in the world than whom I increasingly see as spoiled cosplaying liberals. Still, I check myself as well because I now live in a country where I can go anywhere at night without fear, losers concede elections, and don’t see the everyday extreme misery of inequality people see every day in the US.

To a more positive direction: I want to keep three intentions for 2024 to keep growing in 2025, make space, and enjoy the process.

When I was in Turkey a few weeks ago, I stepped off the plane feeling like I had definitely left East Asia, but I wasn’t quite back in the West. The French have a word, dépaysement, for the disorienting feeling of not being in your home country.
I watched a documentary in-transit at Istanbul airport by another Taiwanese who moved back from the US. A line struck me in my disorientated state as I reflected on living back in Asia after decades: “This place is feeling like home again, though I can’t help but wonder how long this will last. I have split the last 15 years of my life going between China, Taiwan, and the US. More and more I feel like a kid whose parents are involved in a three-way custody battle. Hostile, co-dependent, manipulative, each pair with their dysfunctions. They all think they know what’s best for me. They don’t care about what I want.”
These thoughts are an inescapable part of life for many of us. Needing to show up professionally in a place that was unfamiliar and unbelievably beautiful pushed me out of mental boxes I sometimes find myself enclosed in and reminded me of the possibilities of this world.
The first intention from that is to keep growing. The older you get, the more you can’t take the same impulsive bets you used to, but you can still grow with the capacity you have. Sometimes it’s that job at that unknown company to work on interesting challenges you didn’t know existed. When you start out, the world feels full of open doors. As you start to reach middle age, you can see doors closing, but you can also see it’s also now our job to open and hold the door open for others.
The second is to take up space and make space for others. I saw this bumper sticker #stopactingsosmall in Tainan. Taiwanese people have a reputation for being nice, but don’t mistake our kindness for weakness. For women, you’ll work with people who want you to be small. You don’t need to accept toxic environments because the egos are too fragile. Also recognize when you have power to protect and pave the way for others.
The last intention is to enjoy the process more. When you’re younger, it’s all about the hustle and grind. Career progression and personal growth eventually becomes less defined and more open-ended. I’m more able to savor the beauty out there in the world and progress despite living in insecure times. I end with a couple of lines from Khalil Gibran’s poem On Work I still love years after first reading:
Always you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune.
But I say to you that when you work you fulfil a part of earth’s furthest dream, assigned to you when the dream was born,
And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life,
And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret.

What I want to add in 2025 is that I am a true believer in liberal democracy in a time where it’s threatened. I’m contributing monthly to:

NRDC
Planned Parenthood
ACLU
Indivisible
EFF

I’ve been reading Timothy Snyder’s Lessons on Tyranny and On Freedom. There are the points I’m focused on:

“4. Take responsibility for the face of the world. The symbols of today enable the reality of tomorrow. Notice the swastikas and the other signs of hate. Do not look away, and do not get used to them. Remove them yourself and set an example for others to do so.”
“5. Remember professional ethics. When political leaders set a negative example, professional commitments to just practice become more important. It is hard to subvert a rule-of-law state without lawyers, or to hold show trials without judges. Authoritarians need obedient civil servants, and concentration camp directors seek businessmen interested in cheap labor.”
“8. Stand out. Someone has to. It is easy to follow along. It can feel strange to do or say something different. But without that unease, there is no freedom. Remember Rosa Parks. The moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow.”
“15. Contribute to good causes. Be active in organizations, political or not, that express your own view of life. Pick a charity or two and set up autopay. Then you will have made a free choice that supports civil society and helps others to do good.”
“19. Be a patriot. Set a good example of what America means for the generations to come. They will need it.”

As I move to this different phase in my life and have become a more serious person and pondering goals ahead after completing my mid-life bucket list, about my late UC Davis classmate Angelina Malfitano, who was ahead of her time and hers, she wrote: “We are all connected. I believe we all have the capacity to impact each other. As individuals we must accept the responsibility and the possibility to create change. Then, as a community, the impact is far- reaching and tangible. Join me in believing in the power of your impact as a mentor and a teacher and as an individual in this world.”

Content I Loved

Articles:

Books:

TV/Movies/Music/Podcasts:

Gives: Transitioning from a corporate career to start-up to mid-sized company, questions about business school, product management, working abroad

Ask: Expansions on the above, long-term career planning mid-career, working broad, financial and life planning moving towards mid-age, working and living your values

2022–2024 Years in Review

Content I Loved

Written by Bessie Chu