Silicon Valley Time and the Work of Starting Over

After reading about SpaceX in Liftoff and then picking up Ashlee Vance’s Elon Musk biography, I found myself looking for more books about Silicon Valley.

I spent a good part of the end of 2023 and the start of 2024 reading. I had not had that much time with books in a while. The early SpaceX story left me unusually eager to start something of my own.

There is a saying that you are still young as long as you have a dream. I had dreams when I was younger. Years of working made it easier to settle for what I already knew how to do. Reading brought back some of the feeling of wanting to learn what came next.

A different book than I expected

I picked up Kim Jae-woo’s book at Seoul Library because I expected to learn more about the region. What I found was a book about trying another line of work or another way of doing it before you know whether it will pay off.

Kim uses Silicon Valley as a place to think about how failure can become part of the work. He wants young people in South Korea to have room to try again as well.

What Kim calls “multi-switching”

He calls the practice “multi-switching.” One way he explains it is through the Korean idea of a secondary persona, a role you can develop alongside the one people already know you for.

The book sees something of that in Starbucks’ move toward a place to spend time, in a musician founding Blue Bottle Coffee and in Airbnb turning space in a home into somewhere a traveler could stay.

I thought of the Three Kingdoms stories I enjoy. The people who make it to the end often have to change their plans as the world around them changes. Kim is asking how to recognize when it is time to do that.

The people who make a start possible

Kim also describes a culture of introductions, partnerships and people trying an idea together. It can be easier to begin when somebody else knows a part of the work you do not.

I have found that useful in my own life. Before an idea is much of anything, one person has to bring another person into it. Some of the projects I remember started exactly there.

The book made me think about what trust does in a working relationship. You have to be able to ask for help and give the other person a reason to take the request seriously.

What English gave me

When I was younger, I did not understand why I was expected to spend so much time on English. I feel the answer more now. It gives me another way to reach people and read about work happening outside South Korea.

I majored in English literature and kept using the language at work after graduation. Over time it stopped feeling like something I needed to think about before speaking.

As I get older, I find myself wondering what I will do after my current working life changes. Having a language I can still use gives me a little more room to picture another sort of job.

That is the part of Kim’s argument about English I agree with. The effort becomes easier to justify once you know who you might use the language to talk to.

Returning to computer science

At the start of 2024 I was working through an introduction to computer science and learning to code again. It was one way to try Kim’s idea for myself.

I had a degree in computer engineering, then moved into English literature and let most of the engineering go. I had also tried some Spanish, Chinese and Japanese. Returning to code felt like a chance to use a part of my education I had left behind.

I do not know where it will come in handy. For the time being, I can make a little progress at it alongside the rest of the work.

At the time, the news in South Korea made me anxious about inflation, interest rates, low fertility and strains in property project financing. Part of wanting another skill was wanting a few more options when I looked ahead.

I can worry about where the country is headed and still make a decision about what to do with my own time. Like Kim, I would like to work in different parts of the world. Studying again was a place to begin.

Book details

Silicon Valley Time

Author

Kim Jae-woo

Published

July 26, 2021

ISBN-13

9791191436051

View on YES24

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