Career reflection: My first 20 years in Science and Tech

My career as a series of best alternative options

and some thoughts on Goals, Alternatives, and the Joy of Progress

When people look at my career from the outside, it might appear as a series of achievements falling neatly into place — from a small village in Vietnam to tenured engineering in one of the world’s top companies, and soon, a return home to help shape Vietnam’s tech future.

But the truth is, very few of those achievements came from the exact goals I first set. In fact, most of my proudest milestones have been what I now call the best alternative options — second choices, unexpected turns, or adjusted ambitions in the face of shifting realities. And resilience built up through learning from failure. That’s life.

When I was a teenager, growing up as the best student in my small countryside school, I believed I could take on the world. That belief was shattered the moment I entered a gifted high school, and later a gifted university class, where everyone seemed more talented, confident, and capable than me. The imposter syndrome was real and brutal. The choice was clear: either accept that pain, redefine my approach, and focus on meaningful, achievable progress — or quit, with no real safety net to fall back on.

I chose the former.

I focused on what I could control: mastering new materials, closing gaps when they truly mattered, and leaning into my strengths. That path didn’t lead to becoming the class’s prodigy — but it led to graduating top in my major, earning a prestigious scholarship, and building the resilience that would later carry me through even tougher moments.

As the Stoic philosopher Epictetus said:

"It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters."

This lesson repeated itself during my early career. Transitioning from academia to industry, I realized that many of the skills I’d spent years acquiring suddenly felt irrelevant. Once again, it was a choice between drowning in self-doubt or developing a deliberate strategy to adapt — prioritizing breadth first, then going deep where it mattered most. Those five years turned me from a fresh graduate to a tenured engineer, mentor, and inventor. Some of the interns I mentored then are now thriving at companies like Meta and Google, which feels just as rewarding as any personal accolade.

And then came the pandemic. The travel industry — my world at the time — crumbled overnight. Layoffs rippled through every company I touched. For five years, six waves of layoffs. In those moments, the instinct is to move fast, grab whatever job you can, and brace for impact. But I chose a different way: to reflect, study human psychology, understand how people — including myself — respond to crises, and double down on my long-term goal of becoming a top-tier machine learning engineer.

It wasn’t glamorous. It was messy, uncertain, and exhausting. But that clarity of purpose, coupled with empathy for those around me and a refusal to be derailed, led me to land not just one but two of my dream jobs — working in computer vision deep learning, and later at one of the Big 4 tech companies.

As Marcus Aurelius wisely put it:

"The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way."

Those detours? They’ve become the best parts of my story.

Each “best alternative” job, project, or pivot taught me lessons I couldn’t have planned for — and equipped me to achieve goals I hadn’t even known were possible. More importantly, they shaped the principles I now live and lead by:

• Have a goal. Be bold in setting it.
• Pursue it consistently and relentlessly.
• Be transparent and empathetic — with yourself and others — about the progress, the failures, and the learnings.
• And when the path changes, meet it with curiosity, not fear. Adjust the plan, not the principle.

Because it turns out, the “best alternative” often becomes the achievement you’re most proud of — not because it was your first choice, but because you pursued it with clarity, courage, and grace.

Let’s lead in this way. Let’s normalize the idea that evolving goals and adjusted ambitions aren’t signs of weakness, but of wisdom. And let’s build careers and communities where progress, integrity, and empathy matter more than perfection.