2023년 3월 12일 일요일 – Mountain View 생활 74주차

이번 주는 국문으로 쓴 후에 deepl로 번역하고 chatGPT로 tl;dr을 만들었다.

tl;dr

As I reflect on my career, I realize how much has changed since I moved to the US. Initially, I planned to live alone, get my green card, and work my way up the ladder before deciding on my next steps. However, my wife’s pregnancy changed everything, and I took paternity leave to be with my family. The recession and layoffs in big tech companies, including Google, have affected my career, and there’s still uncertainty about my green card status. The reputation of FAANG engineers is suffering, and generative AI poses a threat to Google’s search engine. I believe getting a green card and working in the US is the best option for career success, but my family is moving back to Korea next year. Ultimately, it’s a decision based on personal values.

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Career concerns

I’ve been thinking a lot about my career lately. Partly because I’ve gotten impatient, and partly because my surroundings have changed so much.

When I first transferred, I planned to live alone for three years, get a green card, get a promotion, and then decide what to do next – I’m a person who tolerates loneliness well, so I was really determined.

However, less than a month after arriving in the U.S., my wife announced that she was pregnant, and I immediately took paternity leave and moved to the U.S. This allowed me to stay with my family and watch my child grow from birth to adulthood.

It wasn’t always good news.

With the onset of the recession, big tech companies began laying off employees in droves. Google was no exception. I was one of the lucky survivors. Not long after I returned from maternity leave, I felt a strange energy and was transferred to another PA, the advertising department. More than half of the people in my old team were laid off. It was the first round of layoffs in Google’s history, and the relationship between employees and the company was irrevocably changed.

My green card also became an issue. I don’t know if it was because of the recession or the mass layoffs in the big tech industry, but the Department of Labor started denying PERMs en masse, and people who left around the same time as me were also denied PERMs. I hired an asshole lawyer in the middle and it’s been delayed for months, so I don’t know the outcome yet, but there’s a very good chance I’ll be denied – maybe this asshole lawyer will get lucky and save my green card.

The reputation of FAANG engineers is also suffering. There are news reports that companies that interviewed a lot of FAANG graduates were disappointed with the lower than expected performance. This could be due to lowered hiring standards due to COVID-19, but the days of a FAANG background being a free pass are coming to an end.

The changes that generative AI will bring to the world also pose a threat to Google. There are increasing reports of garbage websites optimized for SEO by generative AI appearing at the top of Google searches, and it’s not uncommon to hear of developers using ChatGPT to solve problems without a lengthy Google search.

A paradigm shift in the way we search for and consume content will make Google Search and YouTube obsolete – can Google move fast enough to prevent that from happening? I think we’re already at the beginning of that future. There’s no guarantee that Google won’t follow in Yahoo’s footsteps – even when Yahoo was failing, it had some of the best talent in the world at the time.

The best thing to do is to get a green card, even at your own expense, and start here, whether it’s a job or a startup, because it’s a boring place to live, but it’s where the money and talent is. But my family is moving back to Korea next year. Whether you spend 3-5 years away from your family or go back to Korea is purely a matter of values.