Year in Review — 2024

Year in Review posts are some of my favorite posts to write. They’re the encapsulation of this blog’s namesake: to create the space for retrospection, taking deliberate time to mull over events past to help inform future directions and thoughts. It’s the one time per year I make myself look back at what I’ve read and written throughout the year, the newsworthy happenings, the photos, and personal diary entries that chart this year’s arc.

For reference, I’ve collected all of my Year in Review posts on the Archives page, and here are all my posts from this year overall.

Writing in 2024

I wrote less and spent less time writing this year than in years past. I had intended to put more time and effort into this once I graduated from my job at Kiddom. Still, after a few weeks of household chores and decompression, I found myself in a new and exciting leadership role instead, and that’s taken the bulk of my energy since the summertime.

One thing I have been experimenting with here is integrating LLMs into my workflow. Rest assured that the prose here is all my own; it’s easy enough to point ChatGPT or Claude at this site and have it generate a dozen similar-sounding articles, but it does this with a level of generic platitude that I find offputting and easy enough to identify1. Instead, akin to other creative fields that have found GenAI useful for producing pre-vis and scratch work, I’ve been seeding ChatGPT and its ilk with a handful of talking points, using that to generate a rough draft, and then rewriting most of it into a usable version to post a week or two later.

So far, this has been a worthwhile exercise due to the mental modal shift between writing and editing. A lot of writing advice starts by encouraging people to put words on the metaphorical page; you start by initially capturing ideas and disparate wisps of thoughts, then coalescing them into constructive narratives and captivating prose—i.e., the follow-up task of editing. All the current generative AI models do a quick—not necessarily great—job of building a couple of ideas into paragraphs and paragraphs of text, which then become raw ingredients for aggressive editing.

With that, here are some of my favorite posts this year:

  • The Statis of E-Ink. I was kinda, sorta right in that e-ink displays haven’t shown much improvement in the past few years, but I’m happily surprised by all the new e-ink products that have come out in the past year; I even added a Boox Palma e-reader and TRMNL display to the collection.
  • AI Optimism. We’re at or even past the peak hype cycle for GenAI, and on the other side, there will be the inevitable shakeout of startups, services, and companies that won’t survive the downturn. With so many new use cases and products popping up, it’s a Sisyphean task to predict the winners. Yet, some commonalities and patterns have emerged that rise above the fray—and that may be the surviving baseline in an AI-enabled world.
  • Developer ∩ Technologist. One of the reasons I got into the tech industry was my interest in software and hardware at a young age, and I found that commonality in many of my developer peers when I started my career. As I advanced in my career, however, I was dismayed to see that leadership seems wholly orthogonal, and C-level execs—some CTOs, even!—struggle to get a Zoom call working.
  • Upwards Status Updates. I ran a couple of Plato management circles last year and held an SFELC conference roundtable last year on managing upwards; this is a deep dive into one aspect of those sessions.
  • Emergent Tetris. It speaks to timeless gameplay and replayability in some of the classic titles when players can take the same code, now almost four decades old, and invent new rules, which then creates new dimensions of competition.
  • Raising Readers in the Digital Age. Most parents want their kids to embody their best qualities, and ever since I became a dad, I wanted to imbue my kids with the joy of reading. The jury’s still out on whether we’re ultimately successful, but I’d like to think we’re on the right track.

Things I’ve Enjoyed

I consume a lot of entertainment—books, music, games, movies, TV shows, etc.—throughout the year. Some of them make it into book reviews here, but a lot of creative works are simply enjoyable, and there’s not much more for me to add other than “You should check this out, too!”

Movies and Series

  • A Man on the Inside: A sweet and funny story about aging, based in San Francisco.
  • NieR: Automata Ver1.1a: Retelling the narrative from the game and hitting on most of the major bits, while preserving what made the storytelling special.
  • Monkey Man: Unabashedly brutal, it reminded me of the noir Hong Kong action films that were more popular a decade ago.

Games

  • Astrobot: Super Mario Odyssey PlayStation-ified, this had no right being so charming while hitting on all the nostalgia notes of memorable PS characters of the past 30 years.
  • Balatro: Stupidly addictive yet accessible; I preordered the physical card deck.
  • Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown: Well-made Metroidvania while retaining some of the old-school Prince of Persia vibes.
  • Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth: Somehow, the FF7 Cinematic Universe gets even more expansive and weirder.

Books

  • Team Topologies: I got around to reading the book this year, and while it’s a bit too DevOps-centric for my tastes, there’s plenty of good advice backed by research and surveys.
  • The Engineering Executive’s Primer: Like Will Larson’s other books, this one is heavy on pragmatic suggestions, which makes it a great starting point for newly-minted executives without getting bogged down by philosophy and principle.
  • The Beggar King and the Secret of Happiness: I didn’t know that professional storyteller was an occupation, but this book shows what one would sound like.

Career Shift

After spending the last 4 years in education and EdTech, I decided to move on from the domain altogether. Similar to HealthTech, I wanted to experience the industry for myself and learn about how it functioned—and how that would have a downstream impact on the businesses built in the space, the technology decisions to support said businesses, and the teams formed to support such tech. Tying it all together was the passion for education and the desire to give our kids better teaching materials and better classroom experiences, underlaid with an evolving foundation in childhood pedagogy.

It’s not an easy space to thrive in. Users—in our case, mostly teachers—are often skeptical of technical solutions to real classroom issues, and schools are perpetually under-resourced in teachers, time, and IT support. There’s now a crop of EdTech startups incorporating GenAI into their services, but schools are more weary than welcome; understandable, as for a lot of teachers and administrators, their first contact with this wave of AI came in the form of plagiarism via ChatGPT.

So I took a break. I had intended for an extended sabbatical and ride out the tech down turn, but opportunity found me, and I instead accepted a leadership role at UJET, a cloud-native contact center software company that’s solidly in the “scaleup” phase of the startup journey. It’s again a new domain, but with novel challenges from a global workforce to voice technologies to closely collaborating with major partners.

Moar Travel

As the kids grow up, I feel like we’re making up for lost time by ramping up our travel itinerary these past two years. California is such a scenic state that there’s already plenty to see and do within road trip distance, which was where we held the bulk of our vacations when the kids were smaller. Last year, we expanded our travels up and down the North American Pacific coastline, and this year, we jumped the ocean and visited Japan for the first time. We do have to acquiesce to the school calendar, which generally means that we have to compete on space and price with all the other families going out of town as well.

Being late to the party, I’m learning what other travelers already know about how to minimize—well, reduce—the stress of travel. Global Entry enrollment, airport lounge access, early restaurant and venue reservations; I’m seeing why people shell out for these services to keep their vacations enjoyable. It’s a huge contrast to when we traveled as kids, when it was all about getting the most sightseeing done in the most cost-effective ways2. Admittedly, our kids are spoiled here.

In terms of travel gear, I upgraded my camera to a Sony A7Cii compact mirrorless, and consolidated my lens collection to a pair of generalpurpose zoom lenses plus a 2× teleconverter3. To fit all this stuff, I also picked up a Peak Design Everyday backpack, which is well-designed for this use case of traveling with dedicated camera gear but still adds weight and bulk compared to just using a phone camera. The A7Cii shines on a huge monitor or in photobook and Christmas card prints, but I’m learning to be more selective about when to lug the entire setup, especially for extended trips abroad4.

Thinking about Finances

I’ve been working now for 20+ years and have been fortunate enough to participate in the best parts of Silicon Valley and the bits of it that embody the American Dream. Retirement, while not in the cards right now, is something that’s been on my mind for the past few years; the aforementioned sabbatical would have been a trial run at what such a life transition would feel like. I’d have to answer questions of identity and purpose, or just an apportionment of activity to make up for the hours that are currently dedicated to work.

The other variable is whether our savings can sustain retirement and the loss of income. COVID shook up the FIRE movement5 a few years back, but true to form, the stock market went on quite a roller coaster run since. That is, equities dipped and strongly rebounded for 1½ years, which led to inflation and interest rates rising and caused the markets to depress for about 24 months. The combination of favorable politics and monetary policies has turned it back to optimism in the latter half of 2024. The S&P 500 index has been averaging north of 20% growth these past five years when it’s been positive; only the down year in 2022 has pulled back the total return to approximately 15%.

To that end, I’ve been tracking our budget and the vicissitudes of the stock market for these past few years with increasing aplomb. I use a combination of Empower Personal Wealth (formerly Personal Capital) and Schwab’s brokerage dashboards to monitor weekly trends while I work with a financial advisor for other aspects of personal finance, such as tax management and alternative investments. It’s fun now because the numbers are mostly going up; the real test will be when the market corrects itself, to see whether these investment strategies and theories on long-term retirement plans hold.

Onward to 2025

It didn’t seem that long ago that people were freaking out about the Y2K bug while still partying like it’s 1999, but we’ve made it a quarter of a century past that millennium mark. I happened to be in the Class of 2000 in high school; it was one of those round-number years when all the chatter was future-looking, so much so that our entire age cohort is named “millennial” to mark the occasion. By that generational definition, we millennials are mostly in our 30s and early 40s: a time of career stability, family growth, and maturity in physical and mental capabilities beyond our young adulthoods. I think most of the topics above fall squarely into these categories and would resonate with people around my age group.

Rather than setting personal resolutions—where the rush of positive feelings from engaging in self-improvement is inevitably offset by the eventual disappointment of not achieving said goals—I think of a new year as an occasion to take inventory of life’s many facets, and figure out which things I should start, stop, and continue doing. I like to keep the number of items small, in part because it’s easier to remember, in part to force prioritization, but mostly because with scarce time and energy, changing a handful of life’s routines has a higher chance of success.

So for me, in this coming year:

  • Start: Taking the necessary steps to become a better sleeper; I’ve worn an Oura ring for years to track my crappy sleeping routines but haven’t seriously acted on the feedback. I’m getting to the age, though, where the demands of work and life and the fatigue it brings make this the biggest single area of personal improvement.
  • Stop: Trying to write a book; I’ll have to punt this for a few years and find the time and mental space to make another attempt.
  • Continue: Taking the family on trips, while the kids are still willing to hang out with their parents and wherever we drag them.

Here’s to a joyful and fulfilling 2025!


  1. When I asked Claude to use a couple of Year in Review posts to construct a custom writing style, my stylistic label was “Thoughtful Chronicler.”

  2. I distinctly remember spending hours driving to a landmark, taking pictures on the exterior, but declining to go inside to save on admissions.

  3. I grabbed this for a great price in Japan, but if I’m honest, the added f-stops make this tricky to use in practice, and I suspect it’s only meant for birding and other outdoors nature shooting.

  4. Not to mention the added concerns for safety and theft.

  5. Basically, retirement spreadsheets for the mathematically inclined.

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