2024 year in review
By Eugene Teu
Decided to write this after doing a good bout of soul searching and wanted to end off this year reflecting on it.
2024 was the year of change for me:
- My grandfather passed away
- Did my first team switch at meta 2 years in.
- Bought a house
- Proposed to my long term gf
Headwinds: Jan - Jun
Started the year off strong on paper, finding out I got awarded the highest performance rating given to folks at meta, for my work in ‘23. I felt nothing, in fact I haven’t spent a cent of the bonus payout on anything luxurious. Around the same time my grandfather was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer.
Came down with a good case of hero complex as a result of this rating, and I suspect abit of survivors guilt too till this day. Feeling like I had to jump in and fix every single thing that was happening to the team and people around me. Didn’t helped that my key partner in the team was laid off suddenly too. These things combined which ended up in having irrevocable consequence on my personal life:
The weekend before my grandfather passed , I was suppose to visit him one fine thurs evening. Choose to respond to a production incident at work instead. Figured I see him the week after. He passed shortly after.
In another life, I would have been a better grandson to him.
I’m blessed I was still able to make it to the hospital ward to see him off in the wee hours of the morning. Things continued to rise up at work on my old team and somehow i kinda knew my time there was done.
Staying any longer would have fucked my mental health over
A brave new leap: Jun - aug
Since my grandfathers death, I realise a simple concept: time waits for no one. Decided to finally go house hunting and pulled the trigger(much earlier than expected) on a property, albeit thanks to mama and papa money provided.
At the same time, successfully navigated a team switch process to another team.
Wasn’t all that smooth sailing, especially finding out that the project owner which you were taking over from was actually resigning (LOL)
Also started to finally talked to a therapist during this period to seek help for anxiety, which I been battling my whole life
Struggling for balance: Sep - Nov
Celebrated my birthday in hcm. Quince Saigon was amazing. Other than that, nothing much to say during this period other than trying really hard to hit my project targets and balance crypto / managing my assets. Over a very insightful lunch with a past crypto friend decided to reassess my holdings and at the same time pay abit more attention to things outside of work.
Also completed psychology of money which gave me a lot of new perspective on asset management on my personal finance side.
This period was mostly about balance, as weekends were filled with looking for IDs in between pockets of rest.
Searching for a meaning: Dec
A lot of soul searching around how I viewed career this year was done in December. I’m making a stupid amount of money for someone my age and I’m very very privileged to be able to do so.
But I feel so empty inside. I spent my golden years optimising for Total Compensation (>200k now lol) that I think I traded some part of my soul away for it.
Maybe it’s time to take bet on something and to bet on myself. Have a good 2025 everyone.