FOLLOW YOUR CURIOSITY · 24 POSTS
Career turning points, mentorship, and the judgment we carry forward.
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↗An autumn conversation about a young mathematics tutor prompts Kefei to reconsider how parents pass on experience. Advice can compress decades of choices, hesitation, help, and luck into a conclusion, leaving children without the steps that made it convincing.
↗An old notebook returns Kefei to an August 2020 engineering sprint, when platform upgrades, unexpected problems, and team coordination converged. Remembering colleagues through changed names, he pays attention to the trust and often invisible work that kept complex systems running.
↗Early departures, heat, and fatigue make Egypt a setting for Kefei’s reflection on deliberately chosen challenges. He considers the difference between meaningful effort and strain that simply depletes, including the need to listen to the body and rest.
↗Marking the newsletter’s first anniversary, Kefei revisits his move from structural engineering into technology, the dot-com collapse, and the financial crisis. He recalls how uncertainty reshaped his understanding of adaptability, leadership, and the value of continuing to build.
↗Remembering the choice not to display college banners at home, Kefei considers the relationship between educational prestige and a life’s longer arc. He values continuing growth, integrity, trust, and the ability to change direction after formal milestones have passed.
↗At a Tongji Foundation gathering in Liberty State Park, a conversation with Roger about aviation scheduling software gives Kefei a concrete example of purposeful effort. He is drawn to the care behind solving a difficult problem and sharing the work.
↗Returning to SOM's New York office as a visitor, Kefei encounters a living reminder of his earlier work on San Francisco's airport terminal. The visit revives the question of what his career might have become had he remained in structural engineering.
↗Breaking a pause in publication, Kefei explains how travel and reflection redirected his attention toward the human questions beneath a technology career. A visit to West Point helps crystallize thoughts about purpose, character, and the legacy of daily choices.
↗Written around the 2025 Lunar New Year, this essay responds to market turbulence surrounding DeepSeek through the symbolism of renewal. Kefei compares contrasting business approaches and draws a personal analogy between dependable foundations and the ability to change direction.
↗Kefei draws on his seismic engineering background to think about resilience in everyday life. Remembering research on structures under stress, he uses flexibility and energy absorption as metaphors for responding to career pressure, burnout, and unexpected change.
↗This letter announces Kefei's 2025 focus on millennial readers navigating ambition and well-being. Prompted by the tragic story of AI researcher Felix Hill, it asks how professional achievement can become entangled with a person's sense of worth.
↗A chance meeting in Shanghai reunites Kefei with the colleague who shared his first day in Silicon Valley decades earlier. The encounter recalls the uncertainty of changing professions and the companionship that made a new beginning less solitary.
↗From Pleasanton, Kefei reflects on disagreement surrounding a Tongji alumni event in New York that he did not attend. Drawing on community conversations, he distinguishes an event's potential value from questions about representation, communication, and coordination.
↗Over coffee in Shanghai, Kefei helps a young professional named Ray reconsider a career spanning corporate work, finance, and a food plaza venture. Experiences that initially appear disconnected become material for a more coherent entrepreneurial story.
↗This archival letter records Kefei's effort to help former colleagues after layoffs affected infrastructure engineers in the San Francisco Bay Area. He asked his network for introductions, employment leads, and support for people navigating a difficult transition.
↗Using a graduating analytics student he calls Alex, Kefei develops a career planning case study around strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. A capstone project becomes the centerpiece for considering how technical ability can translate into a persuasive professional story.
↗Kefei looks back on engineering education as preparation for work that may extend far beyond a chosen major. He highlights analytical thinking, problem solving, organization, and collaboration as abilities developed through difficult courses and projects.
↗Kefei recalls choosing a university program partly to remain in Shanghai and avoid beginning college with English. Studying offshore structural engineering and German at Tongji brought unexpected cultural influences, while poetry and friendships competed with academic priorities.
↗Writing from early retirement, Kefei asks new graduates to picture the life they hope to reach beyond their careers. He sketches a personal model organized by decades, linking talent, relationships, responsibility, adaptability, and preparation for later life.
↗Independence Day celebrations in Omaha prompt Kefei to reflect on the choices behind his transition into cloud engineering. He connects his interest in Warren Buffett's investing approach with the time he committed to understanding technologies he believed would matter.
↗Visiting the University of Colorado Boulder, Kefei remembers an unsuccessful doctoral application and briefly imagines the life an acceptance might have opened. An unexpected conversation with an older electrical engineering graduate student redirects that backward glance toward present possibilities.
↗At Mount Rushmore, Kefei focuses on sculptor Gutzon Borglum's relationship to his subjects and uses it to consider the influence of people he has admired. The visit recalls an encouraging exchange from his years working as a tour guide in Shanghai.
↗A deliberate detour from Salt Lake City toward Jackson and Yellowstone recalls Kefei's departure from structural engineering for a new career in Silicon Valley. He describes that earlier change as a difficult reset after years of specialized education and practice.
↗Driving east from Reno to Salt Lake City, Kefei revisits a route associated with his move west after completing his doctorate in 1994. The landscape brings back the anticipation and uncertainty surrounding his first engineering job in the United States.
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