First published on TechieStory, 22 February 2023. Written by Vi Tran. Translated from the Vietnamese. Tay was a Senior Software Engineer at Dwarves Foundation then, and roles and plans are as of that date. The interview ran on TechieStory's social pages; we found no archived web copy.
Tay Nguyen's short answer, in his words: whatever you do, focus on the core.
1How did you know you fit the field?
The clearest sign that I fit this field goes back to high school. I already loved computers and computer games. Back home in the countryside we did not have what kids in the city had, so every time I got to see a computer it felt like "oh wow", really cool. I still remember a game called Rockman. I was crazy about it, and little by little the love of playing games turned into wanting to make a game like that. Liking computers, liking informatics class, liking hard things like algorithms and programming: it was like an addiction. The other kids in class were scared of informatics and avoided it, but I found it fascinating. A computer is "dumb", really. You have to work out how to type the commands so it runs your program, and that felt magical.
Then at university, what you learn in school matters quite a lot. You have to master the programming fundamentals before you can get anything done. But at work the challenge is on a completely different level. A product you build at school can be made any way you like; as long as it runs, you've succeeded. When you build at a company, for a client, the product has to be like a masterpiece. It has to look good, everything has to be just right, and the end user's experience has to be smooth, with no bugs. Only then have you done your job.
That pressure at work gave me a "formula" for my life that I can apply to everything: whatever you do, focus on the core. Not just in tech, in any field. When you hit a problem, find where its core is and solve that, instead of getting tangled up fixing the side things that miss the point. Say a ship keeps taking on water. Some people try every way to get the water out and pump it overboard. Others try every way to find the hole and patch it. Once a ship has a hole, it will sink one way or another; you just don't know when. Fixing bugs at work is exactly the same: find where the bug comes from, then fix it. Everyday life is no different. When something goes wrong, it is easy to let emotions take over and get angry, instead of looking deeper at the nature of the problem and solving it at the root, more simply and more gently.
2Ten years in, have you ever wanted to quit?
Along the way there were certainly times I felt unsteady and lost, but quit the trade? Not yet. I remember, about five years ago, when I was still at my old company. People rated the environment very highly, and my colleagues were really nice and supportive. But I kept feeling something was off, not right for me. I was not growing much in that job, and I could not do well in that environment. In the end I realized that although the workplace was very good, I did not really belong there. I decided to leave after many years with the company, and to this day I think it was the right choice. Looking back, when something feels wrong, you need to find exactly where the cause lies and have enough data. Then the decision is easier to make, and life is easier to breathe.
Any young people still unsure which branch of the field to pick can reach out to me. I am very happy to share with you.