All-Hands

When I first met the former CEO of Uber I had no idea who he was.

We were gathered in our makeshift All-Hands area, which at the time was nothing more than an open slab of concrete in the middle of our warehouse.

Travis, alongside our co-founder, Anthony began an elaborate presentation on the future of Otto, the self-driving truck startup I had joined just 4 days ago and its new plans to join forces with Uber.

Though most of that night is now just a blur, I do remember the mixed emotions that permeated throughout. Some looked excited, some did not. Some had a look of confusion and some angry. It was an interesting couple hours, to say the least.

For me, I defaulted to my optimistic self, asking the same question I had asked in so many other unknown situations, “What’s the worst that could happen?”

Though I didn’t know it at the time, I was about to go on one of the wildest rides of my life (no pun intended).

Maybe you can stick around so I can tell you a bit more about it?

A Brief History of Unfortunate Events

To better lay out the context, I’d like to lay out an incredibly condensed version of some of the events that have transpired while working here at Uber. Please note, my intent here is not to demean the company, I want to be absolutely crystal on that. These are simply facts of events that’s already happened and/or is currently happening.

I believe every great story that’s worth telling needs a great conflict. It would kinda be like leaving a CrossFit class right before the halfway mark, taking a nap and rejoining at the end to celebrate. Allow me to set the stage here so that we can fully appreciate and honor the miracles my God has shown me through this process!

August-ish: Otto is acquired by Uber. It begins.

mid-September-ish: One month later, my manager who recruited me out of RockIT gives us notice that he’ll be leaving. This one hurt because of working and being mentored by him was one of the 4 reasons why I made that initial decision to join.

September-January-ish of 2017: 2 more manager changes, aka manager-less. No concrete idea on where I was going with my career, how things may/may not integrate with the main Uber business, and no real guidance in navigating the internal recruiting environment. Just figure it out!

February-late – August-ish: PR nightmare hits Uber. You can do your own Google search here but headline after headline that ranged from sexual harassment, illegal monitoring tools, top senior executives leading and much much more hammered Uber. It was a difficult season for recruiting to say the least.

mid-February-ish: Waymo (Google’s self-driving company) sues Otto/Uber for stealing trade secrets and infringing on patents. There is a ton that I can expand on here but for context sake, we are still in the middle of what could arguably be one of the biggest trials in Silicon Valley history with billions (yes, billions!) of dollars on the line. This eventually led to Anthony being fired and throwing our deal with Uber into whack.

March-April: We ‘temporarily’ move out of our beloved warehouse to a corporate skyscraper. We are also asked to officially not use the Otto name because of a potential trademark infringement. Bye bye Otto!

mid-February-ish till now: Because I was part of Otto before the acquisition I essentially have a 0% equity stake in Uber until the trial concludes. More on this later but if you can imagine the daily conversations I have with engineers on how valuable Uber equity is yet having none of it myself, it can feel a bit hypocritical. I guess what I’m trying to say is that it never feels nice when you’re being treated differently.

Now, literally just now at 9:45pm Oct 30th as I’m writing this: My current manager just emailed us letting us know that she’s leaving Uber. That’s #4 in 14 months.

-Intermittence for Albert to process what just happened-

Just A Little Longer

Alright, back.

I think you get the point here and I apologize if the above was written in any way that would elicit a sense of showboating. Again, not my intention here. All to all to say, life at Uber has been anything but normal from the day I joined till even tonight.

But sometimes it takes abnormal things to grow. Or to put in other common sayings, “the growth is in the stretch” or “you grow the most when you step outside your comfort zone” or maybe this “you gotta work out them muscles in order for it grow!”

I’ve lost count the number of times I’ve asked myself a series of Why questions. Maybe you’ve done something similar? Why am I still here when there are a plethora of other opportunities here in the Bay? Why stay when I know financially I can be in a better place elsewhere? Why build teams for a company that you didn’t even make a decision to join?

Things were so comfy at RockIT and I was on a good path in getting one tiny step closer to one of my ultimate life goals in retiring early.

This wasn’t the way I planned it.

Every time I tried answering those Why questions, I came back with a feeling to stay just a little longer. Another month would past only to be met with another barrage of the same questions that would fill my mind like a cloud of fog. More anxiety, more worry. But the same feeling to just stay a little longer would emerge after each episode. Just stay a little longer. Just stay.

Be Thankful.


“The man or woman who is wholly or joyously surrendered to Christ can’t make a wrong choice – any choice will be the right one.” – A.W Tozer

Maybe I’m just naive about this whole ordeal. Maybe I’m just one of those entitled Millennials who thinks his/her problem is a real problem. There’s no shortage of headlines that can be picked out from a quick scroll through Facebook that can squash this squabble with my career and Uber into oblivion. But maybe not. Maybe my story is somewhat more digestible to understand and more importantly relatable so maybe it’s worth it to continue.

Enough with the introspection, let’s continue.

It’s in tough times like these where the support and sympathy from friends and family are welcomed. However what’s sometimes even more helpful is a healthy (and metaphoric) slap in the face to get my perspectives right.

For that, I thank my wonderful wife. (Shout out to the No-izzle Dizzle!).

Every time I started complaining about how things were unfair and how stressed out I was were all opportunities that Noelle patiently used to remind me of how amazing things actually were.

You’d think it be one of those elementary life lessons that you’ve already learned getting through 26 years of life but we tend to live in our own selfish, inwardly looking sphere that’s all about ME. As easy as it is to be optimistic about life, it can sometimes be even easier to go the polar opposite direction when life is just slightly unbalanced.

There is something so powerful around praise and perspective. In fact, it’s correlated. Pastor Adam always said that our perspective is determined by our praise, so praise. Fight for an attitude of gratitude because anything short of that would be a gateway for greed and comparison to leak through.

“You’re fine.” Noelle would constantly remind me. “You’re in a great place career wise. You have ownership and opportunities to learn and grow, you have a stable paycheck that supports the both of us here in the most expensive place in the country. You’re building teams for one of the hottest technologies today in self-driving vehicles and dude, you have free and free lunches every day.”

“What the heck are you complaining about?”

Despite all that, it’s so easy to get caught up. I’ve found that it’s in those micro-moments where I need to be intentional in fighting back those silly thoughts as they come. Not as they fester up but as they come up. Steph Curry didn’t learn to shoot the 3 when he was born (okay, maybe he did) but I think it took time. Probably A LOT of time and a series of mindful decisions to apply what he had learned.

I love what Philippians 4:6 says on this,

“Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.”

What a powerful word. Just be thankful! Tell Him!

Why Worry?

I also love the simplicity of the first two words in that verse.

Don’t worry.

Just don’t.

Why worry?

This was the biggest lesson that I truly felt God wanted to teach me in this long and frankly, annoying season.

The breakthrough came maybe a couple months now during Ps Adam’s sermon, “Go Fish.” It’s a great lesson regardless of your faith, you can listen to it on the podcast or watch it here.

It was a simple, yet super practical sermon on helping me understand who my Father was.

If I had a Father who I didn’t trust, didn’t know or maybe I just felt was incapable I can understand how easy it is to be anxious. It was surprising that for someone like myself whose been walking with Him for some time now, how brittle my faith was when it was pushed and tested. I know who my Father is and if I wholeheartedly and whole soulfully (is that a thing?) believed that He will work ALL things for my good (Romans 8:28) then why do I worry?

Even if I made the wrong decision to stay way past my due date here at Uber I can know that God can still use it all. Nothing goes wasted. He is not pacing around freaking out that he didn’t intervene sooner. No, Colossians 3:1 says that he is “seated at the right hand of God” and in Hebrews 12:2, “He is the author and finisher of our faith.” He’s not George R. Martin trying to finish the book series before HBO catches up…He already knows the ending because He’s written it!

This is who I am. I am cared for, loved by and called to by the same God who spoke the universe into the existence. Romans 8:31 says, “If He is for me, Who can be against me?”

Peace Out, Yo.

Part dos of that same verse in Phil 4:7 says,

“Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.”

I always wondered what this meant. How can you experience peace in the midst of chaos? It seems like a walking contradiction that my rational and limited mind just couldn’t accept. But miraculously, things started to shift.

Have you watched something melt in the microwave? Okay, maybe not since if you had parents like mine, they probably red taped a 5 ft parameter around the thing. Nevertheless, it continues to fascinate me to see a string of cheese that was once this tangible object completely transform before my eyes into this new thing that looked, tasted and felt different.

Similarly, the what-if questions and anxious thoughts that greeted me each morning just seemed to melt away. It had no place in me because that’s not who God created me to be! I had an unwavering foundation in my identity that I needed to remind myself of day in and day out.

“Oh, but what about this new information that surfaced in the trial? How concerned are you?”

No matter what happens, I’m going to be more than fine. I’m going to be taken care of.

“Ummm, why are you still here? You know you’re just another cog in a giant corporate machine who undervalues what you do!”

So what? Even if that’s true, my decision to stay will be blessed and God will just everything.

And what a brilliant coincidence that things are looking shaky once again with the organizational changes coming our way. What happens when my manager (AND her manager) both leave in the next 2 months? How sustainable can these constant changes be? Not going to lie, it’s been a rough week on all emotional, mental and spiritual fronts. The unknowning sucks and as my coworker perfectly put it, “I’m tired of being resilient.”

Just another situation and just another opportunity to apply all that we’ve talked about tonight.

Why worry right? He is with me, He is in me and He can work through me.

Another Layer Deeper

I hope you’re doing okay with me being all vulnerable and getting into touchy subjects like identity.

If you’re still here, then I guess you wouldn’t mind me talking purpose as well.

Down?

For a while, I had main two focuses in life – crushing it in my career and finding a way to retire early. I don’t know if it’s just a Silicon Valley thing but there’s a very deep sense of pride and egotism in celebrating one’s own accomplishments. It’s all about me. I did it. I deserve it. I cared a lot about my brand and at times, fell into the temporal trap of comparison. Retiring early would give me back time, arguably life’s rarest resource which I felt could be used to do great things outside the 9-5.

And both are great endeavors to strive for, no doubt about that. But at the end of the day it boiled down to the same two simple questions – Who & Why are you doing these things for?

Throughout this past year, it’s been a very humbling experience to have God continually strip away these outer layers of where I had found my purpose in. I thought Otto was my ticket to stardom but it was quickly squashed when we were absorbed into Uber, a company I had never thought I’d be working for. My previous agency at RockIT was supposed to be my vehicle in quickly amassing enough cash to start a real estate portfolio but ever since hopping on this crazy train, I’m now handcuffed to a situation we are treated unequally in our compensation.

The list goes on yet I share these little examples with joy.

I have so many opportunities right now to trust Him in the little things. I can trust Him in my career, my finances, and my future. My who is in Him and my why is for Him. I’m never going to be truly and deeply satisfied with anything I do if it was always to toot my own horn. I’m just a human being and those standards for perfection will always be too high. But for God? He already loves me and adores me in everything that I put my hand to. He’s not trying to please anyone else, He is God! It’s that simple.

If I had known last August that this was the path that I’d be on, would I have chosen to take it?

Absolutely not.

But then, I would miss out on the most personal, professional and spiritual growth I’ve ever had in my life.

What can stop me if I know whom my identity lies in and what my purpose in the workplace is in?

That Next Little Step

I don’t know how this story will end but I’m looking forward to the next little step that He guides me on.

In some ways, God’s actually made it super clear for me to stay put.

When Otto was absorbed into Uber we had a ‘special’ deal in place that essentially made our compensation package a little different than the thousands of other employees at the company. Typically, you put the work in for a year and hit what we call a ‘cliff’ where you would receive the first 25% of your equity package. You can treat it almost as a little reward for committing to the company for 1 whole year.

Unsurprisingly, things change as they typically do here when Anthony was fired and when things started heating up with the Waymo trial. We’re now left at the mercy of Uber to tell us how this deal will play out, especially when it comes to the amount of equity we’ll have in the company.

And as of right now, we have nothing. Nada.

In June it sounded like we were getting close to striking a new deal. We were going to get compensated for all our hard work and receive equity! We get to be treated like everyone else, woohoo! Maybe then, I can start exploring for new opportunities.

“Sorry, the update we have for you today is that there is no update.”

August rolls around and another meeting is called for.

“Sorry, no updates. We need to see how the trial goes in October before revealing anything.”

Mid-October rolls around, the trial is set to start.

“Waymo’s discovered new documents and we’ll need to push back the trial date to December. Because of that, we can’t share anything till that finishes.”

Well, alright then God. I see what you’re doing and I thank you for making things so easy. I’m obeying, I ain’t going nowhere!

God works in mysterious ways and there is so much comfort in knowing that He knows. I mean shoot, things might get pushed out AGAIN but that’s fine. I trust my Father that He’s cooking something good in the back. One closed door only means something even better and bigger is going to come. He can do so much with just the smallest of my faith and I can’t wait to see how all these dots connect in the near future.

Hope this helps, thanks for reading.

Albert