Dude I feel like the most subtle way you can tell how obsessed Silicon Valley is with all these like milestones and like status and like clout is every single time you like meet someone whether it's at a party or you know like your mutual friends or whatever it's always like hi nice to meet you so what do you do and then they like the conversation is just waiting for you to one confirm that you're an engineer in tech or to confirm that you have some job that they don't care about you know what I mean like yeah it's like the idea of success is so narrow that as soon as I hear that question I know what answer they expect and what answer they don't want to hear so for me since I'm not like an engineer I'm not a doctor I'm not you know any of those like traditional career paths I always have to preface what I say with like an explanation you

know what I mean like I always have to

say like yeah I'm like oh I do this work at a skincare company you know like it's just like as I add more and more words to like describing what I do for my job I feel like I'm proving to them that I'm further and further away from their definition of successful so I totally know what you mean like I think there's like always this like secret clout measuring thing that goes on behind the scenes so on top of like our personal you know fears and pressures like that's always like an added layer of stress I think and there's always that like wait for the name drop or you know if you answer like oh I do this they'll be like oh okay where do you work and it's yeah it's such an interesting culture I think it tends to make people who work for maybe smaller companies but like really fulfilling work feel bad about that and it's it's it's like a huge just like Bay Area thing and yeah it's hard to like change and adjust but I'm glad that Tiffany you've been able to kind of like reframe your mindset and really like look into yourself and reflect and understand what's important to you and really shed yourself of other people's judgment or like the pressure from their expectations

right yeah it's not easy right but I think that big part was like surrounding myself with people who were really encouraging and non-gensamental of that a lot of my friends were kind of embodied the same mindset of success and risk-taking and so that also definitely helps like if you are surrounded by people who are constantly telling you that you need to be in that socially acceptable job role or whatnot then it's going to be really hard to pick out that mindset but I think what GC said is totally true like it definitely is a Silicon Valley thing where every time you introduce yourself it comes with so what do you do where do you work it's almost like you're being valued by your job and you're being respected because of your job role and I don't agree with that but I understand that that is something that is normalized here at the same time like I think it's more important to do something that you enjoy and I think that even that is something that I realize is not really talked about is like how normal it is to not know what you want to do because I remember just even in high school in college just singing to myself like why don't I know like what I enjoy doing I don't really have anything that I'm passionate about and I think it felt kind of shitty to see people who just like had it quote-unquote all figured out like they've known since kindergarten that they wanted to be an engineer you know and that wasn't me I didn't know for a really long time and I think that's that's so normal to not know and that's why it is so important to just spend you know your 20s figuring out like what you want to do and the only way you can do that is by dabbling in as many things as possible that's a struggle that I think like not enough people talk about and there's no shame in not knowing what you want to do I think that a lot of people feel that way and and just don't really talk about

it