2020 is a super busy year to the planet and myself. At very beginning of this year, we lost Kobe Bryant. Almost at the same time, the outbreak of COVID-19 forced we changed our behaviors: no hugs, no social activities, but have to sit at home all the time. As for me, I had to stay at hospital from Feb. to April taking care of my father, because of his cerebral hemorrhage due to an incident. And during that time, a warning from doctors on my liver health problem made me finally decided to end my 13-year Microsoft career, to get a new job with work-life balance. All things happen in the first four months. What a wonderful year. One sad news after another.

But still, I want to say a Hello World to 2020. It changed my mind a lot.

Starting from 2018 I worked for Bing Ads to handle its data processing pipeline. The team grew from 7 to 24 developers in 6 months during 2019, covering multiple Bing Ads datasets. I worked 13 - 15 hours every day to meet the rapidly increasing demand. Many friends said I was crazy, yet they also say I would be able to keep working in this way, if I didn’t get the health warning, as well as some learning that drives me to the decision of leaving. I don’t regret that; instead I appreciated the amazing team we built up together. However, the health risk is a signal, that I can’t live in that way anymore.

Now I have a chance to start a new journey in Porsche, an area I never worked before. It reminded me the day back to 2006, when I created my first blog post in MSN Spaces. Feeling a bit nervous but excited, I wrote my first post with title Hello World, if I remembered clearly. The website is gone for long time, but the world is still here and moves on. So seems it a good time to say hello again.

Toast to a new start.