I committed newsletter suicide
What I’ve been thinking about for 3 months ...
Why you’re getting this: This is a friend-first newsletter. Faangboss is a weave of three essential threads: the craft of design, the art of influence, and the journey of growth in UX. I poke at connective tissues, drawing from my 20+ years of launching products and mentoring designers in tech NYC.
Dear reader,
You haven't gotten an email from me in 3 months. After that long hiatus, I've finished thinking. For those of you who know me, I have a tendency to overthink. The problem is, I really enjoy it, and it's one of my superhuman powers. 🦸♀️
What I've been thinking about...
❤️ Be the love that you seek
I made significant changes in the latter half of 2024. I started a new role, built new relationships, and connected with more people on and off Amazon. Early 2024, workplace toxicity burn out was real. (story here: Special voiceover life update episode - the good, the bad, the ugly).
My faith was restored when two projects I worked on were launched in December. Seeing the work launched on stage was validating.
Project 1: solving the junkification problem at Amazon is a $1-7 billion opportunity. We launched brand name AI tool in Amazon Global Selling conference in China. International sellers can brainstorm brand names with ease, leading to reduction of trashy names in amazon stores. (See images on my IG).
Brands can target customers with fine-grain promotions, by using enhanced audience tailoring and gain insights from customer journey analytics. (35:52 - 38:52)
It was validating to see this work on stage. The extended wait taught me that we all own to ourselves: love, validation, and acceptance. Don't wait for someone else to provide that for you.
🌱 Go to Asia, come back Asian
I haven't been back to my homeland, Taiwan for 24 years. I didn't realize how white I became. The second my foot was back on asian soil, the culture of asian ghost came right back into my body without skipping a beat.
Two weeks in Japan and Taiwan awakened my memories of my cultural origins. I saw my childhood playground through the eyes of an adult. The world was different, my mom stayed the same, and the person who changed the most was me.
I finally got to stay at Surian in Kyoto and fulfilled my dreams of having an outdoor onsen overlooking maple trees. Kyoto restored my inner peace and healed me whole.
At the Arashiyama bamboo forest, we wished our surrogate in Dallas will have a successful transfer. After a long 2 year journey, we are having a girl this August 2025 🐍👶🏻🍼.
2024 year-end at work was really rough with the news to flatten middle management and RTO 5 days. Teams were dismantled, merged, reorganization causing designers to quit, pip'd, and forced to leave. I'm supporting managers to grow jr's during this time. 😭🥺
🕺🏻2025 Socializing & Bday 🍰
I kicked off 2025 with a lot of socializing off Amazon. Joined 3 NYC meetups, saw a friend from Grace Hopper conference in Phoenix Arizona, and started a bit more active on IG, give it a follow! 😜
📰 What to expect in 2025
In November 2024, I sent out a survey to understand you better.
Top insights are:
Readers are early-career and mid-senior designers who like my no-BS perspective, unique voice in tech that is vulnerable, authentic, practical, actionable content.
Reader's top goals & interests are 1) Career growth and innovation capability, 2) Product thinking and interaction design, and 3) AI and design integrations
Readers who are willing to pay $5/month would like:
Private community access, live group mentoring sessions and Q&A
Figma design libraries
Resume/portfolio reviews
Design courses (both short and long format)
From these results, the core stack of problems my readers face are:
Tired being the execution workhorse. "I'm tired of pushing pixels while others make the real decisions."
Unable to influence stakeholders - "I know what needs to be done, but I can't get anyone to listen."
Stuck at Senior and is pressured to manage to progress
I'm reaching conclusions on...
Creating a product course.
While it's important to have a product for readers to anchor on and convert, it's too much effort for too little gain for me. Courses have no bar for quality. Most course content is a compilation of frameworks, templates, and asset library.
Growth plan.
100% of my newsletter growth will be supported by readers like you, and that means it won’t ever be enough as a viable business.
Demand for hosting a podcast.
I've been getting many requests to create a podcast when I don't have time to write. People like hearing me rather than reading my words. I think this is a great idea, but I don’t have a lot of time. I’m open to testing out this idea in this format in the coming months. Looking for hosts who would like to have me on.
Paid subscriber perks.
I will be releasing sneak peeks to a large backlog of YouTube video content called Speedrun to Senior. I'm open to testing out monthly community mentoring, if you are interested in that, please reply to this email.
Have a great week ahead,
