Tomorrow will be my last day at Google after 27 years, and watching it grow from 25 people to 190,000+ has been an amazing journey. Below is a note I shared with many people internally at Google today. An excerpt is:
It has been an absolute pleasure to work with you and to help build some of the most widely used and impactful products of all time. As a kid, I dreamed of helping build software that would be used by many people, and Google now has thirteen products used by more than a billion people (amazing!). Our work has had a tremendous impact in the world, and I have been lucky enough to collaborate and form friendships with many colleagues that I deeply admire, respect, and enjoy. It still brings me joy every time I see people out in the world using our products to find information, handle email, translate documents, watch videos, learn new things, navigate and understand the physical world, browse the web, use their phone, run large-scale computations on our infrastructure, ride in an autonomous vehicle, or perform complex tasks with the help of our AI systems. I hope you all share this sense of joy, because it is a shared accomplishment! Thank you to all of my colleagues at Google over many years!
Now I'm excited to go start @DiscoLoopAI with my longtime friends and colleagues @Sanjay_Ghemawat, @OriolVinyalsML, and @quocleix.
(Updated post: slightly redacted to not have some personal info)
@doncorleeeone You never ready for Wetin Dey come for you this season. Sundeland, Leeds, Coventry, and brentford go still beat you o. Wetin you go con dey shout when that time reach?
Iโm an AI PhD at Oxford wanted to move to the US for years, but it never worked out. Maybe I can share why.
To me, it feels like the US is making it harder and harder for Chinese talent to come or stay.
First, Trump signed PP10043, which meant I couldnโt go to the US for any graduate school. Thatโs why I had to turn down my Stanford offer and come to Oxford.
Later, I qualified for an EB-1A (the extraordinary ability green card). But because I was born in China, Iโm stuck in a country-specific backlog that could take another 4โ5 years.
Meanwhile, on the other side, Iโm getting 3โ4 emails from China almost every week. They offer high salaries, free housing, generous research funding, and even offered an astonishing amount of money just for me to come back and have a conversation.
Iโve always loved the American spirit. I truly believe my abilities could have a bigger impact there. But honestly, the whole process has been incredibly frustrating.
All of this makes me wonder whether I should just give up.
Why am I spending so much energy trying to go to a country that doesnโt seem to want me, when another country is doing everything it can to bring me back?
As America commemorates 250 years of independence, the @usmint will begin striking this new $1 gold coin to honor the enduring legacy of liberty and a lasting symbol of patriotism. Featuring President Trump, it celebrates the strength of American values, and the promise of a nation dedicated to preserving freedom for all.