Nghia Nguyen

Strategic Ops

What are you holding on for?

This is something I’ve continued to ask myself throughout my life. It’s an innate fire—a reminder to tread only for so long along the settled and reassured paths. For me, there has always been that impetus to reach for things far-off from the straight and narrow. To trade things familiar for things beyond my realm of comfort; things that, at one point or another, were unfathomable to me. It’s my forcing function for growth.

Ten years ago I had embarked on a career doing computational physics in the aerospace field. I had no idea that I would end up in the area of business development, no less even thought about being a data engineer. Come to think of it, the latter term barely even existed then. The years at each of those waypoints were intensive: early mornings, chaotic days, long nights, tough customers, and lifelong friends. They gave me an appreciation for the value of failure. I reveled in soaking up the countless hours of learning. But sooner or later, it eventually always became maybe all too familiar, and that was my barometer to be unsettled again.

So, I’ve always welcomed leaving behind the well-honed parts of me to give way to something new. These leaps of faith carried me along an unconventional path. I trust in them. They gave me lessons in building from scratch. They taught me to let go. They helped me tame the fear of uncertainty. They led me to DevRev, where nothing we do is familiar, and there’s so much left to create.