A quick intro is in order: Hi there. I’m Kim Nguyen. I’m a MS in CS student at Georgia Tech (graduating Dec 23) & a backend engineer at GoDaddy Payments.
My background
I was born in Saigon, Vietnam, and grew up there until my family moved to Los Angeles when I was 12. Growing up in a family of entrepreneurs (my parents collectively found and sold ~5 businesses and currently running a 6th), I realized I love building things early in life – and an optimism for the power of technology to lift all boats. I graduated with a double major in Mathematics and Economics from Williams College in 2017.
After leaving the beautiful Berkshires, I didn’t know what I want to do with my life, and settled in NYC while working as a strategy management consultant for OC&C Strategy Consultants. I learned a lot, traveled all over the world, worked with gigantic companies and small companies internationally, and got a glimpse into the Merger & Acquisition process for Private Equity, and reasonings (or the lack thereof) for F500 strategy decisions. Post consulting, I worked as a founder and PM for an IoT startup before starting my Masters in Computer Science at Georgia Tech. I am looking forward to graduating this December with my Master’s degree.
Academic activities
At Williams, I enjoyed learning for the sake of learning, and had a blast exploring topics such as mechanism design, game theory, political philosophy of equity (eg Rawlsean fairness). I also loved playing little math puzzles along the lines of math proofs, and somehow emerged with a Math major. For survival in the Berkshires, I also learned how to cook and I think I make really good Vietnamese food now!
At Georgia Tech, I’ve taken classes such as Advanced Operating Systems and Software Analysis, giving me an understanding of topics related to distributed computing and writing correct software when using LLVM. I also have experience in software development processes with Java, writing Android apps, and developing testing suites for them. Additionally, I have taken graduate courses focused on High Performance Computing Architecture using C++ that have allowed me to write processor simulators such as SESC.
My hobbies
When I’m not at work, I enjoy experimenting with technology, exploring the city, hosting dinners, and hanging out with friends and family. On the tech side, this includes researching new debugging techniques as well as exploring various approaches to systems design. I enjoy hacking, mentoring, board game nights, milling around places with good arts & design, and attending random seminars and conferences that are tangentially related to my academic and professional work.
The goals for this site
I’m a software engineer now, which means that – for better or for worse – I don’t find myself naturally making time to write down a lot of my general thoughts on the state of the world, the state of arts & designs, and a lot of my mental model development as a results of my experience. Sure – there are technical blogs (and some of the things I write here might be able those topics), but I want a little corner of the internet that 1) I own, 2) that has no financial benefits or lack thereof (no monetization plans – ever), 3) that people in my life who are interested in can follow but that does not pollute their social media feeds. In the age of aggregators and platforms going in and out of fashion very quickly, I want a constant place where I can trace the lineage of my thoughts, experiences, debates, engagements, conversations I had with the interesting people in my life, and an archival of information for a future me. Given these goals and my desire to have fun writing, I’ll also disable all comments as a preventative method of avoiding harassment and trolling. But in the interest of discourse ™, I will have a liberal email policy – if you read this blog and want to start (or continue) a conversation, contact me by my provided email address. I promise I will respond to the best of my ability.
This site is a room of my own to write and process the world, so to speak.
Welcome and hello.