A busy week has passed, and after working on the product for a week, I finally have time to continue writing.
Last time I mentioned October 2020, I was inspired by a large order of distributed storage software from my colleagues at headquarters and began to seriously study IPFS. While organizing my computer files these past two days, I surprisingly found the PPT from that time, and one page is particularly representative—friends who participated in the early stages of Filecoin may feel a bit emotional seeing it.
Back to the point. After self-studying the PPT, I searched online for a lot of information and studied the working principle, output mechanism, and encapsulation process of IPFS. I also followed videos from bloggers like 'Grandpa Wang' and 'Where is the Coin Chain' to learn. But to be honest, after studying, I still feel confused, and my overall understanding remains vague.
Coincidentally, at that time, I was in charge of a university media integration project, and had close interactions with the partner (also my former company). Once, I took the school leaders to visit the exhibition hall of my former company, during which I chatted with the former CEO. He mentioned that an old colleague was working on distributed storage, and the team was recruiting candidates for B-end solutions, asking if I was interested.
The old leader spoke, of course, and said, 'We can chat.' Before long, an HR added me on WeChat and scheduled a face-to-face meeting.
The interview was scheduled for mid-November, and I remember that day in Chengdu had a bit of a chill. I was wearing a shirt with a down jacket and rushed to their office located in IFS. Walking into the meeting room, I took off my coat, and while waiting for the boss to arrive, I thought since it was introduced by my former boss, it would probably just be a casual chat.
I didn't expect two girls to come in, both holding laptops. I thought they were HR, but they said the interviewer would arrive soon, and they were just there to observe. I wondered to myself: is this really that formal?
After a while, a boy came in, introducing that AM focuses on distributed storage, with the vision of becoming the world's largest distributed storage service provider. We discussed some issues related to distributed architecture and IDC, which are areas I am familiar with in cloud computing, so the conversation went quite smoothly.
Halfway through the conversation, another girl came in - who later became my direct supervisor, let’s just call her EVA. EVA introduced AM's plans on the market side, targeting universities and government enterprises, saying they wanted to establish a distributed storage cluster to allow universities to store their data.
Hearing this, I almost laughed out loud. For 20 years, I had been running through universities and government; it was crystal clear - the Ministry of Education explicitly requires that school data must not leave the campus. It felt like they completely didn't understand the actual situation, but I couldn't openly refute it. The overall conversation was not particularly congenial, and after the meeting, I added EVA on WeChat and went home.
Later, she sent me the company introduction on WeChat, which contained mostly marketing materials. At that moment, I realized - they were actually working on IPFS. Interestingly, during the interview process, they only referred to 'distributed storage' and never mentioned IPFS. At that time, I didn't understand why they chose to be so vague, but I wasn't very interested in the company, so I politely sent a thank-you message and declined the opportunity.
It was late November. One day, EVA suddenly invited me to dinner on the weekend to chat some more. We set it for Saturday noon at a private dining restaurant near Jiu Yan Qiao. I arrived ten minutes early, and the hall was empty. Shortly after, EVA also arrived.
At the dining table, she began to outline the company's blueprint: to establish an overseas team, of which I would be fully responsible; she also mentioned that vendor in my PPT, saying they could become the global leader after the New Year. The most crucial part was that they offered a salary I couldn't refuse.
At that time, my child had just been born, and it was a time when money was needed. Financial incentives are quite enticing. After dinner, I said I needed to think it over, but my mind was already wavering.
A few days after returning home, I sent EVA a message:
"I join, and we fight together."