Job hunting with late stage cancer.

Uncategorized Apr 24, 2021

I will tell you about the time I did the job hunt while I had late stage cancer and on chemo.

Sept: I was living in Asia and was on a business trip for my employer, a hedge fund, when I noticed a golf-ball sized lump in my armpit.

Back in Beijing, doctors said let's have a look and put me under, took it all out and ran some tests. Turned out to be stage 3B melanoma - skin cancer which had moved to my lymph nodes. As much as could be found was taken out, then the standard regimen was to have chemotherapy.

At the time, I was living in China. No plans to leave. Now, it was time to return to the US. The fund was really supportive.

My son was to be born in a few months. I wanted to do what was best for the whole family.

Staying in Beijing didn't seem right, although I had fully planned to spend my career there. The fund was closing, and anyway I would have to find a new job anyway. And the US may have a good clinical trial.

All career aspirations were let go. I mostly thought about how nice it would be to see my son grow up - at least for a little bit.

Could I get a few years? I considered myself still a "going concern" but maybe on a different path now.

Oct: back in the US. I joined a clinical trial and started a new job hunt.

Nov: Went to a job fair. The online brokerage Scottrade (now TD) was looking for a head of Asia Pacific. I started to interview with them and also started 30 consecutive days of chemo.

Dec: got the job. Negotated a January start date. By now I was doing my own self-injections with the chemo every other day (interferon).

Over next 12 months, I felt dizzy at times and sometimes saw stars. My blood tests showed strange things. Turns out I had been injecting myself with too much of the chemo. The doctor's jaw dropped when he heard how much I had been injecting (the whole vial vs just 1/2).

Over the next12 months, managed a team of 60 to grow net new assets 15% or by ~$200m -without a budget. The job turned out to be mostly pulling Scottrade OUT of Asia, not growing there, which was happening organically with some operational improvements.

That job did not last long. But boy do I feel grateful for that experience to keep my mind off of things. Even took the chemo on a trip to Hong Kong and jabbed myself there on business!

I'm not sure I have a moral to this story. Keep going, do your best, see challenges as opportunities, have a goal and figure out how to achieve it, and maybe most importantly, let go whenver possible. I would say most of the healing came from letting go and just not worrying about it.

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