My Perfect Path
My Perfect Path is a podcast about uncovering the defining moments that shape meaningful careers.
Hosted by Daniel Koo, each episode features candid conversations with leaders, creatives, entrepreneurs, and professionals from all walks of life. Whether you’re exploring new opportunities, navigating a transition, or simply curious about how others found their way, this podcast offers real stories, practical insights, and inspiration to help you carve your own unique path—wherever you are in your journey.
🎧 Listen in and discover that there’s no one-size-fits-all path to success—just the one that’s right for you.
My Perfect Path
Adapting fast is important for your career with Nathan Hillson (Chief Information Officer, Department Head of BioDesign)
My "Tetherball" Path
How do you navigate career decisions when you can't predict the future? For Nathan Hillson, Department Head of Biodesign at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the answer lies in what he calls "career tetherball" – a journey tethered by your context but bouncing in different directions through experiences and mentorship.
Nathan's journey began with cockroach experiments and high school supercomputing challenges in Albuquerque, where his exposure to possible careers was initially limited by his environment. With parents in medical fields, becoming a radiologist seemed like the logical path. Yet through college coursework, he discovered that physics – not biology or electrical engineering – sparked his genuine interest and played to his strengths. Rather than forcing himself to continue on a predetermined path, he listened to this internal feedback and pivoted.
What makes Nathan's story particularly valuable is his insight into how we make decisions under uncertainty. When choosing his graduate lab at Harvard, he prioritized culture and environment over perfect research alignment – a decision that profoundly shaped his scientific development. Later, when weighing a stable national lab position against being the first employee at a biotech startup, his life circumstances influenced his risk tolerance, demonstrating how our "tetherball" is constantly influenced by practical realities.
The most actionable wisdom from Nathan's experience may be his approach to mentorship. He advocates for having multiple mentors at different career stages: senior leaders who provide big-picture vision and peers just a few years ahead who offer practical navigation advice. The ideal mentor should see your potential more clearly than you can yourself while remaining unbiased about your decisions.
Ready to apply these insights to your own career journey? Start by examining whether your current position offers the three essentials Nathan identifies: working with people you enjoy, continuously learning, and making a positive impact. Remember that your adaptability might be your greatest professional asset, allowing you to find fulfillment across multiple potential paths rather than just one.
I always found it helpful to have a couple of different mentors you know, one that is further out in your career and one that's really close, maybe a couple of years ahead, because I think they have the practical advice that you may be able to leverage.
Nathan Hillson:Sometimes the best teachers might be people that just learned the thing, like within like the last year, as opposed to somebody who basically learned that particular thing you know 20 years ago. So if you try to get advice from somebody who's been in your particular situation like 20 years ago, that's going to be super helpful for, like the very big picture and like the overarching, you know. You know arcs to the, to the stories, but you might need a little bit more precise navigation guidance based on like the current. You know. You know arcs to the, to the stories, but you might need a little bit more precise navigation guidance based on like the current, you know the, the current, like you know state of things and then, like you're saying, somebody that's maybe just a couple of years ahead of you is going to be probably much, much better. So I like what you're saying, daniel, that you probably want almost like a portfolio of mentors to to, to, to learn from.
Daniel Koo:Hey, welcome back to my Perfect Path. For those of you who are new, I'm your host, daniel Koo, and I welcome you to season two. For me, at large, pivotal moments of my life, such as applying to new colleges, applying to new jobs or determining what next career move is right for me I spend time researching and finding mentorship to determine what was the best right for me. I spent time researching and finding mentorship to determine what was the best path for me. I knew that this struggle was not isolated to me. Everyone struggles with this, simply because we cannot predict the future. However, I found something that is second best to predicting the future it's learning from those ahead of our career and from those who've seen more and experienced more. After all, there are not that many problems that have not been solved yet. If you've ever felt unsure about your next career move, you're in the right place Today.
Daniel Koo:I'm excited to introduce you to Nathan Hillson, department Head of Biodesign at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Chief Information Officer at the Joint Bioenergy Institute. His journey started with high school supercomputing challenges in Albuquerque and led him through major career pivots, from wanting to become a radiologist to discovering his love for physics. Choosing lab culture over research fit in graduate school and making the risk-averse choice between a startup opportunity and a stable national lab position. His path took him through top national laboratories, including Los Alamos, sandia and Lawrence Berkeley, earning a PhD in biophysics from Harvard along the way.
Daniel Koo:In this episode, we'll discuss career decision-making under uncertainty, failing fast to discover what you don't want, finding mentors who can see the bigger picture and why being adaptable might be your greatest career asset. I hope you enjoy this one biophysics. Along the way, you've navigated some major career pivots, weighing academia versus industry. Also, you know wondering if you should go to med school or go to a law firm. Today we want to dive into those key decisions that shape your career and the lessons you've learned along the way. Thank you so much for your time and for being here.
Nathan Hillson:Well, thank you, Daniel, very much for the opportunity to talk with you and your listeners. It's going to be fun.
Daniel Koo:Before we start, could you tell us a little bit about the episode title? So you chose the word tetherball. I want to know why you chose that.
Nathan Hillson:So, daniel, as we were kind of talking previously, you know, some of the themes that I think have come up in our conversations is that oftentimes your career path or your path in life is often kind of tethered or, you know, constrained by your particular, you know, context or where you grew up or the things that you've experienced. And also, I think, in my particular instance, the path that I've taken hasn't necessarily, you know, been straight. It's kind of, you know, bounced around between you know, different places, different people have influenced me, different events have influenced me. So I was coming up with a metaphor and I kind of thought that tetherball might be a good example. So there's the tether, so that's probably why I started thinking about that. Is that just that word choice? So there's a constraint, that's there. But also in the game of tetherball you have two different players kind of bouncing the ball back and forth. So I kind of felt like that kind of captured the kind of concept of what I was trying to convey, do you feel?
Daniel Koo:like it was you versus yourself, or was it you and other people involved?
Nathan Hillson:So I feel like you know there probably were different players. You know subbing in almost every time. So I guess if we have like four kids that want to play tetherball, what you can just do is sub in and sub out. So maybe sometimes it was myself that was bouncing the ball back, or maybe there was just a rotating cast of characters that might've been coming into play. So maybe not only myself and maybe not only one other person, but a variety of people.
Daniel Koo:I see I want to kind of start from the beginning of your career, but before we do that, could you actually describe to us what your day to day looks like? I guess like your main mission as of right now.
Nathan Hillson:So my current full-time job is I'm a senior staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. It's one of the United States national laboratories that's primarily supported by the Department of Energy. The national labs basically serve the national mission in many, many different ways, but those also include basic science and technology development amongst many other types of things. The environment itself and maybe we'll get into this later is kind of somewhere between what you might find in an academic research environment and what you might find in industrial research and development. So it's very important, especially at Berkeley National Lab, that everything that we do should have the intent of publishing. So we're trying to be very open. We don't generally preserve trade secrets but we do try to generate valuable intellectual property and support commercialization.
Nathan Hillson:My current role is largely at this point more on the management strategy side of things leadership role, types of roles. I don't work in the laboratory anymore. I don't do pipetting. It's very rare now that I'll actually do any coding myself, so it's largely trying to be a cheerleader or an organizer of others. We work generally in a team science type of a setting, so it's working with large teams to solve big problems.
Daniel Koo:Yeah, I'm sure being able to kind of conduct this at scale at what you do is. I think it's remarkable and quite possibly a lot of listeners could be wanting to be at a position like you, which is exactly why I think you'll have so many insights to share today. Now that you've shared your current state, I want to kind of dive back into where you grew up and your upbringing. I know you grew up in Albuquerque. Did you ever imagine when you were living there that you would be doing what you are today?
Nathan Hillson:I don't think that it was really growing up in childhood I didn't really think about it as something that would be a real possibility for me. On the street where I grew up, one of my friends, his parents, did work for Sandia National Laboratories and Sandia is one of the largest employers in Albuquerque. So I was familiar with Sandia and the national labs. I wouldn't say like, as a child, actually knew what they did. I never actually visited Sandia National Labs, but I think probably what I was more familiar with would be kind of the things closer to what my parents did or what their friends did. So my father was a dentist and my mom was a physical therapist, so much more in the medical side of things. I had family that had been running restaurants or been selling Westernware restaurants or been selling Westernware. But I mean I didn't have any direct experience with real, I would say, like scientists or engineers or, for that matter, venture capitalists or, you know, investment bankers or management consultants. There's so many things that I didn't have any direct experience with, did you feel?
Daniel Koo:like in Albuquerque, the environment, kind of like in Albuquerque, the environment kind of led you to a certain path, Did it give a certain bias, or were certain paths easier?
Nathan Hillson:basically, by being in Albuquerque. I think in Albuquerque there's several things. I mean. I guess the first thing about Albuquerque, or New Mexico in general, is it's not going to be a New York City or a London, it's a. It's a. It's a smaller you know type of a town and people generally find you know a lot of their entertainment or kind of their, their leisure in the outdoors. So if you like hiking or you know mountain biking, backpacking, it's a fantastic you know place to be. And I think the connection to kind of exploring or kind of being in the natural environment and learning things, I think that probably, and the curiosity and the creativity that comes out of that, that might have predisposed me from some of the personality traits that you might anticipate finding in a scientist, engineer, I would suppose.
Daniel Koo:But I guess you were exposed to science and technology through a high school kind of super computing challenge. Could you tell us a little bit about that?
Nathan Hillson:So maybe a couple of little anecdotes, and maybe the first one is just kind of a teaser and then we'll get more into your direct question.
Nathan Hillson:But I would say my first real exposure to science in any type of real structured way was, you know, when you're in elementary school. They'll have these science fairs and usually it's pretty much like the parents I mean, unless you have like a super talented kid that comes up with their own ideas it's usually the parents that kind of influence, kind of like what the experiment was. And this idea kind of came from my mom. This was definitely not my idea but it kind of got my attention. So that particular experiment that we were setting up had to do with cockroaches and cockroaches that were starving, they were super hungry.
Nathan Hillson:And this particular experiment was basically, if you set up kind of like a walking path and we just had these elevated little wooden sticks and one of the paths, there's basically a fork in the road and the cockroach could basically kind of walk around and decide to do a U-turn, so kind of go closer, you know, back to where it started, or it could basically make a right turn and a left turn and it would basically keep getting further and further away from where it started. And so we just had, basically like this, this little soup container you know sized of starving cockroaches and you put them on the start and you just kind of record okay, did it basically choose the left in the in the fork or the right in the fork? Um, and it turns out that the vast majority, but not all, of the cockroaches you know chose to go more of like a straight path to get as far as possible away from where it started, as opposed to like doubling back on like where it got to. And it kind of makes sense, right, like if you're searching for food, like if you double back on the path where you just were, like that's kind of wasted effort, like you want to explore the maximum amount. So that really kind of got me, you know, got me thinking and kind of curious. So maybe that was like one of like the first sparks of of interest in like the scientific you know, you know process and here's, here's like what you think is going to happen. And then you actually do the experiment and you analyze the results and I think, even though it wasn't I didn't conceive of the idea, like I got to understand the process. So maybe that's one little little fun, fun, little anecdotal story. So that was kind of my actual beginning, getting to kind of like the actual question that you asked. So I think another big influencing factor on me and also it'll connect back into the national labs where I'm working now is that another good thing about you know Albuquerque?
Nathan Hillson:You know, going back to your previous question that was conducive to my current path is that Sandia National Labs, as we mentioned, is in Albuquerque itself and then Los Alamos National Laboratories is only about an hour and a half drive away.
Nathan Hillson:And so this is back in the early 90s, between Sandia and Los Alamos they had put together what they called like the, the New Mexico supercomputing challenge and Los Alamos and Sandia had, you know, supercomputers that they used for their own, you know kind of national defense, you know type of research. But they were also very interested in, you know, you know, future workforce development and and you know they wanted to make sure they were also training like the next generation of scientists, engineers, and what they did was they made accessible to high school students, I guess even middle school students, access to their supercomputers. So you basically, you know, basically they had you know training, you know, boot camps to show you how to kind of do software development and how to actually run yourself software programs on their craze and thinking machines, and it was an amazing, amazing opportunity. So that was basically also my first kind of real interactions with the national labs and certainly my first exposure to being able to work with supercomputers.
Daniel Koo:I think from your initial story about the cockroaches, I think you've already had a kind of disposition to science. It seems like there was something inside of you that you know. Naturally, you know you liked experimenting and wanting to see the results and trying to make, I guess, an analysis out of the results, and I think the way that you participate in this super competing challenge was also probably a pretty big kind of challenge for you as a high schooler. I'm assuming that you know there's a lot of time commitment and it's also something very different. You know you're not you know doing homework or you know doing something through school. It was kind of like a separate challenge that you had to participate in. Did you have a mentor for this at?
Nathan Hillson:all. So they in that particular supercomputing challenge program they did have several different mentors and coaches. But you also in your own schools you also had people that kind of like were coaching or mentoring you and I guess maybe this also kind of goes into people that you know mentored you or kind of made significant influences on your life. So one of the players that was batting at that tetherball for me in high school was one of my physics teachers, ray Menegas. He had kind of like this big head of red hair. His nickname was Mad Dog, so that's what people would call him. So Ray Mad Dog Menegas. He had kind of this big head of red hair. His nickname was Mad Dog, so that's what people would call him. So Ray Mad Dog Menegas. And he was also our cross country and track coach and he was, he's fantastic guy good sense of humor, I think.
Nathan Hillson:In in our physics classes we probably learned calculus from him a lot faster than we actually learned it in our proper calculus classes and we understood like why you know it was getting used or how it was getting used.
Nathan Hillson:We didn't, of course, do all like the formal mathematical proofs and all the rigor that we would do in our math class, but he was just a great, you know inspiration and I think because of him I started to become very, you know, passionate about physics.
Nathan Hillson:But he was my, my mentor, or our mentor I was. I was on this, this particular project with with another student, jason, so so so you know, ray Menegas was basically our mentor for that particular you know project. So he, he was advising us, maybe not so much on the computing side but more on the kind of the physics side of of how you think together and the project that we were working on, for that was, if you're simulating, you know, kind of like a galaxy and you want to know how all the stars are moving, and they're mostly, you know, moving, at least in classical mechanics, maybe, maybe not post Einstein, but at least in in classical mechanics it's largely as a consequence of just gravitational fields. So we were just trying to use supercomputers to compute how the gravity between the various different stars would change their velocities and those types of things, and there were some computational tricks that you could kind of do to make the problem a little bit more accessible.
Daniel Koo:Anyway, that was yeah, I think. I think you mentioned that this was like um related to the three body power problem. You know, where there's two bodies in, uh, in a gravitational field, it's somewhat predictable, but when there's three or more, it becomes uh, I guess exponentially harder to compute yeah so.
Nathan Hillson:So I guess there's even kind of like the recent, like Netflix series, like the three body problem. So you can, you can have a proper closed form solution just with a mathematical formula that can show you how two bodies work. But when you get to three bodies, then to my knowledge there's no closed form solution. So you have to do kind of numerical, you know, you know some simulations or numerical integrations to kind of solve, to solve the problem. So that's true for three bodies. But now we're talking about we call it the n body problem. So n can be like a hundred, it could be a thousand, a million, a billion. I mean there's a lot of stars out there, so you can only imagine yeah, I guess.
Daniel Koo:Um, I think it was great that you had a mentor that kind of took you along this journey and, you know, kind of gave you kind of a new perspective on science and kind of shaped your future as well.
Daniel Koo:You know, I think one of the themes that I'm seeing with the episodes that I record is that a lot of people have mentors at an even young age and they really guide, or they really guided, their path so that you know they can get to the next step, the next step, the next step, and people who's had mentors, you know they would they all recommend that you should get a mentor. So I think, you know, maybe that's a key takeaway that we can, we can take with us. We often consider what's immediately visible in our environment, but I think new exposure to ideas and people and that can change, shift our perspective on what's possible, your college days as well. So you have your undergrad and initially you wanted to become a radiologist. As you explained, your family has a medical background. I guess, in the beginning, why did you think that was the right path and when did you end up realizing that maybe it wasn't?
Nathan Hillson:Yeah, so so. So again, you you kind of are subject to like your own experience and your own environment. And at my particular high school there was a family and you know, one of the parents was a radiologist. And I mean, you're a high schooler and you can probably be very simplistic and materialistic.
Nathan Hillson:I certainly, you know, was at that point in time, but I think that family had had a Rolls Royce and I had also learned, you know, that that they, you know, had a had a radiologist parent and I also kind of knew a little bit after looking into it, that radiology, whereas it is a medical kind of doctor, they they tend at least my impression of the time was that they might not be spending as much time directly with patients. Doctor they tend at least my impression at the time was that they might not be spending as much time directly with patients as other physicians, like they might be looking at, you know, x-rays or tomography, you know a lot to make a diagnosis, but they might not be interacting as much directly with the patients. So I thought that sounds pretty perfect. Like I know, like I mean my, it's normal in my family to be doing something in the medical sciences. I thought that's something that I could do. It sounded kind of kind of interesting You're, you're, you're helping people, so there's kind of the purpose there. Do you get paid a lot of money At least that's what I, that's what I understood at the time and you don't have to, like interact with you know people like as much.
Nathan Hillson:And I I wouldn't say like I was completely on the introvert, you know side of the spectrum. I was kind of like between an introvert and extrovert. But like, being able to do that without having to interact with people nonstop sounded like a like a good option. So that's what I, that's what I thought I was going to do. So when I was applying for for colleges, I largely applied to biomedical types of programs, which not exclusively, but would often be in or associated with the electrical engineering department. So that's generally what I applied for. So I think when I matriculated into Rice University in Houston, texas that's where I went to college that was pretty much the major that I had chosen to begin with.
Daniel Koo:It sounds like you've actually thought it through, you know at the time and you've considered your. You know personality and what you want and you know the kind of level of kind of financial reward that a job can give you as well. So it's not something that was lightly chosen, would that be right?
Nathan Hillson:Yeah, I would say it wasn't lightly chosen. I would also say that it wasn't like any family influence that told me why don't you consider being a radiologist? It was just a conclusion that I myself, you know, came to. But again, that's coming back to like the tethered part of the conversation. I was aware of radiology because someone just happened to have a parent at my school that was a radiologist. Like maybe if there was like an IP lawyer, or maybe if there was like a venture capitalist, or maybe if there was like a startup founder, then I would have, you know, chosen a totally different path. But I think my conception of what was possible was totally limited to what I was exposed to.
Daniel Koo:So what made you change from this path and choose a different one?
Nathan Hillson:When I started taking electrical engineering courses in college this would have been when I was a freshman I was taking the 101 electrical engineering courses, so I was.
Nathan Hillson:I was taking that at the same time as I was taking probably like the first year biology course. But because of kind of I took advanced placement courses in college, I was already maybe like to like the sophomore you know level in math and physics, so I was. I was taking kind of like second year physics, you know, second year you know advanced calculus, and I was taking first year biology, intellectual engineering and I guess it's easy to say this in retrospect but 101 courses are generally not going to be the most stimulating or intellectually rewarding. I can say I hated first-year biology. To me it was just brute memorization and not something that I especially enjoyed. And then I was taking more advanced physics and going back to high school and my mentor there, ray Menegas, and kind of like how much I loved physics. I started to really okay, I really like this physics stuff and I'm not so sure about biology and which is. You know that was going to be something that was going to be needed for for medical you know types of paths if I wanted to do radiology eventually. And then for the electrical engineering it was somewhat similar, I mean my perception. Again, this was in retrospect, I don't think this is accurate anymore today, but the electrical engineering course it kind of seemed to me like, as opposed to physics, where you're understanding, like, why something is happening, what it felt to me in engineering was you just memorize a whole bunch of solutions or formulas and you have to know which is the right one to apply and then how to, how to actually use it to get to your solution. But there wasn't you know so much thinking about, okay, like the underlying reasons for like why you have this, this formula or why you choose it. It was kind of more like you just kind of memorize it. Biology you were memorizing organisms or whatever. And then electroengineering is kind of like you memorize solutions and you know the right time to apply them. So that was.
Nathan Hillson:And then I was battling against physics, where that was kind of like, where I was maybe predisposed to be passionate about. So I ended up deciding, okay, I really don't want to do this, this engineering, you know electrical engineering thing. So I switched over to physics and maybe the next part of the question. If it's okay if we segue a little bit is also kind of like maybe why I chose to go away from kind of like the pre-med or radiology path and I guess I was getting some indications of that because I didn't really like the first year. You know biology, you know so much.
Nathan Hillson:But in my sophomore year I also took organic chemistry and other kind of pre pre-req for pre-meds and the first semester of organic chemistry is a lot again of like brute memorization, like okay, you have to memorize, okay you know a via this catalyst or this reaction process, step condition goes to this, this product. So lots of memorization. And at the same time I was taking third year physics. So quantum mechanics, intermediate mechanics to me like organic chemistry was a lot easier than the physics and it wasn't like my most demanding, you know, course, whereas I think the pre meds, like organic chemistry by far and away was my most demanding course, whereas I think the pre-meds, like organic chemistry by far and away was their hardest course. So they spent a lot more time at it and it was just basically not possible for me to compete with the pre-meds.
Nathan Hillson:First of all because a lot of pre-meds I mean this is overgeneralizing things but a lot of pre-meds tend to be very, very good at memorizing. So I was already at kind of you know, a loss there, and then they were able to spend a lot more time at it. So I think first semester organic chemistry was probably like the worst grade I think I had ever gotten in my entire life. So I definitely didn't, relative to others, I didn't perform that well. So that was kind of another thing that said, hey, like you know, I'm maybe just not cut out, you know, to be like a brute memorizer and I again in retrospect, I mean I think that physicians are so much more than just memorizing.
Nathan Hillson:So it wasn't really necessarily in hindsight like a fair assessment or choice and I think I actually would have loved going into you know, medical related things, but it just kind of drove me a different direction, whereas you know it is kind of confirmed to confirm my bias. Maybe second semester, organic chemistry, where it's most more about you know, retrosynthesis and not just one step. But how do you get from A to Z and you have to be able to think you know how do you go B, c, d, e, f, g, and that wasn't something that the premeds you know, even if they're fantastic at memorizing, you can't. That's an astronomical number of possibilities and you can't memorize your way out of that problem. You have to think through it, and I think that was something that I enjoyed, I see.
Daniel Koo:I think that's actually a really good breakdown of those of those fields. You know biology. You have a lot of memorization. It's learning what these processes do, but not really figuring them out or modeling them for the future. The knowledge is already there and preset. You're absorbing them. I think.
Daniel Koo:For electrical engineering, you spend a lot of time understanding the solution, but oftentimes, because I studied electrical engineering as well in my undergrad, I know it's a lot of catching up. Actually, you know there's a history of solutions that have developed over time. The solutions are building off of each other. So for me, the entire undergrad you know program felt like I did computer engineering. It felt like we were just catching up to modern computers and how that worked and why we arrived at this state.
Daniel Koo:And I guess we don't really, you know, think about why and you know the science of it and I guess physics you know. Obviously it's a very, it's a very core natural science that kind of tackles, you know, the really big problems of the universe. So I think I can really see why that might've interested you. What strikes out to me here is that you listen to your own experience and the things you were going through, careful decision, and you know, after a course you would kind of process it and actually listen to your own I don't want to say I don't know if it's feelings, or you know certain emotions that come up or or thoughts, but you listen to them and with the, with the time pressure and the, you know things like that you were able to choose your new major as a physics major.
Nathan Hillson:Yeah, I think I think that's, I think that's right and I think I tried to get exposed to a lot of different courses and ideas. I mean, I think again in hindsight, maybe I didn't give a fair shake or I didn't give enough time to getting through the kind of the 101 level courses and now that I know a lot more, I mean biology is so much more interesting and intriguing than just that that first layer. So biologists eventually, you know, have to become very, very good at pattern recognition and being able to make models that can explain extremely, you know, complicated, noisy, you know data information and on the engineering side, there's so many advantages of being able to operate at different layers of abstraction or having things to be modular and decoupled and then figuring out where cohesion makes sense. So I think there's a lot of reasons like why the training happens in a certain way, so that maybe that's one, that's one kind of lesson.
Nathan Hillson:I think this is true in other domains too, like, maybe, like your first six months of, like, piano lessons are miserable, but you have to kind of just go through that pain to get to the point where it's actually enjoyable and rewarding. And if you don't have, like a mentor, that kind of can basically, or a parent that can kind of nudge you through that painful transition period. What you're resorting to is just getting you know, backing the tether ball, basically getting bounced around and that's that's. I think that's pretty much how I was doing it, like I tried a lot of things and I just got bounced around and I kind of found my path based on what kind of it was. It was reasoned, it wasn't like totally random or just, you know, instantaneous. You know I'm going to, I'm going to suddenly change, but I think that's, that's basically how I found my path. But if I had had kind of a more like longitudinal type of a mentor, then maybe the path might've been a little bit smoother.
Daniel Koo:I agree, For me, going into computer science was, you know, there's the feedback loop, for computer science is super quick, right? So you write code. If it's a website, you load it immediately. If it's an HTML file, right and it. I think, because of that quick feedback loop of like, oh, I can build things. You know, I could see that kind of future vision of building things and that helped me understand that computer science was going to be fun for me, software is going to be fun for me, but I can see how you know, with these one-on-one courses it may not have, you know, shed the best light on what the actual work would be. I think that's actually a really good insight to take away from this. And speaking of, I guess, bouncing around, could you tell me about your experience at working at a law firm and realizing you didn't want to go to that kind of law career as well?
Nathan Hillson:Yeah, so this is going back to high school and one of my mother's friends was a partner at a firm and in high school I mean it's always nice if possible to earn a little bit of money doing a summer job and it turned out that what this law firm needed at the time and again this is going back to the early 90s was somebody that was essentially just doing data entry from like a conflicts type of a perspective that if you represented a client, you know previously that you're not on the opposition with that with that same person because it could represent a conflict.
Nathan Hillson:So they had to take very careful track of like who they've represented or potentially who they've been on the opposing side in the past.
Nathan Hillson:And at the time a lot of this information was essentially just on these little Rolodex cards, not digital at all. So my job is like a maybe like a freshman in high school was to basically day in, you know, day out, just take a Rolex card and type it into like one of these kind of like older, I mean, it's now totally obsolete, but an older database, you know type of a type of a platform where they could at mean it's now totally obsolete, but an older database, you know type of a type of a platform where they could at least have it, have it more electronic so it's more readily searchable and preservable. So that was my kind of like. My first taste, you know, at being in a law firm is my first you know actual job. I would say I was probably getting you know minimum wage which was probably maybe like a factor of 10 less than what market rate would be for that type of a job.
Nathan Hillson:But hey, you're like you're in high school and you, you're you're grateful for, for what you get, um, but it definitely was not like a fun. A fun job it was. It was monotonous. Um, I could see a little bit of the purpose, you know, to why we're doing what we're doing, but like it wasn't maybe that purposeful, like I wasn't really becoming a master at anything, like I wasn't any better like the second day than the first day, um, and I was getting directed what to do, so I didn't have much autonomy. So it was just like like I think a lot of people you know say, like you know, to be like really motivated in your work, you need purpose, you need mastery, you need mastery, you need autonomy, and it basically had none of those. So it was not a good recipe for success. But I mean, I like the people you know that I was working with and they paid me, which is probably the most important thing for high school student.
Nathan Hillson:The next, the next year, they kind of had me change, change tasks and I was responsible for doing kind of filing. So now it was not just like data entry, it was more kind of like just you know um kind of filing. So now it was. It was not just like put data entry, it was more kind of like just you know, organizing, you know basic documents and files and making copies. But I would also have to cover um for the receptionist um when they would go out for lunch or take take breaks and I think that was like the worst job that I've ever had, like covering somebody as a receptionist Um, because if you mess up like phone calls, that's basically like the bloodline into a law firm, like you don't want to mess up like phone calls, like if you drop a call that might have been like one prospective client that they lost or you might have, like you know, lost the opportunity to book some billable hours. So it was just it was high stress and just not something that I enjoyed. So I think again like learning about yourself, like things that you don't want to do, and I worked a third year where it was a little bit more fun because I was a gopher and I got to drive around or I got to actually start working more on the accounting side, which is actually a little bit more interesting and you can see the internals of how a law firm works. So I would say that the type of work that I was doing got better and better over time. So I think from that perspective it wasn't so bad.
Nathan Hillson:But I think the reason why I kind of really soured on law and again, this was just totally based on my context and in retrospect I think I mean even now, like being like involved with intellectual property law or things could actually be pretty interesting or other types of litigation and things would be interesting too. But what I saw around me in that law firm was that people really worked to live and they didn't live to work. So they all had like these amazing, these, these amazing passions on the side.
Nathan Hillson:So my, my friends, my mom's friend on the weekends was a skydive instructor and that's what he was really passionate about and that's basically why he worked was to support you know kind of this, this hobby, and the same thing was true for lots of other you know of, of the, you know of the admins or the lawyers themselves, the assistants, and I didn't really feel like I want to be working in a place where I'm almost kind of miserable, like eight hours a day, just to enjoy things on the weekend or in the evenings. That just didn't feel. That didn't really quite feel right to me. So, again, it was just based on my, my context and my tethering, but I just kind of decided, hey, maybe law is just not not what I wanted to do I see.
Daniel Koo:I mean, the most important thing to take out of this is you know, realize, uh, what the paths you don't want to go to. You know earlier. So you know you found this out in high school and maybe that allowed you to kind of navigate the science space a little bit more. So I think you know if we can take away anything, it's, you know, trying out those things earlier and you know, I guess, process of elimination and getting rid of those paths so that you don't waste time on finding your correct one.
Nathan Hillson:Yeah, I think in Silicon Valley style, I mean, I think you know failing fast is definitely the way to go. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't say and again, this is this is all in hindsight but I wouldn't say it makes sense to make your decision based on how you feel doing the work that you're doing, because you might be doing the one-on-one level stuff, the entry level stuff, but I think if you observe how those around you, like the people that are actually established in those professions, do they enjoy their work, do they enjoy their lives Like how does, do you want to basically become like what they are? And you can. If you just spend like a few months at a law firm, like, you can see like the types of people and how they are and what they do and what they care about, I think you can get, you can learn that pretty pretty, pretty quickly and you can see if you're really kind of compatible with that. And I think maybe we'll get to this in a little bit more in the conversation.
Nathan Hillson:But I think that's another thing where I've where I've heard other people more in the conversation. But I think that's another thing where I've heard other people, for example, say you know why they don't necessarily want to pursue a career in academia, because they can see the lives that professors live and I think they have so many sacrifices and I think some people are going to be willing to make those and other people's not so much. So you might not actually ever work as a professor, but you can probably know pretty well like if you want to have that particular life.
Daniel Koo:I agree. And also, you know who you have as a mentor is actually really important at this point as well, where you know if you have a mentor who's a professor, who's loving their life, you know their research subject and you know their students and things like that, then that might change you a little bit as well. So I think you know it. Really, we have all these kind of environmental factors that kind of guide us. I do want to talk about your grad school at Harvard and you know, maybe tell us a little bit about what you're researching and also how you chose your lab environment. I understand you've had the opportunity to kind of look through a couple of them and to choose one. How did you end up choosing the one that you did?
Nathan Hillson:Yeah, so I think and maybe just touching really briefly, going back to the previous topic, I think but and also role models are super important and we'll get into that in a second when I actually answer the question that you just asked to see someone that they could potentially become or emulate.
Nathan Hillson:So I think that's a real challenge for people is like, if you know they kind of seen lawyers but none of them kind of like look like them or they don't talk like them or act like them, or they don't necessarily have like the same values or preferences or passions. And I think if you can find a role model or a mentor that you can kind of see yourself in, that makes all the difference in the world. And I think if you can find a role model or a mentor that you can kind of see yourself in, that makes all the difference in the world. And I think for some people, depending on their context and where they grow up, it's easy to see those role models or find mentors, and in other environments or professions it might be more difficult. So I think that can also make or break like a career path into that field. So I would also encourage people to spend, you know some time to try to identify, like you're saying, that mentor you know role model to really truly pursue into it.
Daniel Koo:Yes, and a part of why I do this podcast is to, you know, present a lot of mentors, present a lot of role models and career paths that people can get inspired by. So, you know, I think that makes perfect sense.
Nathan Hillson:Exactly, daniel. I think that's a great contribution of your podcast. So I'm really happy that you're doing it, because I think more people could really benefit by seeing you know other types of paths and see what's possible. So I think that's fantastic. So, getting to your question, when I started graduate school, I was really fortunate that our biophysics program was supported by the National Institutes of Health and they had these training grants where essentially the NIH would cover the first two years of kind of like the graduate school, you know, tuition and costs. And that was really important because what it meant is that if you were to do kind of like you know, internships or we would call them rotations with given labs, they didn't have to pay for you. So basically you were free to them. So it was kind of a very like low cost commitment. Sure, there would be the opportunity time of them spending their time and resources with you, but they didn't actually have to pay for your tuition. I think in other organizations you know universities where they don't have these training grants and a professor like has to support you. You have to choose your laboratory very quickly because they're not going to be willing to basically pay for you if you. You have to choose your laboratory very quickly because they're not going to be willing to basically pay for you if you, you know, go somewhere else. So anyway, so in our program we were very fortunate that we could do these rotations.
Nathan Hillson:I did three different rotations and I think what again, maybe it's going back to this. You know this tetherball, you know type of a situation. I thought I was predestined going into graduate school to join a very specific lab in the chemistry department, and that was because this particular lab was pursuing theoretical protein folding, and that's exactly the type of research I did during college in summers, where I spent it at Los Alamos. And I think the reason why I actually got into this particular program was because this professor in the chemistry department thought that I was going to come to to his, to his lab, um, so I thought I was always, you know, pretty predisposed to this and doing rotations, hey, that's, that's fun and that expands your horizons and your experience. But I just kind of thought it was all for show, because for sure I'm going to be going to this one lab. So it I did three, three rotations. The lab that I thought I was going to go to was was the second one. And then I went to a third rotation at the at the medical school which was less computational and it was more kind of like you know, wet lab, experimental, and I mean some of the. You know the contrast. Again, if it had been a slightly different set of circumstances I might've made a totally different decision. So it's all just about what happens to you in your particular path.
Nathan Hillson:But the laboratory in the chemistry department was exclusively male and the chemistry department was exclusively male and they didn't have any kind of like wet laboratory space. And while I really liked the people that were in that group and one of my best friends in grad school was in that lab it didn't really kind of feel like a very fun environment and I kind of knew grad school is going to be like probably five years. And do I really want? It's kind of like the law firm, right, like I see the lives of those grad students Like, is that who I want to be for like five years. So I'd only worked there for maybe like a few months, but I couldn't kind of anticipate what that would be like for me.
Nathan Hillson:And then, in contrast, the medical school laboratory was gender balanced and it just kind of seemed like a fun place. The science was fantastic and actually, you know, the professor, the mentor there that I had, was unbelievable, he was so good. The mentor there that I had was was unbelievable he was, he was so good. So, anyways, that was that was. But but largely kind of like how I felt in that environment as opposed to the actual type of of research. Um, cause I, I for sure, like computational and protein folding and and the, the medical lab that was more interested in you know how, how are antibiotics, you know maze made in the natural environment by microbes. It was also very interesting, but there's a bazillion interesting things that you could work on in science, but I'd rather be like in a happy, fun environment myself pursuing it, you know. So that was kind of how I made that decision.
Daniel Koo:Yeah, I was just going to ask, like at the moment, you know, it's a five-year, five to maybe seven-year commitment I guess I was going to ask if you were prioritizing, uh, like quality of life as well. I, I feel like, for phd students you know, it may feel like a very tough decision because maybe you know the field that you go into is very important for you. You're becoming an expert, um, a big part of your path is going to be set by this decision, and I wonder if you would, you know, prioritize quality of life over the you know the subject matter or I don't know, the professor, like what was kind of going through your head at the moment.
Nathan Hillson:So I guess maybe a couple of thoughts. And I guess the first one and I think I probably even kind of knew this about myself at the time and I think it's, you know, very important I think it's even more important generally now for people in their careers than it was historically and more important generally now for people in their careers than it was historically. But I think being adaptable, at least for me, is super important and super critical. I kind of know it of myself that while I'm doing what I'm doing now, there's probably a million other things that I could basically find purpose in, that I could master and I would have some autonomy in I'd be happy. So I don't think that I'm limited to only being happy in this one particular thing that I'm doing now.
Nathan Hillson:And I think that for people now they have to change their careers much more often. I mean it's much less common now for people to work for the same company for like 30 years, like people change like every every couple of years and you might be doing, you know, very different things. I think a lot of people actually like that. So you know some some change and being able to contribute in in different ways. So I think I kind of I kind of knew that, whatever I chose, I could eventually be happy in that particular domain you know domain and I think, like you're saying about the quality of life, that was like maybe one of the primary, you know, motivating factors is because, hey, I could be happy, like intellectually, in any of these different things. I'm not going to be getting paid anymore, depending on where I choose. The future career path is probably, you know, equally good in all of these. So, all else being equal, you know why not choose the laboratory that you're going to feel like you're having, you're the happiest in and having the most fun?
Daniel Koo:Yeah, I think that's going to be very useful information for people kind of, you know, going into PhD. I know I have a friend of mine who's literally going through a rotation right now across, I think, three labs as well, so I think it's going to be particularly helpful for him listening to this. So I guess, after your grad school, so after PhD, what was kind of like your assumed path, what were you kind of assuming that you would end up doing, and if you have any thoughts around industry versus academia at that point, I think that would also be very helpful so I think in in graduate school my eyes were opened to many different career paths.
Nathan Hillson:So I don't think I was actually exposed to all that much when I was an undergraduate, because either I was actually exposed to all that much when I was an undergraduate because either I was, you know, in the university, so I kind of knew what the academic, you know environment would be like and I worked at Los Alamos National Labs so I kind of knew what a national lab was like. But I was still, you know, pretty, pretty sheltered in the university. I mean, I think I had friends that you know had been, you know, talking about getting jobs right out of you know undergrad at like a management consulting place. So I think I was learning a little bit of some alternative career paths. But I think in my graduate lab there were actually people that after they graduated they did go work directly for venture capital firms. People went to one of the students is amazing Like she did kind of like night law school, while she was also kind of like doing like her PhD. So she actually went into practice more IP kind of like law like right after her PhD and she had, I guess, her JD or the equivalent. So that was amazing. There were people that were working in industry, so lots of people going into the pharmaceuticals types of companies, but there were also people that were going to fantastic academic institutions people that were going to fantastic academic institutions.
Nathan Hillson:So I think at that time, like there were just a ton of different you know viable paths in front of me and I think at the time I kind of this might have been maybe an instance of just kind of kicking the can, you know, down the road. And one thing that you can always do or not maybe always is too strong of a word but if you want to postpone your decision for a career path, one thing that you could consider doing is a postdoc. So that's kind of like the next natural progression from a PhD and that still enables you to pursue careers like in industry, in academia, and you could still always, you know, go back to law school or you could, you know, work for a venture firm. So I think I was just still really liking what I was doing and I think I just thought that it would give me a little bit more time to make a decision and also, I mean, the real purpose of a postdoc, and I'm extremely biased against postdocs, like I think postdocs should not exist and they're just kind of like a historical artifact. But they are a very good opportunity, you know, for you to get further training in a particular you know area so that you can actually do the job that you really want to have. And I think that's the only real reason why you should be doing a postdoc is if you need further experience or training to do the job that you really want to have.
Nathan Hillson:And my graduate school work was largely experimental, like biochemistry. At the end I kind of got a little bit of free space to work more on computational things and protein. You know engineering and design. It's kind of going space to work more on computational things and protein. You know engineering and design. It's kind of going back to my experiences as an undergrad at Los Alamos and previously even in high school, and that was really fun. So I was thinking well, maybe what I should be doing as a postdoc is looking for labs that more tightly couple the computational with the experiment, because I feel like that's where my future profession should be, is somewhere at the interface between the experiment and the, the the modeling side. So that's where I started to look for postdoc opportunities. That and that's how I ended up at Stanford it was. It was a lab that was kind of or kind of a joint lab that was. That was really good, both on the experiment side but also on the computing side.
Daniel Koo:Yeah, I think that actually ends up or I mean it seems like it's it probably contributed a lot to what you're doing right now, right, with experiments and also the computational side of it all. Could you tell us a little bit about you know the decision between I think you've mentioned like between a stable lab job at Berkeley versus potentially joining like a startup, and like what was going to, what was going through your head and why did you end up choosing what you did?
Nathan Hillson:Yeah, so I was a postdoc at Stanford's school of Medicine and in my grad school lab it was very typical for postdocs to only work for about a year, maybe two, before getting a job. I was probably a third year in and I was getting a little bit antsy, even though other people in that same lab had typically been there, typically like been there for almost like a PhD length postdoc it was like five years or something. It wouldn't be atypical. But I was getting a little bit antsy after about three years and I started to kind of, you know, indicate you know to my boss that I was, you know, feeling like I was getting ready to leave and starting to look for things and we can, you know, go off into another topic in a second kind of about that process and what happened there and some advice. But I had started looking for jobs and there was a job posted at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory where I ended up. So you already kind of have the spoiler of like what the decision is going to be, no surprises there. But also, you know, at a friend's dinner party I met a co-founder of a you know biotech startup in San Francisco and when I met this co-founder their company was basically just an incubator at the University of California, san Francisco, in their Mission Bay campus and they didn't have even their first employee and just talking with them they said, well, maybe you could consider working with us and I interviewed with them and they said, well, maybe you could consider working with us and I interviewed with them and I probably would have been the first employee, number one of the startup company.
Nathan Hillson:So, getting in very, very early and they were awesome. Three great founders. I still interact. We're still in the same space, so I interact with some of them from time to time. Really good technology. I liked the work environment, everything, space or interact with some of them from from time to time. Really good technology. I liked kind of like the, the work environment, everything. The one thing that made me hesitant was that the the compensation level at the startup company, at least to begin with, was really no different or better than a postdoc salary and there weren't too many like actual benefits, like I think one of the benefits was like you can go to like free um giants games, like so you can go see, see baseball Um, cause I think it was in the walking distance.
Nathan Hillson:Like the, the giant stadium was like very close by the mission Bay campus, um, which is a nice perk Um. But I mean, along the scheme of things, you know, I was coming out, I never had a job right. So I went, you know, from college to grad school, to a postdoc. I didn't have any, I didn't really have any savings, I had never really made a real salary and I was looking at like another extended period of like just having like a postdoc salary. That that seemed kind of tough. Now, to be fair, like berkeley national lab, they were competent, they were the job. You know, the other option that I was pursuing, um had a much higher um starting. You know salary and and benefits, um, I mean, you know the one one thing that you you might be considering is okay, sure, like you're getting paid less at the startup company, but you probably have a lot of upside in the equity, especially like if you're like employee number one. I mean that's part of the deal, right, you basically bear some of the risk with the founders and other early employees. So people could fairly say, hey, you're undervaluing like that equity and I think you know's that's perfectly reasonable. It did.
Nathan Hillson:It did turn out again in hindsight, that that startup company was acquired and had I joined that startup company, I would have ended up doing very well, but in a different, like parallel universe, like who knows, like if that would have happened exactly. So I, I guess. I guess my decision getting back to your question was I was fairly risk averse at that time just because I had not accumulated any economic assets of my own yet. So where, where I am now, or you know, if you had already had like an exit from another startup company, it would have been a very different decision making process because I wouldn't have been like as risk averse to having a low salary and I think I would have been much more willing to take the riskier upside of the equity over the salary.
Nathan Hillson:But I think, I think that's that's that's still I think, for for the people that are listening, you know, to this, I imagine there's going to be some people that are in a similar situation where I was. Your bank account doesn't have a lot of zeros Hopefully it's not 0.00, but it's not like eight zeros followed by a point and you'll have to kind of make that decision. And again getting back to some of your previous questions around, like kind of like the kind of the life quality type of an issue you're going to have to decide like how long you're going to be willing to suffer a bit to get to that first exit or that first you know breakthrough and just decide like you know what is your break point and when are you going to get out. But I think eventually you're going to have to make a decision and then just feel confident that you made the right decision and then just roll with it from there.
Daniel Koo:There are several factors for that. I think as a founding member, you tend to get less salary and a lot more in equity and potential upside. As maybe you know, if you're one of the engineers that are joining after the 10th or the 20th, sometimes you have enough funding at that moment to get a decent salary. Obviously you wouldn't have as much risk. You know, for me as a student, I worked at a startup right out of college for a couple of years and you know, at that point in time it was not important for me that I get a decent salary. I think at that point in time, for me, I really just wanted the experience and to be on the ground and building something and just coming from what you were going through and coming from where I was, I think you know they're very different decisions. You know, and I think being risk averse is, you know, in most instances it's the safest decision.
Nathan Hillson:So you know, you know who's to say what's the right decision, but it's good to know, understand, like all the factors at play and, to be fair, to like what you're saying in your experience, I think, immediately after college, like as a grad student, you don't get compensated very much and I wasn't really motivated by money.
Nathan Hillson:So, like as somebody that was 21 years old, that was fine and I had like a runway that I was comfortable with and I imagine you, daniel, were also comfortable with a certain runway to just explore a little bit after college.
Nathan Hillson:But what I'm talking about in making this decision, we're also comfortable with a certain runway to just explore a little bit after college. But what I'm talking about in making this decision is after five years of a PhD, after three years of a postdoc so I was probably 28, 29 at the time and you can imagine if you've had friends that got jobs right after college and they've had eight years of a real salary and you've you have nothing to basically show for it. I mean it starts to it's, it becomes a little bit more, more pressing. Especially, I mean there's I mean this wasn't me in that particular time but also if you know people want to, you know start having, you know families or other types of things, it's not just about you anymore and you have to start thinking about you know any anyways. So it's also kind of you're going to be very case dependent on, like where somebody is in their life path.
Daniel Koo:Exactly when, where you're tethered to. I think that's. That's the. The context is really important. I do want to talk a little bit about mentorship. Can you tell us a little bit about what makes a great mentor and, I guess, what kind of qualities in a mentor that you found most helpful?
Nathan Hillson:So I guess a couple of different you know things. So I think I mean we talked about very informal mentorship, like even going back to high school and Mad Dog Men. I guess it was kind of like a maybe not stated formally, but he was pretty much like a mentor. But I think my first real formal experience with the mentoring program was in my current role at Berkeley National Lab. There's kind of like a survey forum that essentially asks people if you're looking for mentorship, what would be the qualities that you'd be looking for in a mentor? Or maybe even like who do you want to be your mentor? And I think part of it is I didn't know better or that I just didn't really, you know, think about what was a reasonable ask. But I think I basically asked for the like the associate laboratory director, so basically like the second person in command at Berkeley Lab. So just going like way, way high up. And I said, hey, I would love, way, way high up. And I said, hey, I would love, you know, for this person you know to be my mentor. And it just happened that that person was available and did do mentorship and that was my first experience with formal mentoring and that was just a great, you know, experience.
Nathan Hillson:I think one thing we should be looking for in a mentor, ideally, is someone who can see a much bigger picture than maybe you can even imagine. So I think that was definitely true in this particular relationship is like okay, even though, like I thought, like my horizons were pretty broad at the time, like I definitely wasn't playing on the same level as the person that was mentoring me and really got, he really knew how all the pieces were fitting together and how things were moving. So I think that's one thing. I think coaching and mentoring are different. Maybe we can talk about that at some point too. But I think one thing that's very helpful for a mentoring relationship is for them to basically be able to see a lot more than you do. The other thing that I think is super critical for mentoring is that they should be fairly arm's length, so they shouldn't directly benefit or be hurt by any of the choices that you're making, dependent on what they tell you. So I think that's very different between a coach and a mentor. That's one dimension, for example.
Nathan Hillson:So I think if you're picking a mentor, you don't want your direct boss, for example, to be a mentor because they have too much of a conflict that your performance in their group is going to influence them or benefit them.
Nathan Hillson:So ideally, if you're looking for mentorship in the same organization, it's going to be in a different operational unit.
Nathan Hillson:You're going to probably be looking for somebody that you feel that you can trust, because there's strong kind of. You need strong assurances around confidentiality. You ideally want someone who you think is going to be able to put your best interests ahead of the organization. So you should be mentoring you know the person as an individual for their own career development and progression and not just for the benefit you know of the organization. So an easy way to do that is like get a mentor that doesn't even work at your same company or is not in the same organization you know so, so that that would be like one way of going about it. But I think looking for somebody that has a big vision has a really long view into the horizon, somebody that's not going to be biased or conflicted in giving you guidance. And ideally, I think it's still going to be important to pick a mentor that sits in a place where you kind of want to be, as opposed to somebody that's a little bit more tangential to somebody that's a little bit more tangential.
Daniel Koo:Yeah, to summarize a couple of that, I guess for a great mentor, you want them to at least be able to look at your best interests right, also, be a good role model, also, having done what you're doing at the moment. One other thing that I would like to add is I always found it helpful to have a couple of different mentors. You know, one that is further out in your career and one that's really close, maybe a couple of years ahead, because I think they have the practical advice that you may be able to leverage. Did you have someone like that or not?
Nathan Hillson:So I think again, probably a little bit less formally.
Nathan Hillson:So I think there's lots of value in what you're describing and maybe an analogy that I would kind of use is that sometimes the best teachers might be people that just learned the within, like the last year, as opposed to somebody who basically learned that particular thing, you know, 20 years ago.
Nathan Hillson:So I think that the problem with the way that human brains, you know, tend to work is that we're not necessarily like linear thinkers and especially the longer you've been around, like all these, like different interconnections between all these different concepts happen and that makes it very difficult to sometimes talk in like a linear narrative and often we learn best from more of kind of like a linear progression, and I think it could be.
Nathan Hillson:The same thing is kind of true for what you're talking about in terms of mentorship. So if you try to get advice from somebody who's been in your particular situation, like 20 years ago, um, you're gonna, that's gonna be super helpful for like the very big picture and like the overarching you know, you know arcs to the, to the stories, but you might need a little bit more precise navigation, guidance based on, like the current, you know the, the current, like you know, state of things and then, like you're saying, somebody that's maybe just a couple of years ahead of you is going to be probably much, much better. So I like what you're saying, Daniel, that you probably want almost like a portfolio of mentors to to, to, to learn from.
Daniel Koo:Okay, so, as the episode is coming to a close, I do want to ask a few closing questions. First one is do you have any advice for those feeling unsure about their career direction? So maybe they don't have enough inspiration or maybe they don't feel confident in their skills.
Nathan Hillson:If you have advice for those feeling unsure, so I guess a couple of things, and I think maybe this is going to be slightly repetitive but stated in slightly different ways, think maybe this is going to be slightly repetitive but stated in slightly different ways. Um, I think when you're looking at kind of like an ideal, you know type of a type of a job, it probably needs three, three different things. Um, you ideally, you know, want to like the people that you work with. Um, you want to be learning, you know all of the time, and you want to feel like you're making a positive impact. So I think, for people in a career, about their current career status or their career trajectory, if you don't have those three things, you probably want to start looking to go somewhere else. And if where you're looking also doesn't have those three things, then maybe you want to consider even an additional alternative. I mean going back to kind of like motivation and these types of things and we talked about you know it's really important to have purpose and mastery and autonomy. I think that can also kind of influence. You know, maybe some of the reasons why people are unsure or unconfident about where they are is because maybe they're lacking. You know one of those things. So I think the first thing for people is to try to understand. Okay, I know something is wrong, I know something is missing, but try really hard to figure out. Like, what is missing Is it? I don't, like the people I don't, you know, feel like I'm making an impact, like I'm not learning anything, I'm not getting better at things. I mean, these are all related.
Nathan Hillson:If you see a potential career path that looks like it's going to be very good for you, but you feel like you don't necessarily have the skills or training, there's a couple of different things. I guess the first thing is, like you can learn on the job. So don't, if you're applying for a job, like don't just kind of make the assumption that if you don't have 100% of the skills required, that you couldn't be a successful candidate. I mean, largely it's going to be a crapshoot based on who else applies for that same job. But you can learn some of those things on the job.
Nathan Hillson:Like you don't have to have everything same job, but you can learn some of those things on the job. You don't have to have everything on day one and you can also proactively start to develop those skills even while you're in your current role, but you kind of need to know where you want to go and what you need to get there and then you just need to satisfy that gap and mentorship can help out. That way you can look at, kind of like, what the job position requirements are and get a better understanding. There's a variety of ways, but I don't think it's going to be uncommon that people feel you know unsure or have doubts or you know, I think that's very, that's very natural and very common.
Daniel Koo:I think that's really good advice for those that are kind of hesitating to jump into their next field or they don't know which direction to take. What is one advice you would give to your younger self?
Nathan Hillson:So I guess, just kind of you know, reflecting back on history, I mean, I think one of the things I think I've been very, you know, fortunate and I think you know certain people you know might might use kind of like the terminology like you kind of like leave live like a blessed or like a just a, a very kind of lucky, fortunate life. I guess one, one thing is, if you are adaptable and you kind of are, are, are interested in, interested in multiple different things, you can at least take a little bit of comfort in the fact that, no matter what happens in the future and there's lots of uncertainties you're going to be able to adapt and adjust and overcome and find happiness on the other side. I think that's one thing that's happening you know to us right now in this country and maybe some other countries, is there's just a lot of uncertainty and that can be very stressful and anxiety inducing. But one way to kind of, you know, maybe, emotionally comfort yourself or intellectually comfort yourself along that angle is, you know, just to rely on your own you know ability to, you know to adapt and things are going to work out. You know just to rely on your own you know ability to you know to adapt and things are going to work out. You know, I mean, I guess there's the expression like this too shall pass, and like you'll just you'll get through things. But I think emphasizing, like you're focusing on your ability and demonstrating your ability to adapt is something you know that's going to be super important.
Nathan Hillson:Looking back on like an earlier, you know, version of myself, and the advice that I would give to myself is largely kind of like keep trusting your process. Like pay attention, you know, to your feelings and emotions and what feels good and what doesn't feel good, but don't make like sudden, you know, um, sudden like judgments or decisions. Like like actually think, think through it, um, and and where it's where it's going to go, and if you follow, keep following that process, like everything's going to be fine, um. So I think that would probably be be be part of it too. Just just trust the process.
Daniel Koo:To summarize a little bit about what we went through today. I think the key takeaways that I'll be kind of implementing in my own life is trying everything and failing fast to figure out what you like and what you dislike. You have to carefully plan out and listen to your experiences, your emotions and finding out the next really good venture that can potentially be your next field. I think the second thing is don't assume what you think now is what you'll do later. I think just you know from your experience there was a lot of pivots in the road, but I think every pivot got you closer to what you will do now. You know, and I think it's really impressive what you were able to kind of achieve at the current state. So if that's what you went through, I think there's a lot of confidence that for a lot of listeners that we can kind of think the same.
Daniel Koo:The third thing is mentorship. So having good mentors and relying on them. I think even at a young, young age you were, you had a mentor that kind of nudged you into the science space. If we can find those mentors, I think that would be most ideal and they'll be able to see things that we don't and be able to guide us in that way. And the last thing is being inquisitive. I think the best quality I see from this I guess episode from you is that you were very inquisitive and you invested your time into what you believe is interesting and fun and passionate. So I really admire that and I want to implement that in my own life as well. So thank you so much for your time and I really appreciate it.
Nathan Hillson:Yeah, thank you, Daniel. Thanks very much for the conversation and the invitation to participate.