In this personal storytelling talk, Farnaz Azmoodeh, Director of Engineering at Snap, shares a series of pivotal moments that shaped her personal and professional trajectory. She begins with a high‑school skiing anecdote where, pressured by a group of "cool kids," she confronts a daunting vertical drop (the "Wall"), falls, and learns to tolerate embarrassment and risk. She draws a parallel between that experience and later life decisions: moving from Iran to the United States for graduate studies, confronting language, visa, and cultural challenges; realizing during her PhD that academia was not her path; receiving a cold‑call from Google and ultimately putting her PhD on hold to enter industry. In her early industry years she emphasizes learning from colleagues who were more skilled, repeatedly seeking new projects once she mastered a role, and the importance of staying in the uncomfortable zone. Finally, she recounts joining Snap, the steep learning curve of app development, and the recurring pattern of questioning belonging while ultimately thriving. The overarching lesson she presents is that continual discomfort and willingness to jump into the unknown drive growth.
Chapters
Hello everyone.
It's wonderful to be here. Amazing audience, even more amazing speakers. It's so hard to go after three of you. It's, yeah, it's tough.
So my name is Farnaz, and I'm an engineering director here in LA at Snap. When I was talking to the organizers of this event the very first time, they said they're looking for storytelling around those sort of pivotal moments that help shape our lives. And I think, as you see, there are several moments like that. They all leave their marks. But at that moment, for me, what hit me was this experience I had that has helped shape my life, one of those events. And I think I'm just going to go with it. And I think Samantha talked about this as well. So the story goes back to my high school years when I was skiing. I had skied from very early ages.
And you go through those beautiful first few sessions where you start with, bleh, I don't know what I'm doing, to I'm in control. I think I've got it covered.
And it feels amazing. It's fulfilling and fun. And obviously, future changes when you're learning anything new, right? The first set of changes come really fast, low-hanging fruits, and then it gets slower and slower. And that's fine, well understood. But when I got to high school, I think I was self-conscious enough to realize that, "Oh, I'm not changing that much, I'm plateauing." So I went to this great instructor, and I asked him to start working with me. We had our first day together, and at the end of the day, he said, "I think I know why you're not good." Which, first, You don't say that if you're an educator, you're a teacher, you're an instructor. Just don't say that.
Some of us are tough enough to hang in there and keep plowing through. Some of us aren't. Luckily, I was one of those first groups of people.
So he said, let's go. And there's a group of quote unquote cool kids where we go and ski together at the end of the day for an hour. The problem is, one, I'm not a cool kid.
Two, I don't hang out with cool kids. So immediately, that was a red flag, but I figured I'll go with it. He knows why I'm not good.
We went, and we hit this point where it was called—
within the slopes, it was called the Wall. Now, Game of Thrones wasn't released back then, but it was called the Wall for very similar reasons.
It was a vertical drop, snowy, icy, and I would not be hitting that part of the slope in my right mindset. It was just not a thing I'd do.
It was not even scary, it was crazy.
So we hit it, everybody's lining up sort of perpendicular to the drop, and they go one by one, a couple of them fall, not a big deal. And I'm the last one. And I stood up there, like imagine high school, tough ages, right?
And the group of cool kids is staring at you.
And I can't remember how many minutes it was, but, I think it was that gaze of the cool kids that got me to just go with it. And it was horrible.
I had the worst fall I've ever had. My ski was in one place, the hat was in another, there was snow in my ears. But I think something amazing happened at that point, and that was just getting a little more comfortable with looking silly and clumsy, and in front of a bunch of people watching you just falling. And by the way, Disclaimer, I'm not comfortable with that in life. I got comfortable with that at that moment, at those circumstances when I was skiing. And that really helped actually push me forward.
I got better. And being a somewhat sentimental kid, I took a note of that and thought, I'm a risk-averse person. I get into my comfort zone, and I plateau. And I have to push myself. I have to force myself. And I try to think about that when I get to those tough decisions that I need to make. And what I remember is there's a few instances in life where I think that experience kind of came in handy and helped push me outside of my comfort zone. After college, I was thinking about, you know, do I want to stay back in my home country or go abroad, come to the US and study here? And it was somewhat of a scary thought. I had to go to a country where I didn't know that many people. It was a different language. It was in a place where I had to get a visa, where my parents couldn't visit me, where I couldn't go back due to the risk of not being able to come back and finish my studies. But I decided this was, you know, one of those once-in-a-lifetime sort of opportunities. So I decided to go with it.
And by the way, I'm gonna ruin the story, I'm still here, so like it worked out. It was really, really hard. I was staying home, that's what people did back home.
You stay with your parents throughout college. I was pampered, parents are taking care of you, making sure your day-to-day needs are met. And all of a sudden, I'm landing in LAX, in this new world, and I gotta take care of it myself. It was really, really hard, but fulfilling and amazing, and you learn so much, so many new experiences that I would have never had before. Throughout those years as I was working on my PhD, you know, I was a good student. I knew how to get A's, and that was—
I had it covered.
But after a couple of years in grad school, I started thinking that this is not for me. Getting my PhD, postdoc, academia, it's just not cutting it. And you might think, big deal, like, this is what people do, quit, go do something else. But within my network of friends and with my family, like, that, that was not something we did.
Like, you go, you go all the way, you go to the end, you, you know, you don't quit.
And I think that final straw for me came when One, I got a cold call or cold email from Google recruiters. That was exciting. Google was a big deal back then.
Still a big deal. But you know, it was a new hot company. And I had a paper submitted to this most prestigious conference at that—
the area I was studying. And my regular me would be checking that website every day. Did I get accepted? Did I get accepted? And I was not doing that at all. And I learned that my paper was accepted through a congratulations email from my advisor. And that was a really bad sign. I was not caring.
And so, again, going back to hitting that wall, the perpendicular wall, worried about how I'm gonna be judged.
As I quit, I decided to jump and go and give it a try. And I put that PhD on hold.
Again, ruining the story, it's still on hold. Didn't go back.
And yeah, I joined the industry, and it was amazing. It was humbling. I knew how to be a good student, but I didn't know how to work among a bunch of people who, for the most part, were smarter than me, better than me, more hardworking, more experienced. Better, just better. But at the same time, it meant that at those pivotal years, the beginning of my career, I got to be surrounded by people who were better than me, and I got to learn from them. And I think that's huge. And within those years, I made sure that every 2, 3 years when I was on the project, and I was going from the first few months of, I'm an idiot, I don't know what I'm doing, to I've got it covered. The moment I hit that point, the moment people were coming to me asking me questions, it was time to move on. Switch projects, do something new, get into that zone of not being comfortable, get into that zone of questioning whether you belong. I'm learning that that's a good area to be at. And finally, 2 years ago, I left that first company, joined Snap. And it was everything I thought it'd be. I didn't know anything about app development.
Snapchat was used by kids that were cool and hip, and again, I wasn't one. It's a repeating pattern here.
And I decided to join, and it was really, really hard to start the first 3 months. But as usual, that repeating pattern, you know, you pick it up, you learn those new skills, you question whether you belong, you question whether you're smart enough, you're good enough, you're creative enough, and you figure it out. And so I think the lesson for me is we are lucky enough to live in part of the world, and at times where we're given so many chances, like, you can't make a mistake big enough that you can't go back from very easily.
You can, like, if you try hard enough, but it's really hard.
So, um, the lesson for me has always been just out of your comfort zone.
The moment you think, "I'm really good at this, I've got it covered," it's time to jump.
