The Grind

Making It in NYC

Appears in
Xi'an Famous Foods: The Cuisine of Western China, from New York's Favorite Noodle Shop
Xi'an Famous Foods

By Jason Wang

Published 2020

  • About

Young adult Jason showing off his fresh noodle-pulling skills.

“I’ve been thinking about it, too, and I think you should come back and expand the business,” he told me (in Chinese, obviously).

Fuck it, i Got Fired.
After three months of putting on a tie, keying things into a system I didn’t fully understand, and schmoozing with managers and directors at company happy hours, I started to realize that maybe the corporate life wasn’t for me. At school I was enticed by the idea of owning my own business, but working at a big conglomerate wasn’t teaching me anything about that. Instead, I was a tiny little cog in a giant machine. I wasn’t learning anything about building a company, let alone being a leader.