i made a mistake at vercel. a bad one. forgot to set limits and racked up a cost that had a lot of zeroes in it. the kind of number that makes your stomach drop the moment you see it.

i sat there waiting for the fallout. prepared for the worst. because that's what you do when you're 21 and you just cost the company a very uncomfortable amount of money. you brace.

it never came.

instead, malte took time out of his day to help me figure it out and fix it. others showed up too. not to point fingers. not to document the incident for some performance review. they just... helped. explained. walked me through it. made sure i understood what happened and why, and then kept pushing me to be better. no blame. no drama. just the team.

i was so scared i was going to get fired. that's the honest truth. i lay awake thinking about it. running through every outcome. and the one where i get let go felt the most likely because that's just how my brain works when i'm spiralling.

but here's what i know now. don't be afraid of making mistakes. actually, you have to make them. you can't grow without breaking something. and if the place you work punishes you for that, it's not a job worth keeping anyway.

vercel isn't my boss. it isn't a business partner i have to impress. it's my family. and that changes everything about how you show up.

i think about that moment a lot. no careers page in the world tells you that.

life moved fast after that.

fast forward a few months. phoenix, arizona. vercel offsite.

some massive resort. the kind of place where you walk outside and think "wait, is this real." the whole team is there, nico, gregor, aayush, felix, and we're not in meetings all day. we're just hacking. sitting together outside in the sun, laptops out, digging into the realtime api spec, bouncing ideas, breaking things, laughing about it. swimming between sessions. eating some genuinely sick food. and then at 1am, finding ourselves at lindsey's parties. (no one tell @g about the parties.)

honestly? it was the most fun i've had in a while. not because of the resort. because of the people.

there's something different about building irl with your team. slack is fine. video calls work. but sitting in the same room, watching someone's face light up when a thing clicks, that hits different. we were just a bunch of people who care about the same problems, locked in, having the time of our lives at what was technically a work trip.

arizona is also where i met most of the vercel team properly. not on a call, not through a slack message. in person. and something shifts when that happens. you stop seeing usernames and start seeing people. people who are genuinely insane at what they do. the kind that make you feel behind just by watching them work. i came back a different engineer. not because of one conversation. because of all of them.

i got to spend time with javi. we built the oss vibe coding platform together and now i get to keep building with him. he's amazing. i genuinely can't wait to see what we make next.

then there's timer. one of the greatest engineers at vercel. also he's old. (respect. please don't fire me.)

i've been pestering him to build something together and i'm not going to stop until it happens. timer, consider this public notice.

and then there's daniel roe, who spent the whole trip just helping me. telling me things i wish i'd known before. genuinely one of the best people i've met in this industry. he's been helping me get deeper into open source, which is something i've always wanted to do more of. i'm excited to see where that goes. oh, and he got me on bluesky too, so if you're on there come find me. i'll be posting there too.

and it made me think about what i actually want. the answer is simple. grow vercel. make it better for every developer who opens a new project and trusts it. not for a metric. not for a promo. because it actually matters. that's it.

if you told me five years ago this is where i'd be, i would've laughed. i genuinely never thought i'd get a job. not this kind. not at a company like this. not with a team like this. i was just some kid building things in his room hoping someone would notice.

and somehow, someone did.

which brings me to the dms. i get them constantly. "how do i get a job at vercel?" "how do i break into a company like this?" "what's the secret?"

there's no secret. three words:

build. ship. post.

build something real. doesn't have to be big. doesn't have to be original. just has to work and show you can think.

ship it. don't sit on it waiting for it to be perfect. perfect ships never leave the harbour. put it out there.

post about it. tell people what you made. show your thinking. share what you learnt. the internet is small in the best way, the right person will see it.

turns out vercel has a name for it. ITG. iterate to greatness. i was living their values before i even knew what they were.

if you read my other post, you already know i shot my shot and it worked. i walked up to guillermo rauch at a summit i wasn't supposed to be at and just talked to him like a person. that conversation only happened because i had things to say. and i only had things to say because i'd been building, shipping, and posting.

so if you're out there waiting for the right moment, the right project, the right intro, stop. just make something. put it out. tag me @nishimiya when you do. i read everything.

and if you ever need help, career advice, feedback on something you're building, or you just want to talk, i'm a ping away. seriously. i mean that.

but if your goal is to join vercel, know that it comes at a cost. that cost is build, ship, post. no shortcuts. no cold applications into a void. just proof of work. show me what you've made and i'll show up for you.

i've made mistakes here. expensive ones. and i've also had some of the best moments of my life here. both things are true and neither cancels the other out.

that's what a good job feels like.

oh, and some big news. i graduate next month. which means no one can call me an intern anymore. not that it matters much, because vercel already took a chance on me full time before the degree was done. but still. the paper hits different.

if only the higher ups knew the kind of firepower they hired. (they already do.)

also. face reveal might be coming soon. something's happening. 👀

phoenix was special. thank you my fellow vercelians.

to future josh. whatever you're worried about right now, you've been here before. you figured it out then. you'll figure it out again. keep building.