Second Brain

Moved to Rural Japan for Love

The Story

Boris and his girlfriend (now wife) had been dating for three months. She found her dream job. There was a catch: it was in rural Japan, middle of nowhere. “We’d have to move if you want to keep dating.”

Boris said yes. He didn’t know anything about Instagram (he didn’t even have it installed), but he connected with Will Bailey in the Instagram Tokyo office and joined the team. He downloaded Instagram and moved within weeks.

In Japan, the timezone gap made meetings impossible. 9am Tokyo was 7pm New York. Nobody wanted to do 9pm calls. Boris lost his meetings, his one-on-ones, his critical-path role, his visibility. Everything that had filled his calendar for years disappeared overnight.

In his first two weeks in Japan, he shipped more code than in his previous entire year at Menlo Park. He placed in the top 1% of Instagram engineers by code output. He stopped doing standing one-on-ones entirely, and still doesn’t do them today.

He also learned to “lead from behind,” recruiting US-based engineers to front emerging projects while he guided from Japan. He gave up direct visibility and found that “my reputation continued to grow” through enabling others rather than hoarding leadership.

He was also the only engineer in his town. The only person who spoke English. He read Hacker News every morning. He made artisanal miso, trading batches with neighbors. In that isolation, he rediscovered what he actually loved doing: building.

Lesson for Creators

Removing yourself from the noise can be the most productive thing you do. The meetings, the networking, the “being visible” might be the thing keeping you from your best work. Boris didn’t plan to become more productive in Japan. The constraint forced it. The question for creators: what would you produce if you couldn’t attend meetings, couldn’t network, and could only build?

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