Kun Chen, who has worked at Microsoft, Meta, and Atlassian, says most people wait far too long for a sign that they've stopped growing — when the answer is hiding in plain sight.
For many workers, the decision to leave a stable job is agonizing — especially in today's cautious job market, where holding on to what you have often feels like the only rational move. But for Kun Chen, a software engineer who has navigated stints at Microsoft, Meta, and Atlassian, the decision came down to a single, deceptively simple question.
"What did I do this month that I couldn't do last month?"
Chen shared his framework on a recent episode of Steve Huynh's A Life Engineered podcast, explaining that most people rely on lagging indicators — a missed promotion, a stalled title, a shrinking bonus — to recognize that their growth has plateaued. By then, he argues, it's already been true for a long time.
"That's a very lagging indicator," Chen said. "I think actually we can tell if we're growing much, much earlier."
A Question He Asked Every Month
From the start of his career at Microsoft, Chen made a habit of checking in with himself monthly. The question wasn't abstract — it demanded a concrete, honest answer. Could he point to a skill he'd developed, a problem he'd solved for the first time, a challenge he'd never faced before?
Six years into his first Microsoft role, the answer started coming up empty. The work was familiar. The tasks were ones he'd long since mastered. He could do them faster, do them better — but it was still, fundamentally, the same work.
"That's how I knew I wasn't growing as much," he told Business Insider.
Why the Pace of Change Makes This Test More Urgent
Chen is careful to note that stagnation doesn't automatically mean it's time to walk out the door. In some cases, the right move is a candid conversation with your manager — a pivot to a new project, a stretch assignment, a role with broader scope. The point of the monthly check-in isn't to manufacture anxiety; it's to stay honest with yourself before the problem becomes impossible to ignore.
That said, he believes the current moment makes this kind of self-auditing more important than ever. The software engineering field is undergoing a fundamental shift driven by AI, and the pace of that change is only accelerating. Google recently disclosed that 75% of its new code is now AI-generated — up from 50% just six months ago.
"The world is changing very fast, and we should constantly question ourselves," Chen said.
Leaving, Learning, and Coming Back
When Chen finally concluded that Microsoft couldn't offer the kind of growth he was looking for, he didn't leave in frustration — he left with a plan. Joining a smaller company with a different culture and business model, he reasoned, would expose him to challenges that a large, established organization simply couldn't provide. Facebook's stock was climbing, and the opportunity felt right.
It turned out to be one of the best decisions he ever made, both professionally and financially.
But the story doesn't end there. After his work at Facebook reached a point where the core challenges had been solved, and the remaining work had become incremental, Chen found himself back at Microsoft — this time helping to build a new games platform from the ground up.
"I saw that as an opportunity to apply what I learned during my years at Facebook," he said.
It's a fitting epilogue for someone whose whole philosophy is built around one idea: growth isn't a destination. It's a question you keep asking yourself, every single month.