Under the Old Ginkgo

Everything I’m learning about uselessness, thriving, and not needing to scale from our backyard ginkgo tree.

I thought about and drafted this piece back in 2024, and the experience felt special to me, which made me feel like it was something I needed to spend more time crafting and polishing. And then I didn’t publish it. It doesn’t feel like it fully captures the daily experience I had thinking about this tree a few months back, but I’m trying to push myself to write and publish when it feels easy, rather than holding on to pieces and then trying to work on them when they feel less timely.

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The ginkgo tree in our backyard is a downright nuisance. “Feel free to fell the ginkgo. Feel free to make this YOUR home as I have for many many years made it mine,” the letter from the former owner encouraged, mitigating one of perhaps the biggest objections one could have about this property.

“I remember when it was just a third of its height!” Our next-door neighbor reminisces about when it was smaller, and presumably less stinky, back in the late 1980s.

It is illegal to plant female fruiting ginkgos in several cities, and new homeowners often chop down their fruiting ginkgos rather than keep up with the sidewalk cleanup.

Not only have we not chopped down this absurd tree, we’ve contorted our efforts around its dramatic fruiting and foliage season. Every year, it drops at least 50 pounds of the stinkiest fruit imaginable — an odiferous mix of stinky cheese, rotten eggs, and manure — all over our brick patio area. A patio that we would in fact love to use, but instead we clear out completely for two months so that the fruit can fall freely, and then pay the kids a dollar a pound to collect them in buckets.

Every year I connect with neighbors whose Asian parents want buckets of the ginkgo fruit, eager to go through the time-consuming and unpleasant process for the highly coveted nut inside. In many Asian cuisines, the ginkgo nut is considered a nutritious delicacy and a welcome ingredient in nourishing soups. One neighbor shared about her dad’s process:

He usually puts them in garbage bags for a while so it “rots” itself so it’s easier to wash off the outer layer. Then, he soaks them for a little, then uses his hands to just clean off the outsides. He spreads them out in the sun to dry off, and then collects them, and puts them in the sun again the next day.

Despite the annual nuisance, this tree has become quite meaningful to our family as well. At first, it was just a sign of the transition of seasons. Every year starting in late October, the fruit drops, then the leaves turn a stunning yellow, then the leaves drop too, blanketing the backyard in yellow. Over the last two years, this tree has taken on even more meaning. We got married under those vibrant yellow leaves. We incorporated it into our baby’s name. It made its way unexpectedly into a song that Naveed had written for our family, Under the Old Ginkgo.

The five of us makes home, how we all have grown, under the old ginkgo…

Originally planted by the Japanese-American family who bought this property in 1946 when they returned to Berkeley after internment, this tree is thriving, now as tall as a three story building.

I recently learned that the Ginkgo biloba tree is considered a living fossil, with all other species in its genus extinct for over 2.5 million years.

Yet here is this tree, a glorious specimen of its species, thriving in today’s modern urban suburban world, dropping its stinky fruit all over.

Like a cat who has domesticated its owner, this tree has trained us to cherish it as well.

more of the old ginkgo through its fruiting and foliage season

In the book How to Do Nothing, Jenny Odell describes a useless tree, a gnarled tree in Oakland that is not chopped down because its shape makes it entirely unusable for other applications. “That tree was not cut down because it was considered small by standards of redwoods at that time, which were huge because they were old growth, and it’s also this strange twisted shape,” writes Odell. This tree, the Old Survivor, has lived for over 500 years.

So now, on top of all the other meanings we’ve already projected onto this tree, I now aspire to its useless thriving state — too useless to exploit in the conventional ways we use trees, thriving on its own terms in this modern world. What does it look like for me to be too useless to exploit and thrive on my own terms?

As I continue to make space for exploration around what’s next, these old survivors give me a new perspective about fitting neatly into buckets. All our lives, we are not-so-subtly nudged onto a path that leads to a conventional definition of success — good grades, good school, high-paying job, climbing the corporate ladder, buying a house, etc. Gaps in this approved path feel…like not enough-ness, like gaps that need filling, far from uniqueness meant to be celebrated. When I think about what would make me the most employable at the next rung of the career ladder, I can see those gaps in my own experience — I’m not technical enough. I haven’t worked at a unicorn startup. I haven’t spent 10 years climbing the ranks at a FAANG company.

At my lowest points, those thoughts have crept into my conscience as deep insecurities. More often, they showed up as curiosities, as what-ifs, as wondering if my career would be easier if I more easily fit into the categories that late-stage capitalism has created to continue to fuel its growth.

With this new mindset around thriving and being un-exploitable, I feel a sense of smug satisfaction. Ha-ha! Let me celebrate being the most gnarly tree that can thrive on my own terms. What would that look like? Suddenly, it’s easier to see these gaps as beautiful knots and growths. My coaching experience and time spent running a leadership development program. My strengths in thinking deeply about people and process, currently undervalued in the direction the tech industry has been trending.

This tree has also reminded me that I don’t need to scale. Scalability and exponential growth serve the VC ecosystem, and I am just one person. I can find the handful of people who want the fruits I have to offer this world, who will go out of their way to receive what I have to give.

As I continue to figure out what that looks like, I am grateful every day for this extraordinary tree in my backyard.

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If you enjoyed this post, you might also enjoy this guest post I wrote for

Dev Interrupted

about Opting out of the career ladder, and these older posts I wrote as well:

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What’s next

Since drafting this post, I’ve gotten more clarity that one area I’d love to explore is coaching engineers and tech professionals who are ready for a change—whether in their careers or other areas of life—but feel uncertain about what’s next. I would love to help people create the space to uncover what’s truly important to them, work through roadblocks, and develop a clear path forward. In the weeks and months to come, I expect to have slots for research interviews as well as coaching sessions and engagements open up.

If any of this sounds like something you’re interested in, I’d love to hear from you — hit reply or email me at jean@jeanhsu.com, and I’ll make sure to message you first for any opportunities. Feel free to just say you’re interested, or include some context around your situation. I will respond to every email.