I worked at Netflix and lots of my friends have asked me how to break into FAANG.
I always give them the same advice, and it always works.
Here are the top three resources you need to study:
People with half your talent are making more money than you because they're too stupid to doubt themselves.
They take risks, fail, and try again, while you're stuck overanalyzing and waiting for the perfect moment that never comes.
Stop hesitating and start believing in
Here are some of the worst mistakes you can make in your 20's, coming from someone who's in their 30's.
Mistake Number 1: Gain a lot of weight. I ballooned to almost 300 lbs. during college. I was an athlete in high school and kept eating like it, but I stopped working out in
Set boundaries at work and in your personal life or they will be set for you.
Too many people get taken advantage of.
Your time is precious, don’t let others waste it.
Beware of scammers.
I will not DM you asking you for any sort of compensation or to sign up for any courses.
There are people trying to impersonate me on nearly all social media platforms, stay safe out there.
It’s okay to be lazy.
You don’t have to be efficient all the time.
Humans were not built to hustle 24/7.
Go watch a movie. Play some video games. Binge Netflix.
Avoid burning yourself out and get back to work when you’re rested.
It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
When a friend or family member comes to you upset, ask them a simple question first:
"Do you want to talk about it and vent or are you looking for help to fix the problem?"
Too often I try to come up with a solution when all they want is someone to listen.
My grandpa was a literal peasant in China and didn't even know how to read.
My father grew up in abject poverty, often going hungry.
I became a millionaire in my 20s and retired at 30.
People often criticize America, but immigrating to the States was the single best decision
You're going to hear conflicting advice from everyone.
"Focus on one thing", "Diversify your income streams", "Pursue your dreams", "Be more realistic".
Recognize that advice very rarely applies in all cases.
It's up to you to pick and choose what path to follow.
Tech job market is extremely tough out there right now.
Even friends of mine who have 5+ years of experience are having trouble landing new jobs.
Now is the time to lean on your connections and get referrals to companies you want to join. Companies love to hire referrals, and
I refuse to grind for white lists.
Instant leave discord servers when I see you have to:
-follow/retweet/tag people in their socials
-do quizzes and other random garbage
-engage actively in discord
-give out xxx invites
You're basically working for these projects for free
The easiest way to a promotion or raise is to job hop.
This is because the market rate for software engineers rises faster than what you can get at a company internally.
I consistently out earned my peers by switching jobs every ~2 years or less.
I bought 11 bitcoin with my signing bonus in 2013, and I told all my friends that I would hold forever.
I ended up panic selling for a 50% loss the very next year. Today, that mistake has cost me about $500,000.
Realistically I would have paper handed either way. How many
Easiest way to get started with cryptocurrency is to dollar cost average into Bitcoin and Ethereum.
I had 11 Bitcoin in 2014 and sold for a 50% loss one year later. That's worth almost $500,000 now.
These are minimum 5 year investments, don't paper hand your crypto like I did.
No idea how Coinbase is deciding their launch partners for NFTs. I should start my own collection because they are handing them out like candy.
FrankDAO COMING SOON
There's no way Russia invades Ukraine right now.
Here's how the conversation between Xi Jinping & Putin went:
Xi: "don't start a war, it'll affect viewership numbers"
Putin: "but what if I really want to"
Xi: "only after the Olympics, do me a solid"
I've watched so much anime I can pretty much understand Japanese now.
I'm not Japanese.
Here are my top 5:
5. Ping Pong the Animation 🏓
4. Steins;Gate ⌛️
3. One Punch Man 👊
2. FLCL 🤖
1. Gurren Lagann 🕶️
If I had to choose between:
A) winning $1.2b in the lottery
or
B) 100,000 LinkedIn followers
I’m choosing option B every time. Never underestimate the power of having a personal brand online.
Always negotiate your job offers.
The company spent a lot of time and resources searching for a qualified candidate. You have more bargaining power than you think.
The best negotiation tactic is to have competing offers. Never Split the Difference is a great book for more tips.
Life is short.
The first time I got a migraine was actually because of work.
When I wasn’t at work, I was thinking about work. My mood was terrible. My relationships suffered.
Then, I got a call letting me know that my grandma passed away.
That really put things into
People underestimate the power of volume when trying to succeed as a content creator.
When I first started two years ago, I was making 24 short-form videos daily. I've made over 3,000 videos so far.
You'll learn exponentially more than someone who's only making one or two
So for the past three years people have asked for a course on how to become a site reliability engineer, and I ignored these requests because I assumed people could figure it out on their own.
If you’re actually interested in this, let me know by interacting with this post
I'm not convinced at all by the recent rally in crypto.
We're going to suffer a lot more pain in the coming year before hitting ATHs again.
DCA and be patient friends. Don't bet the farm just yet
Predictions for the rest of 2024:
Bitcoin hits 100k.
Stock market crashes 10-20%, and then recovers three months before the election. Biden wins.
GPT5 releases; everyone loses their minds.
Elon settles his lawsuit with OpenAI and co.
Life is too short for bullshit.
Cut off your toxic relationships.
Stop wasting hours on social media mindlessly scrolling.
Focus on what actually makes you happy and helps you grow.
Spend time with people you love, do things that excite you, and work on your dreams.
If you ever thought that billionaires were any smarter or more capable than you are, twitter dispels that notion pretty quickly.
Meritocracy is a myth.
Lots of valuable tweet threads I’ve read have a not so hidden “buy my course” vibe.
I appreciate the knowledge but I’m not buying whatever you’re selling.
Absorb information on twitter but don’t get conned. I guarantee there’s a better, free alternative.
You can get started on learning how to code for free.
Sal Khan has educated millions of people around the world with his videos, and they are available for everyone online.
I started creating content two years ago with just an iPhone.
No other hardware, didn’t bother to edit my videos.
I have over a million followers now across all my socials.
Stop making excuses and just start filming.
Read enough self-help books and eventually you start to realize it all boils down to roughly the same advice:
Prioritize the long term over the short term.
99% of people “trading” memecoins are going to spend thousands of hours gaining zero skills and will end up losing money on top of that.
You’re being scammed by insiders, by hackers, by bots, and by institutional investors.
Retail isn’t coming. You are retail.
The easiest way you can be happy is to compare yourself to people who are worse off than yourself.
The easiest way to be sad is to compare yourself to those who are doing better.
You have the power to prove everyone wrong.
Each day you show up, you're defying expectations and rewriting your story.
Success isn't about where you start; it's about how far you're willing to go.
Giants fall, and underdogs rise. Your moment is on its way.
Russia has signed an agreement to start switching payments for gas supplies to China to yuan and rubles instead of dollars.
Read The changing world order if you haven't already,
@RayDalio
wrote an amazing book
Three years ago, my boss told me I had to cut my paternity leave short and return to work immediately.
That or get fired with no severance.
It was the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and we were also dealing with the loss of a close family member.
Luckily, I was in a position
Learning how to learn is probably the highest roi skill you could have.
I wish I had known how to do this much earlier in life, it would have saved me a ton of grief.
Here's an excellent, free course on the topic:
Don't forget to plan your Valentine's dinner now, spots are filling up quick.
I used to hate buying flowers and dining out at expensive restaurants because it wasn't "worth it". I was too focused on the utility.
It turns out making your partner happy is priceless.
Want to learn how to retire early?
I achieved financial independence two years ago at the age of 30 and wrote about exactly how I did it in my new book.
Pre-orders are up now:
Check out for other distributors
See a ton of misinformation about China from Western media sources, as a Chinese American with family who still lives in China, here’s what’s actually going on
These are the two absolute best courses you can take right now. They're also completely free.
Learning how to learn is possibly the most impactful skill you can acquire. I wish I found this course earlier, it would've made my life a whole lot less stressful.
Your coworkers are not your friends.
Don’t blindly trust others and tell them information you don’t need to, especially if that information could come back and bite you in the ass.
If they gossip with you, they are definitely gossiping about you as well.
Most people at work
If you hate office politics, go work for the smallest startup you can.
It's a lot harder to hide when there's a million things to do and the people who do the most work tend to get ahead.
But if you hate doing work, go to big corporate. Find the largest company you can. There's
If you want to make a ton of money as an ai engineer, move to the United States.
Here's the median total compensation(includes salary and bonuses) for ai engineers at major US cities:
As a man who achieved financial independence in his 30s, here’s my advice to people in their 20s.
Learn how to learn efficiently. This is probably the highest roi skill you can obtain. There’s a free Coursera course taught by Barbara Oakley that you can go through in a weekend.