The Peterman Pod - Staff at Airbnb by Age 26 | Zach Wilson

Episode Date: November 1, 2024

Zach Wilson is an engineer who grew to Staff (IC6) at Airbnb by age 26. He worked at Meta, Netflix, Airbnb and more recently has started his own company. In our conversation, we discuss:• His promotion from Junior (IC3) to Mid-level (IC4) at Meta• What blocked his promotion to Senior (IC5) at Meta• Job hopping to Senior at Netflix instead• Burning out at Netflix when given Staff scope• Negotiating Staff at Airbnb• Regrets & learnings—Where to find Zach Wilson:• Instagram: https://instagram.com/eczachly/• X: https://x.com/EcZachly• Threads: https://www.threads.net/@eczachly• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eczachly/• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@EcZachly_• Newsletter: https://blog.dataengineer.io/Where to find Ryan:• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/• X: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/• Threads: https://www.threads.net/@ryanlpetermanIn this episode, we cover:00:27 Introducing Zach Wilson03:14 Landing a Job at Facebook06:33 Choosing the Right Team at Facebook07:28 IC3 to IC4 at Meta13:54 Trying for IC5 at Meta23:49 Getting hired as an IC5 at Netflix39:49 Negotiating IC6 at Airbnb52:09 Building internal brand when job hopping56:55 Reflection & learnings To hear more, visit www.developing.dev

It made me recognize one thing that's very important about your career is how you interview is the most, it's the highest leverage, most important part of your career. Like, more important than the impact you even have on the role. It's crazy. What you just said is probably one of the most important lessons that I learned at Facebook. If you were to start all over again as IC3, knowing what you know today, what's one thing that you'd change? Today I'd like to share a conversation that I had with Zach Wilson. He's an engineer that grew from junior at Meta to staff engineer at Airbnb by the age of 26. Two of his promotions came from job hopping, which got me curious. So we go into those details, we go over his ratings, his compensation, and a bunch more along the way.

I think you'll like it since Zach is really transparent with everything. So if this sounds interesting to you, Here's the pod. First thing is you breaking into big tech. Can you run me through that story? Where were you in your life? How did you get into big tech? Yeah, for sure.

So I started my career at a bunch of different startups, started off as like a data analyst because I had dreams of being a math professor for a while. And then I realized like, that's probably not what I want to do because it's a lot of school to make not very much money. And then I was like, okay, probably needs a switch. And then I started as an analyst. I got in at this company called Thette. think big analytics where they taught me Hadoop, but they taught me Hadoop really a long time ago.

It was like 10 years ago now. So it was like right when Hadoop was really early. And I owe that experience, I feel like, to like the main reason why I got in at Facebook because that's what they were looking for. It was like those kind of big data technologies. And so I jumped around a lot though, because I tried out four different jobs in two years to like and then I got the job at Facebook. And yeah, it was pretty chaotic because I didn't know what I wanted to do actually.

Because when I graduated, I actually was like, I want to be a mobile engineer, but I also want to be a math professor, but I also want to be a data scientist. And I was like, I just was like, okay, I need to do all of these roles, at least for a little bit to understand which one I want. And that's when I landed on data engineering. And I was like, all right, this one seems like it fits. So were you a CS major? I did a dual major, CS and applied math dual major. Yeah, actually, math was first. I finished my math major first and then got the CS major later. How was the job market when you applied for interviews? Were you able to get interviews? Yeah. I think right now is a challenging time. But I definitely found that like when I first graduated, I interviewed a bunch of places, government jobs. Because like where I grew up, there was tons of like government jobs on a military base.

I interviewed there, interviewed in Salt Lake and all across the valley. I probably got four or five different interviews though, like with no experience and just like the only experience I had was I was a math tutor. That was all I had. So yeah, I feel very lucky that was like. my getting into the industry experience for sure. These were CS jobs? Yeah.

CS an analyst. Like it was like those two. I was trying to decide between the two because, yeah, the government job was going to be a CS role. I actually ended up not taking that role though. Oh, okay. So how did you find your way into Facebook then? Yeah.

So it was wild because so I did one year in Utah and then I got like very frustrated with Utah. Then I moved to D.C. Because I was like, I'm just to leave my home state. I want to try something new. I was in D.C. for six, seven months. And then that's when a Facebook recruiter reached out to me. And they were like, hey, you should interview. And I'm like, this is wild.

Because back in Utah, I did interview at Google twice, actually, for mobile and got rejected both times. And so I was like, but I applied to Google. And it felt very magical when it was like the Facebook recruiter reached out to me. I was like, I felt like Facebook was applying to me almost. I was like, okay, yeah, sure. I'll give an interview. Was that through LinkedIn? Yeah, LinkedIn for sure.

LinkedIn's been so critical for my whole career since that job at Think Big like in 2015. At the time you didn't post on LinkedIn. Oh, no, definitely not. Definitely not like I do now. Okay, so they inbounded. Yeah. And then you interviewed with them. Mm-hmm.

And you got the role. And was the interview explicitly for Data Engineer? Yes. I see, I see. Okay. So then you got the role. Were you applying to other places at the same time? No, actually.

I was pretty happy with my role in D.C. There was a lot of trajectory there. It was interesting because when I got the offer from Facebook, my role in DC countered with more money. Actually, and I was like, whoa, I was not expecting them to. They were like, here's 100% raise. But the thing was, I didn't take it because two months before, I asked them for a 20% raise and they said they didn't have the budget.

And I was like, okay, if y'all only have the budget when I have my foot out the door, I know that career growth here is going to be painful. It's going to be super painful. Even though it's more money, even though it's a cheaper place to live, I'm going to California for less money and a more expensive. a place to live because I believe in the future. Oh, so actually Facebook paid you less. It was a raise based off of what I was making, but the counteroffer that I got from my

company in D.C. was more money. I see. Yeah. It was like 180 was what Facebook offered me. And then they countered with 200. One thing. Okay. Okay.

Sounds good. So then you got into Facebook as a data engineer. How was the moving to Silicon Valley? I loved it. Like, there was a couple other motivating factors for me to come back to California. because I grew up in Utah and like being in D.C. being far away from family, all that stuff was like also isolating. And being in California is really nice because I'm still pretty close to Utah. I can drive home any day I want in one day if I want to do that. But getting into Silicon Valley was really great. It was really wonderful. I really felt, especially those like first couple days, like those boot camp tasks that they give you. And they're like go and do this scavenger hunt. Right. I don't know. It always like my not first like month at Facebook didn't even feel. like I was like working a job. It felt like I was in like Disneyland.

It felt like I was, this is a job, like I'm going to work here. It didn't really, it was very good at getting me to adopt, move fast and break things. This is your company. Be bold, all those like kind of tenants of Facebook that like, because it was such a great onboarding experience, I was like, wow, this company is something else. I love boot camp. It felt like an extension of college or something because you're going to all these classes. just learning, you're not being held accountable for any deadlines or anything yet. So

that was really great. Okay, so you come into boot camp. How did you pick the team that you were in? Great question. So I had three choices. I was either going to join ads. I was going to join growth or I was going to join community support. Those are the three that they had me interview with. And essentially for me, it was like, which one was different? With ads, they were like, if you're coming here, you're going to provide data that's going to make Facebook millions. And I'm like, wow, interesting impact. And then for community support, they were like, if you come in here, you can help prevent a lot of bad stuff on Facebook.

And then growth, they're like, if you join us, you'll have a lot of fun. And I was like, sold. And I ended up joining growth. I think it was a combination of that. And then the manager was more of this entrepreneurial startupy guy. His name's Jitender. He's going to make a couple other cameo appearances in the rest of this podcast. But he was great guy, really great guy.

He's still one of my best friends to this day. And that's why I ended up picking core growth on notifications specifically. When you joined, did you know much about the career ladder or were you thinking about it? No. There were so many things I didn't know. For example, like I actually didn't even understand like L3, L4, L5. I didn't understand. I didn't understand that I was getting hired in at L3 because one of the things that like really was disconcerting to me when I got in at Facebook was like,

I had two years of experience. I'd been working in startups and doing big data pipelines for two years. And then there's these kids from Stanford who get hired and they get paid the same as me with zero years of experience. And I was like, this is unfair. And I recognized that was one of the things I recognized pretty early on in my time at Facebook, which also I think spoiled my time at Facebook is because I recognized, hey, like I got hired at the wrong level. So I need to bust my ass to get to the next level, which I did. It was like seven months from, I was only a. L3 for a very short amount of time. But I think that was something that definitely bothered me as I

recognized. It made me recognize one thing that's very important about your career is how you interview is the most, it's the highest leverage, most important part of your career. Like, more important than the impact you even have on the role. It's crazy. Yeah. One of the things that interests me most in your story is you were able to successfully interview in to promotions multiple times. And I think a lot of people wonder how you do that. I'm going to solve I'm also curious. What were those conversations like when you're having the interviews? How did you get placed in the staff? How did you get placed in the senior? But yeah, we'll go into that later in the podcast. So you got promoted in one half. So what, how did that work? Was that expected or?

I recognized pretty early on that I was going to succeed at Facebook just because of, like, how everything was tasked out and how there was just, I have a lot of energy. And I could tell that I was shipping a lot of code and I was moving a lot of things. And I picked up notifications very quickly. So, like, they had this like waterfall framework for notifications, which is like essentially tracking like conversion rates or clicked rates or delivery rates, all those different like funnel metrics that you can do. They had this whole framework for that, but the framework sucked. And one of the reasons why I got that promotion was I was also like, let's fix the framework. But one of the things about that was like, that was actually like XHP work. That was not.

not like SQL Python work at all. And like when my manager saw that I was like, I'm just going to fix it. Just going to go and learn X-HP and react and fix it. And he was like, wow, this guy knows how to solve a problem, like even when it's not in data engineering. It's a full stack problem. And that was something I demonstrated really early on to my manager was that like, I'm not going to let a skill set or think of that that's not my problem. It's I'm going to learn and figure out like what needs to be done and solve the problem. And yeah, for sure. It was, did anyone tell you to do that? No, not really.

I think that's the other part of why I grew really close with this manager as well, is because I recognize like where the impact is, right? Not just being like, okay, I'm going to finish my tasks and be done with it. That's how you get meets all. Finish your tasks, do them as they were assigned, especially at L3. If you do exactly what your task says, you'll get meets all and it's going to be great. But if you want to do more, which I was very hungry to do more, especially when I realized that I was hired in at the wrong level,

I was like, okay, I have to just get out of this situation as quickly. as possible. So that's why I also did those things because I wanted to demonstrate to them like, I have experience. I'm a skilled person. And yeah, for sure. Did the promo just happen or were you aware of it and expecting that to come at any point? The promo did just happen. Like that first promo that I had no idea. Yeah. Your manager. Yeah. Yeah. Because a couple things about it was like I actually got, it wasn't even a full half because I got hired in at the end of July. So I missed a month of that half as well. So it was five months. So yeah. But, like, definitely the, that promo just was like, I think they recognized that I was hired

at the wrong level. And that's why they gave it to me. They weren't going to make me, like, do all the steps of getting there or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Usually when promotions happen in just a half. Yeah. That means that was a misleveling.

And that's an opportunity. If you just joined Facebook and you all of a sudden were performing as IC5, they'll just promote you quickly because they take that as. It was a miss on the hiring. And I think that's one of the things that is really cool about working there and about these tech companies is that they will do that because it's not, I don't know, at least like growing up in Utah and everything. It's not based on impact.

It's based on tenure, right? It's based on, okay, you've been here three years. Okay, you're a senior engineer now. And it's based on just like amount of time in the role. Yeah. And that was probably one of the most beautiful things that shifted my mentality when I moved to the Bay Area. Because when I was in Utah, I thought that the very most money that I was going to make in my career as a software engineer was 200K.

200K was going to be. And that was like 15 years deep. So that was me imagining myself at 35. And then when I get in at Facebook and I'm like, no, they're like, okay, no, we're going to give you 200K now. And there's a freaking trajectory to go to a million if you want. And it really showed me that there's so much more to this life and so much more to like engineering than just I'm working at a company. I'm closing Jira tickets. But if you actually start to care about the impact of the business, they reward you, right?

They give back. It's awesome. Because you can create so much value, too. You actually make more than you cost. It's easy for them to warrant paying you that much. Oh, yeah, for sure. Okay, it's like, you save us 10 mil. We'll give you a little bit more money.

Sure. Yeah, sometimes when people save 10 mil, I'm like, give me a little. Yeah, just give you 1%. I'll take a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So you got promoted from three to four.

Yeah. Because you had insane initiative. It sounds like you were working a lot of hours. How many hours a week would you say? So after boot camp, I ramped up, I would say probably 50 to 60. Very common, I think, for me, where it would be like, I would get in at 9, 930, and then I would stay till 8 at night because I'd do breakfast, lunch, and dinner, all meals.

Because, you know, I'm still this way. I feel like this is one of the things where Facebook ruined me a little bit is that they're like, we're just going to feed you all your meals. And then I'm like, now I'm 30 and I'm like, I still. don't know how to cook. And I'm like, this is a problem. I'm like, it's a basic life skill that I was able to avoid learning. And I'm like, this is a rough situation. But definitely I would say, yeah, around that. Got it. You know. So then after you got prone to four, then, well, were you hungry for five? Oh, yeah. When I got four, I was like, I want five in a year. And I was like,

I'm going to work for it. I'm going to crush it. And yeah. And it didn't happen. So what was your plan? Do you talk to your manager? Yeah, I did. I talk with my manager. So a couple things happened that I, and Jitender, like that when he was my manager, I actually was pretty confident that it was going to happen. Problem was that next summer, Jitender left. And then there was a period of time where we all just reported to the director, right? And I didn't really have a great relationship with him. And then eventually we got a new guy in, right?

And it's funny because that guy actually came from Netflix, which is so bizarre. Ultimately, because then I left to Netflix and Facebook are all, it's all the same people. dude. But I had a plan and I actually felt like I actually did deliver on the value that was necessary to get to senior. But my view on it was the fact that I had three managers that year. I had Jitender. I had Nick and I had Sotya and no one really had the context, right? Because I'm like, how many times do I have to tell my manager what I did? Why do I have to do this again and again? And I think that was ultimately the thing that kind of disrupted the plan. But it also goes to show that having a good manager who trusts you takes time and you have to build that up with them.

You have to prove that to them. Right. And they're not like the good managers will trust like implicitly. And then they will only remove trust when you give them a reason to not trust you. But some managers are like, no, you got to prove it. Right. That's where it's like different. It depends on who your manager is. So you had Jitender for a half or how he was my manager for a little bit over a year. So after you got promoted. Yeah. That first half did he do your PSC? that half? Yeah, for the promotion. Yeah, for the, for just not, yeah, he did the first promotion, but after that. Oh, no, not the, because he left after that. Okay. Yeah. Half as an E4. Yeah. And then you got a new manager. Yeah. And that half, though, how's your PSC? Was it? I got

greatly exceeds. Okay. You got greatly exceeds as an E4. Yeah. In your first half. Okay. Yeah. That's signal that you're doing really well. Yeah. What prevented the promotion the next time? Great question. I think what happened the next half was it was greatly again. Right. And what they were saying was that like I was not operating as a senior engineer because I was still focusing too much on problems. Like that they were like, you're taking on too much work and that they're like, you are delivering as an E5. But you like, they, their belief was that I would not sustainably deliver like that. That was.

And I'm like, which was something that like pissed me off a lot. Definitely a thing that comes up. Yeah. It's a bummer because you would think. that the harder you work, the more you would get rewarded with promotions. Yeah. One of the things they're looking for is that your promotion's sustainable. Yeah.

And it's funny because if you're working a lot to get those results, people might wonder, oh, can he keep this up? Yeah. What if he starts working normal hours? Mm-hmm. Is he not going to be expectations? 100%. That was right there.

What you just said is probably one of the most important lessons that I learned at F. which is that hours worked does not necessarily influence like your promotion ability. There is a point where it's like hours work helps with addressing like skill gaps. If you have a gap, then you can cover the gap by working more. But that does not necessarily instill confidence and leadership that you are promotion worthy, right? For sure. Definitely.

Because they're looking for behaviors. They're looking for someone that can take. on more leadership, not necessarily just work additional hours to have the impact. So I get it, but also at the same time, it can be, you know, something that can make a hard worker very salty. Yeah. Yeah. And I think for me, what ended up happening was that next, like, going into the next year,

because those promos usually happen in like March or whatever. And I, after learning, I'm like, I'm not getting promoted. I was like, time to go and take the story. Because this is one of the things I think is super important when you think about interviewing is I knew that I had a story that would get me a senior role. Because guess what? Facebook told me that. They said I was greatly exceeding expectations.

And guess what? It was the best part about interviewing is they don't know how many hours I worked. They just know what I did. Right? They don't know how many hours I worked. They like in the interview, they get a different vantage point of what your impact was and what you did. And they don't get as much of the negative data, right?

They don't get as much of that. And so for me, I recognize that. I was like, I know I can go to any other big tech company and be a senior engineer. I already knew that, especially like after all the optimizations I made to the notification machine learning algorithm, all that stuff. There was like some very technical, nitty gritty things that I did that were really impactful that I was like, I know if I just talk about that in the detail that I know, people are going to give me what I want.

So to be clear, you got two greatly exceeds in a row at the IC4, which is mid-level. And then you didn't get promoted. So instantly, you realize. okay, because I'm greatly exceeding, I can get IC5 somewhere else. Yeah, 100%. And also the thing that blocked your promotion, it's not going to be a blocker somewhere else. Yep, yeah, for sure. Okay.

So then how did you sell that as IC5 to the next place? Because when I think of what qualifies for an IC5, if you're interviewing this, say, certain number of years of experience and various other things. They might also want to know what level you are at meta. So how did you get Netflix level of you as an I? I see five when you're mid-level, not many years of experience. Well, I feel like the Netflix one was, there was also one more element of luck here. And that element of luck is that the hiring manager was Jitender.

So I'm like, all right, Jitender, you've already seen my work. You trust me. What's up? And so that helped a lot, like having the right connections. That's why building a network is important. So I'm all about brand, personal brand. And I think a lot of people conflate personal branding with making content on LinkedIn or like putting your voice or doing a blog post.

or making YouTube videos or whatever. But there's also like this idea of internal brand, which is like, how are you known in the company? How are you known by the people you work with? And it's if you are, if you're able to build a strong internal brand, that's what it did. It's because I worked really hard with Jatendor

and he saw what I was capable of and capable of doing. Because for me, there was one other problem that I had with Facebook actually, which was I, and there was one other conversation that I had that like really frustrated me was, I also wanted to not be a data engineer anymore, right? Because I was like, I'm done.

Because I've been shipping so much like React and PHP and hack code and all this stuff. And I even was talking to my managers. I'm like, compared to all the other data engineers on this team, I am writing. I'm, because I even gave him the number. I'm like,

of so I was on a team of 15 data engineers and I'm like, I'm writing 90% of the JavaScript code from our team. Me, just me. And so it's, I am not doing the same. work that like other data engineers are doing. So I feel like I should not be a data engineer. I should be a software engineer and software engineers get more equity. Because data engineers are technically not on the E track, like their IC track. They're like and so they get like it's like 30, 40%

less equity, which is I was like, that was the other thing I was like unfair. I'm a software engineer. I'm a real engineer. And so there was one more conversation I had there that like really set me off that made me like really not want to work at Facebook anymore, which was like, so one was like I really wanted to be like L5. And the other one was I wanted to switch the software engineer. And when I talked with my manager about switching software engineer, they were like, hey, we can switch you to software engineer. We're going to have to

down level you though. And I'm like, I'm not going to be an L3 software engineer. That is absurd. That is patently absurd for me to do that. That is an absurd statement that you even said that came out of your mouth right there. They were like, you're not going to have all the skills necessary for it. And again, that was the thing where I pointed out, what about this stuff I'm shipping? What about all this code over here? See this stuff I've already built. And that stuff didn't matter. They just looked at title and comes back to having

the right manager matters so much. It matters so much because then they're actually able to listen to your career goals and actually take into account all those things. They're not just your data engineer. So for a while, that was actually like standard practice at Facebook. If you wanted to go from data engineer to software engineer, they download you. But not the other way around, which I always thought was interesting. I'm like, okay. So there's like the software engineer supremacy at Facebook or something like that where they're like, yeah, software. engineers are here, data engineers are here. It's, yeah, for sure.

That's where, that was the other thing I recognized was I wanted to work on data stuff that wasn't just SQL because now I learn more and like the field has changed, data engineering has changed. And technically the role I had at Facebook was not data engineering. It would not be titled that today. Today it would be titled that analytics engineering, which is a different title, right? And that's like more SQL experimentation, product analytics. focused, whereas data engineering is more about like big data pipelines and like spark and so

more technical and not as much analytical. And I was drawn more to that kind of stuff as well. So do you think if you had a better manager that you wouldn't have been down leveled? Oh no, I definitely not. If I would have had a more supportive manager there that I would have been able to because guess what? I have a friend who works at Facebook. His name is also Ryan and he still works at Facebook. And guess what? His manager was supportive and he transitioned the week and he I've always I always look at his life and I'm like your life is the life I would have had if I didn't have a bad manager and he's still there he's been a meta like nine years now he's been there for a long time he's doing all this crazy stuff like scuba and stuff

like that yeah yeah but like for sure definitely that is definitely something that I believe especially because when I was talking with your tender at Netflix he was like hey I don't know if I can hire you in as a senior software engineer because you don't have very much experience in software engineering, but he was like, I can hire you in as a senior data engineer, and then I can get you to transition to software engineer in six to 12 months. And I was like, perfect, perfect. That sounds great. And so that's what I ended up happening. I got hired in at Netflix. I was there for six months. And then the rest of my time at Netflix, I was senior software engineer. And I didn't really do as much data pipeline work. Got it. Okay. So going back to your

transition from Facebook to Netflix. Yeah. It was a connection with your old manager who gave you such a strong recommendation that you were put into a senior pipeline. Yeah. And Netflix only hired seniors. Okay. So there wasn't any, it was senior or you're not in?

It's different now. They added levels like two years ago. But yeah, back in 2018, there was no staff either. Were you working directly on his team or? Yeah. He was my direct manager. Was his recommendation especially. powerful because like I can recommend people the meta but it's not especially powerful or anything.

The reason for that is because meta has more standardized interview processes. That's not how it is at Netflix. At Netflix, it's freedom and responsibility. And they give managers a lot of power at Netflix, right? They also give managers a lot of power to fire people and they put a lot of pressure on managers to fire people, but also the hiring process is up to them. Yeah. So that's also who they bring on is it's more free.

I'm sure these things have changed a little bit. it because I think that actually that aspect of Netflix's culture has minuses as well. It's not just it's not all pluses. I think there is definitely some pluses and I benefited from some of those pluses for sure. And initially like when I was there, I was like, wow, this is the best company ever. How many engineers were at the company at the time? Total at Netflix? I think like a thousand or maybe 1500.

Okay. It's quite a bit bigger now. I think it's a 3K now. But yeah, it was like, yeah, but definitely like over a thousand. Got it. Okay. But not Facebook size, right? Facebook is like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

10, 15,000. It's like a lot, right? Yeah. Okay, so you essentially earned your senior position as an IC3 because you proved yourself to to your tender as a junior engineer. Yeah. He thinks, okay, this guy that's out results. Yeah.

And then later when he was building up his team, it was just a matter of, oh, I know that guy's good. I want him on regardless of all the level stuff. Yeah. I know he's going to deliver and I want him on my team. Yeah. So that got you in to get that promotion from mid-level to senior. Yeah.

Okay. Wow. Okay. So internal brand really does matter then. It matters a lot. It matters way more than you think. And so that's why it's important to like not really burn bridges with people, but also find those people who you really click with.

And because you never know. You might be working with them again in the future. Yeah, definitely. And that was a good jump because if you would have just stayed at Facebook, you are already greatly exceeding. So what more? Yeah. You could change your behavior.

and go through the promo process, but that would have been slower than just going directly into Netflix. Definitely. Yeah. And so was that compensation boat from? Oh, yeah. It was like almost double. Your conversation doubled from ICA. Yeah.

It was like two with L4 to 385, 390. It was like and all cash. All cash. Wow. Okay. That's pretty good. Yeah. And so how was your time at Netflix?

Were you thinking, I guess they didn't have a notion of promotions there? Yeah. Just all senior? Yeah, all senior. So what was your thinking? You wanted to transition this software engineer. You did that. Where were you thinking to go from there with your career?

So from there, I wanted to, like, I had a vision. I had a vision of myself. It was crazy that I walked away from a year ago. But, like, I was 24 when I got on Netflix, I had a vision that I was, by the time I was 30, I was going to be a principal engineer like L7, L8, like in big tech doing just really technical deep stuff. And that was my vision. And I knew that I was not.

going to get there in data engineering. And that was one of the other reasons why I knew I needed to make the switch. Yeah, for sure. And Netflix was really crazy because it was like very different. Instead of doing like regular like data pipelines that were like once a day processing, it was like everything had to be in real time to detect security threats. It was like very different, very like cutting edge, very like difficult work for sure. So then if you wanted to get to principal, how are you going to do that at Netflix? Great question. So at Netflix, how it works is essentially every year there is a compensation discussion, but again, they don't have performance reviews either. There's no performance reviews. Technically, there are performance reviews at Netflix,

but they're every quarter where your manager gives you a color. You either get green, yellow, or red as a color, where red means you're going to be fired imminently. Yellow means you need to pick it up and green means you're good. You get that feedback every quarter, which is a lot. Once a year, they do have an annual compensation discussion, but you don't talk about what you did. It's all about what you could get in the market from other companies. And they'll match it. And but your manager can also, if they feel like you're being underpaid or whatever, they can also come in and adjust your compensation like almost at any time.

It's very different. A lot fewer rules than at meta. It's got to be like every six months after a calibration and a packet and a submission. It's a whole thing. Netflix is very different. But I think Netflix has learned because Netflix, obviously, there's levels now. And I think that was a problem. I think for me, the thing that I recognized and why I didn't really care that much about, oh, there's no levels here was one, I knew I was going to make a ton of money.

Two, I knew I was working with Jitender and that I knew that I still had so much more to learn from him. I still do because I talk with him about entrepreneurship stuff now. But anyways, I had so much to learn from him and I was like, wherever this goes, it's going to go. And I know I can have a good story. It comes back to like wherever you're at, always think about your story, about the impact that you had at the company and what you did. And make it sound like a movie, man. Make it sound cool. Make it sound like, dude, you did some really cool shit.

That's like a very important part of the journey. Since I have a tendency to leave jobs every two years or so, I always have to feel like I'm satisfied with the story. Because that's something that happened at Airbnb where I actually had an urge to quit earlier. But then I realized I was like, wait a minute, I don't have a story. I don't have a really good story yet. So I stayed six more months. But yeah, getting that impact story is super important.

So when you say story, you just mean a good full. delivered package of work that was impactful, you can sell. Yep, 100%. Exactly. Where it's like, hey, if you hire me, I will do this much for you in two years. Got it. Okay. For instance, at meta, what was your story?

What did you use to sell? Okay. So at meta, I did a couple things. One was in notifications, I developed the reachability metric, which was a good counterweight to prevent spamming on notifications. Because on a growth goes up, the more notifications you sent. There's a correlation there. but obviously there's a spam on the other side.

And so reachability was like determining who is turning off their settings, which is way more complicated metric than you would think. So that's one big thing I did. Another big thing was I built the first cross-app growth dashboard for WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, and Facebook. So you could look at all of the growth metrics in one chart. And that had never been done before. It was the engineer that integrate all that stuff.

But the big thing was Facebook has this algorithm called Nudges, the machine learning algorithm that determines which notifications to send to you. I made that pipeline 90, it cost. 90% less, so it was 10 times more efficient after I optimized it with this thing called Sorted Merge bucket joins. But those are the main things that I did at my time at Facebook that I sold to Netflix. You're saying for successful job hopping, you want to wrap those pieces up. Yeah.

I'll be thinking about when I jump, this is the story I'm going to tell about the thing that I did. Yeah. Because obviously, if you have short tenure at places, the very first thing they're going to think is this guy doesn't play well with others. This guy is not a good fit there. Why is he going to be a good fit with us? But you have to squash that. Very early in the interview process, you have to squash the idea of this guy is a disloyal

job hopper because that's obviously something they're going to think when they look at their resume. But if you can squash that and instead be like, no, this guy is actually extremely ambitious. He wants to solve hard problems and he has solved hard problems. And he's on a trajectory to help us solve hard problems. That is a much better more, I've even seen it in. where people were initially skeptical of me, but after talking with me, they were like, okay, this guy seems pretty good.

Okay. So let's talk about AirbnbV. So I guess for the promotion, the senior, it was through the job hop and Jutender was a big part of it and your ability to sell yourself. Yeah. So then sounds like Netflix was good. What made you want to jump to Airbnb? Great questions.

A couple things happened. So one of the things that happened with Jutender was he also believed in me too much. because what ended up happening on my team at Netflix was I was on this team working on security threat detection, but then there was a whole other team doing this thing called asset inventory, which is just managing all of the cloud assets and where they're at and who owns all that stuff. And the engineer there who had been at Netflix for 10 years left the team. There was this opening for that spot, which was why Netflix complicated. Back then, especially complicated.

That spot was definitely a staff spot, not a senior spot. I'm like, I'll take it. let's go. I'm hungry for opportunity and I'll take it. And so I take that role. I went from interfacing with just the detection team to interfacing with 11 other teams. The amount of conversations that I needed to have dramatically skyrocketed. I honestly wasn't ready for that. And I leaned back into my behavior of, okay, these people want this, these people want that. And I'm like, okay, I'm just going to answer all these people's questions, even though I was just one guy and it was way too much work. I got to solve all these problems because it was like,

holy crap, this is crazy. And I got a big raise, though. I got a huge raise from that because of that jump into this new role, Netflix recognized that. So when I got in, I was in like the upper 300s. And then my next year at Netflix, like they had me at 550. And because of this like change into this kind of more of a staff engineer archetype, which I was not ready for. And then ultimately, when they ended up having a Netflix was in 2019, they decided that data engineering and data science. So I was still, I was a software engineer on a data engineering team. It's complicated. But like, I was still in the data engineering org. And so the data engineering, they determined that data engineering was no longer like a necessary org.

And they wanted to collapse it into data science. And so they like, what they did was they straight up, they were like, okay, VP fired. Director, fired. And then Jitender, fired. They just cut the whole chain. And then they're like, okay, now all you guys report to the data science people now. And like, when they did that, when they did that, like, that's stressed me out a lot. It stressed me out way too much.

I was stressed me out so much that I went on a mental health break. I went on a mental health break because I was like, this is too much. This is too much. And then I went on a mental health break for a month. Then I came back. And then I realized I was like, I wanted to work with you tender, man. So he wasn't part of the data science org? He was a data engineering leader.

Oh, is he fired? He was fired. Yeah. No, they fired all the data engineering leaders. Oh. They all got. God. And then we all started reporting to data science leaders instead.

And that was a big thing that I was like, there was one last, I had one last attempt. that I wanted to do at Netflix because technically I also wasn't really in the data engineering org to begin with. I was more in like the cybersecurity org because I was working on asset inventory and tracking all like the security assets. That was like literally what my job was. And so the very last thing I tried was I was like, Ted was gone. I don't want to work in a data science org. I did that at Facebook. I did not like it. I want to be in an engineering org, right? Not an analytics org. That's why I'm here. That's why I, that was my original reason of coming. here. And so the last thing I did was I applied to transition to the cybersecurity team.

I was like, hey, makes a lot of sense. I'm like the only software engineer on this data engineering team. So it doesn't even make sense that I'm on this team. So I think it makes more sense that I'm on your guys's team. And then they were like, they didn't get transfer. They didn't like the idea of that transfer. And they were like, nah, like, you should stay in your current role. And I was like, all right, deuce is. See you later. And that piss me off a lot. That piss me off a lot because then I'm like, okay, there's, what am I supposed to do here? I'm just supposed to just shut up and right pipelines. Is that what I'm supposed to do in this situation when literally they just completely changed the org in a way that it no longer aligns with my career goals? So ultimately,

I just quit. I was like, I'm done working with nothing else with nothing lined up. I actually had a dream of traveling the world. That's what I wanted to do. I wanted to spend 2020 travel the world. So I quit in early March 6th, 2020. It was my last day at Netflix. I was like, I'm going to travel the world. The timing was absolutely atrocious. And then the world is like, no, you're not going to travel because COVID. And I was like, wow, okay. But yeah, I just was like, I'm done. I'm going to just not work at this company anymore. Just felt like I wanted to give so much to that company. They were like, we're going to give you nothing of what you want. We'll pay you a lot, but we're going to give you absolutely nothing else. I'm like, okay, then there's the whole adage

of like, in your career, you should be learning or earning or both. I am still, even today, I'm all about learning is still better than earning, even now, even where I'm at. That's why I'm like entrepreneur now because I want to learn new things. I want to attack new problems and solve new problems. And so I got bored at Airbnb because I'm like, I'm not learning. Sure, I'm making great money, but I'm not really learning. So I want to do something else. And I think that's not why people work at Netflix though. They're more motivated there to make a lot of money and retire early. That's the main motivation for people there. I actually think that people at Meta are more learning motivated. Yeah, for sure. Okay. So yeah, there was one thing that you said in your last story

of what you were doing in Netflix at the end there. You said you got put into a staff role and you weren't ready for it. I think that is the thing that these big tech companies try to prevent when they don't promote someone because they don't have the behaviors, but they have the impact. Because you had the skills and everything.

But then you were put in there and it was just too much stuff. You needed the staff behaviors to scale yourself and work through other people. So I thought that was a pretty good example of, I think when I heard the lagging promotion stuff, I go, why are you holding people back? Yeah. But this is the exact.

It's meant to prevent this situation, right? Whereas these people are like, they have the impact for it, but they don't have the behaviors. Like, looking back on it at Netflix, like the big thing for me was a couple of things. I think one was establishing better work boundaries, super important one.

Another one was like, just like planning things out a little bit more. not. It's one of those things that like I recognize now. That's actually the part that is again. It's the lesson I'm learning again as an entrepreneur. It's a lesson I learned then and I'm learning again as you do still need to plan things out and be like, okay, this is going to happen later. It doesn't have to happen today, but it will happen at some point in the future, right? Those things. And I think another big one was just like selling a vision, right? Selling like a technical vision of something that was in my head. And this is something content has helped me a lot with is like being able to take ideas that I have in my head that I'm very excited.

about, but then actually being able to present them and show them and sell other people on them. I think that's one of the big behaviors that changes is that you do need to be able to sell. You have to be able to sell like a vision or a future. We need to be working on this, not that. And those are things that like in all the previous levels of engineering, you don't have to worry about. You just deliver on the work that you're supposed to deliver on and solve the hard problem. But deciding on which problem to solve, that was the other behavior at Netflix that I was like, I'm like, whoa, dude.

I'm like, I don't know. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Okay, going back to the story timeline. So now you left Netflix because there was reorgs, chaos. You don't have anything else lined up. Yeah. How do you start thinking about Airbnb? Oh, yeah.

It really just came back to in December of 2020 when after I was like, I had played a lot of video games and I don't know, I just wasn't feeling very fulfilled. I was really depressed. And then my girlfriend at the time was like, What are you doing with your life? What's going on? And she was like very not happy with what I was doing. And I was like, fair.

And we ended up breaking up. And I was like, whoa, this is, okay. Now I'm like, I got no job. I got no girlfriend. I'm like, and I barely got the dog getting the breakup. But okay, we got the dog. That's just me and a dog right now. I'm like, I got to freaking support my dog, at least with an income.

And then I was like, I should interview. I should like, I should take another swing at the fences here and see what happens. I also, that was also when I started making content. was December 2020. It was like that was because that was also something I said to all my co-workers at Netflix. When I quit, I was like, you're going to see me again. You're going to see me again. I'm going to be famous.

I promise. I told them all that in like March of 2020 when I left because I was like, I'm going to make content. I even knew back then I was going to make content. But I should have done it during the pandemic when everyone was on their phone because you could just blow up and then you could be like Ali Miller and have 1.5 million followers. If you started in 2020, you got such an unfair advantage. And Ali Miller, she's like the number one AI influencer on LinkedIn.

But yeah, I was just happy that I started in 2020 still. And then that was the big things I did. I started making content on LinkedIn. And then I started applying. I actually interviewed at more than just Airbnb. I interviewed at Meta. I interviewed at Google and I interviewed at Airbnb. When you interviewed, was it data engineering roles?

It was a mix, actually, because I didn't know what I wanted. Because Airbnb was able to end up selling me on a data engineering role. But at Google, I interviewed. for software engineer and at Facebook I interview for software engineer. And I actually got offers from all three companies. But the problem was that the Google and Facebook roles were both senior. And I was like, and then Airbnb was like, you're and I'm like, okay. And then it was just like, I can't just say no to an extra $100,000 because it was just like, the Airbnb offer was just so much more money that it was like, okay, this is not even close.

Do you remember what the numbers were? Yeah. So for Facebook, it was like $415 or something. like that. Like, it was pretty high, like 400. And then Google's was a little bit like three. When I got the offer from Google, I was like, why did I even interview with you guys? You're going to pay me what Netflix paid me four years ago? I don't know about that. And then the one from Airbnb came in out. And I was like, okay, it's much more. Over $100,000 more. And I was like, okay, freaking

easy decision. Easy decision. Yeah, no brainer. Yeah. It made me a little bit sad because I was like, it's not even really competing offers because those ones aren't even really competing with the other one. And I was like, it was an interesting kind of place. to be. But the reason why I was okay with it, because Airbnb actually does data engineering very differently than a lot of other companies. Big things, like, for example, at Airbnb, I only coded in Scala, right? No SQL. And I guess not only Scala, but like 95% Scala and 5% Python. But because it's all about they want really high quality pipelines that are integrated with their online systems. Like for me, it was pricing and availability. Their pricing and availability systems, they wanted

pipelines that emulated all of the behavior that those systems would create. And that's what I worked on. And I'm like, this is not really even. This is a good. It actually felt very amazing at first because I was like, this is exactly what I wanted at Netflix because I'm like, it's the perfect blend of creating pipelines, but also still having technical integrations and optimization concerns that you have to

also think about and dealing with online systems. It was like this crazy like role that was in the middle that I really liked. But yeah, it was an interesting one for sure. So Airbnb gives you staff. That's a no-brainer. And it makes it so that you're willing to go back in the data engineering, software engineering. Okay. Sounds good.

The big question for me is how are you able to sell them on staff? Because you were senior. If you just were to go for a staff interview, there's some requirements of a certain number of years of experience or those types of blocking things that you might not have control over. So how do you get staff interview? Great question because that was actually something that I was. really stunned by with Airbnb because that interview, they were actually interviewing me for one or the other. They were like, we might give you senior. We might give you staff. They were saying like, based on how you interview. And I was like, because I actually got the offers from

Facebook and Google first. And then I got the Airbnb one. And because I was like, ah, dude, because when those two came in at senior, I'm like, I'm like, Airbnb, don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do me. Don't do me like this. But then Airbnb comes in at staff and I'm like, okay. Then that makes it very easy. And you're totally right. The role, the staff role, at least on the job description says 10 plus. And at that point, I had six. And I'm like, 10 plus and six, there's a gap there. There's like a significant gap. I think it comes back to just that impact story and being able to talk about what I did at Netflix and like the being like my interface with these like 11 teams and we solved all these crazy security problems. Right. And being able to just talk about all that

stuff, that is what I think really put Airbnb over the edge. Because one of the things that I feel very grateful from Netflix that I know impressed people at Airbnb was they have this kind of culture of this feedback culture, right? The radical candor of just give feedback immediately, right? It's like almost if you come from a kinder company or a more chill company when you come into Netflix and then you start getting this immediate feedback, you're like, everyone hears a dick. Everyone here's like, why is everyone here so mean? But then after a while you're like, wait a minute, no, everyone here really wants me to grow. That's what it is actually about. And I think that was what I was able to learn from and get that. But I was definitely really nervous about the role at Airbnb because I was like,

am I just walking right back into what I just left at Netflix, right? Am I walking right back into something that it was going to be just a replication of what I was doing before? For the senior and the staff was the recruiter up front or they saying, hey, FYI, you're either going to be senior staff. Good luck on the interviews. Yeah. They actually did say that. And I was annoyed by that a little bit because I just felt I'm like I guess because I knew that at that moment if it was just a senior interview I wasn't going to take it because I was there something on your end that you did to advocate for staff oh yeah great question so I advocated for staff because in that interview I was like hey I'm interviewing at these other companies and when I was

talking with the Airbnb recruiter I was like hey I'm interviewing at Facebook and at Google right now as well and those companies like if and I even told them I'm like if I get an interview from all three of you and they all come in as senior I'm not picking Airbnb you said that to him yeah right were they gonna do senior yeah I think so I think that I was well the interview they said and that's why we leaned into that kind of middle ground of we'll just do the interview and if you interview well enough yeah because I wanted it to be like an open-mindedness at least of give this guy a chance but yeah because otherwise because everything being equal I probably would have gone back to Facebook if it was like senior across the board, I probably would have gone back to Facebook.

Got it. But since it was not, I was like. And did you try to get staff interviews at Google on Facebook too? Yeah, I did try to get those rules. They did not give me that. They were just straight out at the front. They said, senior only. But Airbnb, they said, oh, probably senior.

Yeah. You said, I'm not going to take it unless staff's an option. And then they said, okay, maybe staff. And then you had the opportunity. And you did well in the interviews. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it was wild.

And I love that. That's why it's so important. have more than one company that you're interviewing for that you're excited about because then that puts you in this position where you can have conversations where it's hey this is what I need from this company and because otherwise I'm gone I'm just going to go somewhere else and yeah how many years of experience did you have at that place six yeah it was six yeah actually I had a viral post on LinkedIn about this where the Airbnb B roll said I needed 10 and I applied it was six and I got it and then my whole point on that post was like apply for jobs that you don't think you're ready for

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So your ability to negotiate and sell is what got you that stuff. Okay. Definitely. And actually, like, after being in that role for a little bit, I was ready for it. Because you want to know what I realized. I realized more about the Netflix role that was more problematic than I thought it was.

It was that I changed ladders, right? I went from data engineer to software engineer. But then I went up that ladder. to staff. And so in some ways, like, I was just not ready to do software engineering at that staff level because honestly, I'd been doing it like professionally one year. And the only reason that I was able to like even not just get absolutely crushed was because I'd been spending all my weekends doing it and like doing side projects and hustling on the side. But if you look at the actual professional experience, it was the combination of those two things that I think I was like brand new like job

role but also higher job title. And those two things together was like burnout risk. Whereas like when I got in at Airbnb, it was like staff data engineer. I'm like, okay, I feel pretty good about this. It was like more the leadership was there. And I was like, okay, I needed to grow in there a little bit. But it was more manageable. I didn't feel like it wasn't like, oh my God, I have so much to learn. It was like, okay, there's things I need to learn, but I know what they are and this is going to be doable. That was what I want to ask you is now, because you went into the staff role. Some might wonder, would you underperform in that role? You're saying that you performed fine because it was going back to data engineering, which you had a lot more confidence in.

Is that right? Yeah. And because I think at Netflix, it was the combination of getting put into this position of high risk position and like leadership position when I wasn't ready for it. But then it was the combination of that and that I transitioned to software engineering like less than a year before. And so those two things together were I think where there was a gap, right? You only want to change like one variable at a time.

And then so when. I got in at Airbnb and I was nervous about it. For sure, super nervous because I was like, I don't want to just run myself right back into the ground of being in a position where I'm like, I am not ready for this. But it ended up being way more chill for sure. Yeah. And then in your first year at Airbnb, how was the performance? Yeah.

I got exceeds my first half of Airbnb and it was a good one. Like, I think that first year I really started to get the, I just upleveled a lot of the pricing pipelines. and then I built a lot of designs. It was a lot higher level kind of stuff. And then they also wanted me to, they said I was close with greatly because the problem is architecture stuff, right?

They really wanted me to be working on things that were company-wide. And I just wanted to work on marketplace stuff. They wanted me to design the best practices of how to take data from the data lake and put it back in the production systems because everyone has, taking data from production,

putting it in the lake. That's about going the other way is not as straightforward. And they wanted me to come up with all those and I just had no desire to do that. And that's when I realized, that was a moment there. I had a moment of clarity. I remember it was in September of 2021 when I was like, wait a minute,

do I even want to get promoted? Am I good where I'm at right now? Do I not even care? Because I don't know, I just feel like I'm someone who like, I want to do everything that has asked of me. And I want to always be showing that next level growth. That's like a part of my life. And when I didn't want to do that,

I literally was like, I don't want to do this work. I don't want to do it. And I told my manager, I'm not going to do this work. And they're like, okay, They even told that if you don't want to do that work, that's the work that will get you promoted. That's the work that's going to get you to the next level. But I just don't care. It's too many meetings.

I just did not like the fact that it was just so many meetings. So did your, because you said earlier, your vision for your career was principal engineer by age? Did that change then? Because they were handing you. They were handing me the path right up for sure. That's exactly what they were doing. And I think it was when I recognized, this was also right when I was getting traction on LinkedIn at the same time. I was like, I just hit 50K on LinkedIn or something like that.

I was like, wait a minute. I actually care about other things now. I don't just care about my job. I care about these other stuff as well. And so I told my manager, I'm like, it's fine. I will just work my job. And that was like my goal was I wanted to just get Airbnb to more of a rest invest kind of situation where I'm just doing the absolute bare minimum, what I wanted to do.

Throughout your story at Facebook and at Netflix, you had a really strong internal brand with your manager. And so I think opportunities came to you. He kept giving you stuff. Yeah, yeah. Get you to go higher and higher. Yeah. It sounds like an Airbnb, even without that manager's trust, people, again, were giving

you opportunity. So what did you do at Airbnb to go from zero internal brand to a point where they're saying, here's senior staff, please help us? Oh, that's a great one. This is one of the things that I try to do every time I get a new job is I want to do something in three months where people are like, damn. They're like, okay, this guy's crazy. And the thing that I did in three months at Airbnb was,

so they have this pipeline called a pricing and availability pipeline that computes all the prices and availability every day. And it was like a mess. It was like one of the most like deady freaking pipelines I have ever seen. They had this new notion called the paved road, which is the way you're supposed to build a pipeline that is compatible with the platform, quality. They had given me that to move that pipeline onto the road, but they said that was something finished by the end of the year. I finished it in the first quarter instead of four

quarters. And they were like, okay, this guy clearly knows how to make things a lot better. Because that made it so pipeline was no longer delayed. Pipeline just worked and everything was just smooth and pretty much flawless going forward. And that was the start of that first, does the first like trigger in like someone's brain because they're like, first off, they're like, This guy didn't just ramp up really quickly. He ramped up and landed a big impact quickly. Those two things together are really important. I want to show them that I don't really care that much about risk, right?

I manage risk, really. I know that this pipeline is very important for the whole company. Price is a very important part of Airbnb. And so I was like, we can figure this out and we're going to build this out. And I'm just going to be very careful and follow all the best practices. And let's get this done. I try to do that. I try to find those points in.

systems where people know that things could be a lot better, but they don't want to touch it because it's too risky or too complex or too much of a pain in the ass. It's usually one of those three. And that's why people just let it be bad or let it be suboptimal. And there's, I know I have a gift for finding those points of like where it's, okay, I can solve this problem, but I don't know if this is the right one to solve, but I'll do it. And I want to land an impact early. That's the big thing to start building that brand. And did you know that work would have the impact before you did it or was that kind of handed to you? So it was handed to me, obviously it's handed to you. If you're three months into a job, like everything is handed to you at that

point, right? It takes at least six months before you can build your own internal kind of compass of the company where you sit, especially in these big companies that like have so many moving parts. That's the only way to do it. But in this case, it was like, it was something that was handed to me. But I think it's an interesting kind of tradeoff, right? And the goal there is just to build that brand. When you're starting a new job, people don't trust you. They honestly don't trust you. Some people might actually distrust you. I know that there were some senior engineers at Airbnb who actually didn't like me because I got hired in at staff because they were like living, gutting for staff. And like, that staff promo from senior to staff is just unnecessarily ridiculous at most

companies, right? And then they thought it was just handed to me because I got hired in there. And they're like, oh, why is this external hire getting this one? I've been grinding for four years trying to get this promo. Yeah. That shows to the value of interviewing. Because you did something that was very impressive too. You did it and you got this offer with like less than six months of work. Whereas these other people,

they go through all the hoops and things and still they're having troubles. I guess it shows the value of interview. It's similar to a couple things. I think a couple other pieces of that are like, you know how when like startup companies are raising a venture capital? Pre-revenue companies actually get more generous offers

because it's the maybe, right? It's like where could this go? But then it's like when you have a track record, the inertia that you have built from your own track record, it's hard to overcome. Even if it's great, it still can be hard because they're going to always be like, we hired you at this level and then you have to fight it upwards. That's why, yeah, interviewing is wild. Yeah, I think because there's more variance in the interview process.

There's an opportunity for you to step. You get that stepwise, right? It's not an angle change. It's a step change. Yeah, that's huge. Okay, so that kind of does the whole story of IC3 to IC6 and what? You did two halves of Facebook. You did about two halves at Netflix.

You had a break for roughly years. So you basically went from junior to staff in three. Three, four years. Yeah. That's insane. Okay, so I think a few questions to wrap up the interview. Yeah. One of the most common ones that I get is how much did you work?

It sounds like you're working about 60 hours, especially 60 hours a week at Facebook and Netflix. What about Airbnb? Airbnb was a lot better. In 2021, like 40, maybe a little bit more. Like, that was one of the things that blew my mind about getting the exceeds. Yeah. Because I was like, I'm not even, what? I was like, I actually thought that my initial read on that was like, wait a minute.

You can get exceeds and just work a normal amount of hours. That was something that I didn't even think was supposed. I thought I was going to get meats. I thought I was going to get meats. And I'm like, great. I'd be happy with meats. I'm fine. Just don't fire me.

I've definitely met people who are, like, afraid of the staff promotion because they think that it locks them into a lot greater than 40 hours a week. This is proof that in many cases, or at least in this one case, you don't need to work more than 40 hours a week and you can meet expectations. It's more about shifting your behavior, right? It's about shifting from you really need to be able to start identifying high leverage opportunities, right? And that's not necessarily something that is grinding, right? That's just something that like you need to learn how to do. And I think that it can be grinding for some people and staff.

And I think that's why some people, like, they do feel like they need to, like, work more. But also sometimes, like, those opportunities are just not there, too. It's tricky. Yeah, definitely. I think one of the things that might be interesting to go over, is there something you think's unique to your personality that kind of helped you throughout? Yeah, that's a good one. I think a couple things there. Like, the biggest one for me is just my tenacious ability to just keep.

learning and I'm willing to put in the work to do it because even when I was doing 60 hours a week at Facebook, I also founded a startup during that time. And then Saturday and Sunday at the same time, I was also working on a startup then because I wanted to learn JavaScript and I wanted to get better at full stack development. I wanted to learn how to do all this stuff, which has been critical for my success this year as an entrepreneur because now I have this platform that's all JavaScript based and I'm like, oh, I'm so happy that I did that. Even though back then I was like, this is my whole life. I'm just sitting in front of a computer and oh my God, this is so crazy. I think that's one thing.

I think another angle that I think is important for me is that I'm a positive person. I think that another thing that's very important is being excited to work, like showing up to work and being like, I'm excited to be here. I'm happy to be here. It's an underrated trait because the thing is if you are showing enthusiasm and excitement, it's contagious. It makes other people like their jobs more. And if they like their job, if they like their job more because of you, they like you.

And if they like you, they're more likely to give you opportunity. and that helps a lot. I know that's my friend Nikita, she's doing crazy good at Meta. And I think that like for her, that's a big part of it too. It's just like being able to get people to like you and trust you and build up, specialize you get into leadership and manager. I feel like a manager's entire job is that, right, is to get you to like your job. And so I think that's going to be the other big one. I think there's one other angle that I think is for me. I don't know if being positive is unique about me, but I think the third angle that I think for me is that I am not willing to put up with shit. Like when I think something is unfair, I'm willing to change my life, then just deal with it.

Which I think is a double-edged sword. I think I don't think that it's necessarily always a good thing. I think that there could have been, I think I could have done like a similar career trajectory as you. If I would have just stayed at meta and found another manager who was better and pushed that way. and it probably would have been like less chaotic for me, like in terms of all these new companies, all these health insurance plans, all these 401ks.

You know how many 401ks? I had to get because of all this. Like it's a had to merge all of them. It's pain in ass. That's still the same thing though, because even at meta, you'd have to not be satisfied with your current one and be willing to switch teams,

which is, still taking a risk. Yeah, being okay with risk is a very important part of this journey for sure. Yeah. And I think that first trait is a large part, of probably why your first manager even trusted you so much. Mm-hmm.

If you have someone on your team that's willing to put in those insane hours or have that impact, yeah, the manager's going to keep trusting you with more. If you can show your manager that you're going to stick with a problem until it's solved, then they're like, okay, yeah, here's more work. Here's more important work. Yeah. Cool. And then last thing is, if you were to start all over again, as IC3, knowing what you know today,

what's one thing that you'd change? Ooh, that's a good one. I think that there's a couple angles there. One is being like more open to more perspectives. Because I feel like my first couple years in big tech, I was just very focused on. I need to just get my tech skills up very high. Just become like the most technical person ever. And now recognizing that that really only matters to get to senior engineer for the most part.

after that, like technical skills do help a little bit, but it's more marginal after senior engineer. We need other skills to get past that. And I feel like I didn't really start to develop a lot of those soft skills until I was at Netflix and things were on fire. And that's when I was like, okay, time to learn the soft skills. Right when I need them like when I desperately need them. And I think had I spent a little bit more time at Facebook focusing on those things, developing the soft skills in lower risk situations so that like failure doesn't feel so crazy. That is, I think, something that would have helped me a lot, have a better work-life balance, and probably grow faster in my career.

I think that is a big one that I definitely would have changed. I think another one I would have changed that is important is don't eat dinner at work. Don't do it. Just don't eat dinner at work. It's a scam, dude. It's a scam. Because they offer it. because they get an ROI, right?

That's the only reason. Facebook and Google, all these companies, they do not offer you dinner because they're just beautiful, amazing, great companies. The only reason it's there is to keep you at the office longer and to get you working more. Live your life. Take those hours, right?

Because I think that was another thing because I didn't really get into fitness until 2018, like my first year at Netflix. And I feel like had I taken those hours back and dedicated them to the gym or dedicated them to other areas of my life, that would have been another way that things could have been. So given your super fast career growth,

are you saying that you wish you worked less, though? And was it worth it? The career growth, I think, is worth it because it's another way to go about doing your life. My vision now and my life is more of a vision of balance and a vision of tranquility and peace. I'm trying to manifest that in my life now. I wouldn't want to do it again now.

I wouldn't want to go back and do what I'd do. did what from 22 to 25 do those three years again no I wouldn't want to do it again but do I regret it no I think that it was what I needed at the time to feel powerful it's what I needed at the time to grow into the person I'm supposed to be but with that being said your health matters a lot and I think that's an angle that people forget about when they're like do TC chasing is that okay but it's okay say you make 20 million dollars or whatever working in big tech but you stressed out the whole time and you get cancer and you die when you're 50 it's a good life you got to be thinking of about those other angles, right? Health, wealth, happiness, they all matter. And at different

points in your life, they matter different amounts. That's why looking at it now, it's different, but I think that it's a strategy. So if you want, that's definitely a way to go. If you want to go really, honestly, I think as especially young men who are seeking purpose, working really hard is a great option. It's actually a really great option because it makes you useful. It makes you useful because like when you're a teenager, you're not really useful. And you've got to learn and grow and build something that makes you useful for society. And that is, I think it gave me a sense of purpose. And that's great. But could I have gotten that sense of purpose without grinding so hard and having so many like sleepless nights and so many like nights where I felt like I was in over my head and

a couple panic attacks? There was a lot of other kind of behind the scenes things there that weren't really talked about like growing the career that like I think are important things that like aren't discussed as much. So if you could go back and talk to IC3, Zach. Yeah. you'd say stop being one-dimensional, but still keep working hard at work. Make sure you take care of your health. Yeah, and enjoy the ride more. Enjoy the ride more. And not gets laser-focused on that and laser-focused on, I must get promoted.

It's everything will come to you in time, right? If you put in the hours every day and you're showing up every day, you'll get what you want. The universe gives you exactly what you want if you're willing to put in the work and pay the price. Thanks so much for your time, Zach. Really appreciate you coming on the podcast. If you made it this far, thanks for listening. I am going to start posting these career story podcasts since I think it's helpful to learn from others' experience. When I was growing to staff, I had a lot of help from mentors who shared this kind of information with me in one-on-one conversation.

So I'm hoping this podcast can make that information more accessible. When I asked to interview Zach, I wasn't fully prepared for the video side of things. We just recorded this with our smartphones. it's not the best but it serves as a good starting point for us to improve from so yeah we were literally crammed right behind me in my tiny room and s-f but yeah it was fun and if you have any feedback for me and how to make this podcast more helpful I'd love to hear it in the comments I'll read every comment that I get here and yeah thanks for listening once again appreciate it