Check out the free template from Hubspot: clickhubspot.com/0ncq 🚀 Get promoted in 2025 by taking my FREE 5-Day Promotion Accelerator Challenge: geni.us/9P7CAM 💥 Continue the conversation on my Discord server with like-minded ambitious tech professionals. #accountability is *chef's kiss* and #wins is 🔥 - discord.gg/HFVMbQgRJJ 📈Transform your tech career with my free weekly newsletter - alifeengineered.substack.com/
Your day to day life sounds like my academic life style. Saying yes to almost everything, started many, and completed none… both have lots of freedom and can easily get lost. Thank you for the great video.
250k is definition of golden handcuffs. To your viewers its a lot of $$ but to your career earnings, its not much.. esp youll need to work another grueling 2+ months, then after "just" another few months until more money. never ends, golden handcuffs.
Um, no -- Giving up $250k in exchange for 10 wks of "freedom" was short-sighted. Steve is NOT a stupid person, but it WAS a stupid decision and a mistake I think he doesn't want others to make.
Plain and simple this was a stupid decision. It’s not about the $250k, it’s about how much the $250k could turn into and give you more freedom after you give them 2 more months. $250k invested in the stock market for another 10 years is a shit ton of money. Even post-tax. Focus on wealth creation to do things you enjoy most in life, sacrifice.
This video felt supremely authentic, please don’t lose this in 2025 ❤️. You’re actually a huge inspiration on why I personally continue to create content every week. Thank you for everything you do. I hope you and the family have a very merry Christmas 🎄 ❤
A big part of the gap you noticed in our industry is just due to the math of growth: if it takes 5-10 years to mint a true senior engineer and 10-20 years to mint a true principal engineer and the number of SWEs grows 50% each year (numbers completely made up but close enough for this level of analysis) then lack of technical leadership/mentoring is going to continue to be an issue. Thanks for trying to make it better. Your take toward the end there really resonated with me: I always try to be the kind of mentor to people I wish I'd had when I was coming up.
Thank you Steve. You finally get the point that not everything great has to get tied back to Amazon. Jeez, I used to fast-forward almost every video which goes off at the "at Amazon one time ...."
I appreciate your candor in talking about your mistakes. Leaving over $250k on the table by not waiting 10 weeks is staggering to me. That’s an incredible amount of money and a short period of time. Hindsight being 20/20, what options were open to you? You mentioned dealing with anxiety, but were there other ways to deal with it in the short term? Did you have any PTO that you could’ve burned instead, etc?
RSU (stock award) vests every 3 months or 12 weeks. 10 weeks means Steve left 2 weeks after his last award. You’re “always leaving money on the table” with FAANG. That’s how they retain people, but he left close to the best time.
@jamesshen401 thanks for that information! I didn’t know that’s how it worked-I’ve never worked a job with RSUs. The way Steve framed it, I assumed it was a milestone vest and he walked away with nothing but his salary.
There is a catch 22 at play here. People not burning out at their job are the most qualified to teach others for example through YT. But they are less likely to do so because they do not need to cultivate an exit plan. People burning out at work are more likely to want to grow an audience on YT so they can escape, but are they the ones you want to listen to? This has happened with teachers also. One was setting the bar so high I was thinking how do you keep this up? Of course he quit in order to "help other teachers succeed". His audience dropped of soon after...
Incredibly insightful! I plan to incorporate many of these insights into my own life because some of them resonated with me. I really want to see this kind of reflective video at the end of 2025 🙂
Only logged in to comment. 14 YoE. Too many people now are so tied into this industry to make money and their sole personality is what they do or where they work at. This is specially for the younger kids. Great you work at fang but what do you like to do and how are you as a person. Thanks for putting that advice in because it seems lately all people care about is comp.
8:50 I usually just target the thing on my list I find most irritating and annoying (but necessary) to do. Once it's done everything else on the list is SO much easier comparatively.
Please add timestamps next time. It would help most of us who just want to know the TL;DR instead of watching the whole 25 min video which mostly contains fluff.
Doing the right thing, at the right moments, according to your principles, is hard. Eishowermatrix or the adapted version of Stephen Covey helped me a lot.
![Seungmin "그렇게, 천천히, 우리(As we are)" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/kAzmhLHePqU/mqdefault.jpg)
Check out the free template from Hubspot: clickhubspot.com/0ncq
🚀 Get promoted in 2025 by taking my FREE 5-Day Promotion Accelerator Challenge: geni.us/9P7CAM
💥 Continue the conversation on my Discord server with like-minded ambitious tech professionals. #accountability is *chef's kiss* and #wins is 🔥 - discord.gg/HFVMbQgRJJ
📈Transform your tech career with my free weekly newsletter - alifeengineered.substack.com/
Your day to day life sounds like my academic life style. Saying yes to almost everything, started many, and completed none… both have lots of freedom and can easily get lost. Thank you for the great video.
250k is definition of golden handcuffs. To your viewers its a lot of $$ but to your career earnings, its not much.. esp youll need to work another grueling 2+ months, then after "just" another few months until more money. never ends, golden handcuffs.
Also is that money after tax or before? Doesn't sound like a decision I would regret (if I was in that salary range) either way.
no it ain’t bro it’s a drop in the bucket for a ~20yr amazonian so it barely registered on his radar
Um, no -- Giving up $250k in exchange for 10 wks of "freedom" was short-sighted. Steve is NOT a stupid person, but it WAS a stupid decision and a mistake I think he doesn't want others to make.
Plain and simple this was a stupid decision. It’s not about the $250k, it’s about how much the $250k could turn into and give you more freedom after you give them 2 more months. $250k invested in the stock market for another 10 years is a shit ton of money. Even post-tax. Focus on wealth creation to do things you enjoy most in life, sacrifice.
This video felt supremely authentic, please don’t lose this in 2025 ❤️. You’re actually a huge inspiration on why I personally continue to create content every week. Thank you for everything you do. I hope you and the family have a very merry Christmas 🎄 ❤
A big part of the gap you noticed in our industry is just due to the math of growth: if it takes 5-10 years to mint a true senior engineer and 10-20 years to mint a true principal engineer and the number of SWEs grows 50% each year (numbers completely made up but close enough for this level of analysis) then lack of technical leadership/mentoring is going to continue to be an issue. Thanks for trying to make it better. Your take toward the end there really resonated with me: I always try to be the kind of mentor to people I wish I'd had when I was coming up.
Thank you Steve. You finally get the point that not everything great has to get tied back to Amazon. Jeez, I used to fast-forward almost every video which goes off at the "at Amazon one time ...."
Thank you for this fantastic video. I, too, feel burn out and feeling to leave, and this video helps me put things into perspective.
I appreciate your candor in talking about your mistakes.
Leaving over $250k on the table by not waiting 10 weeks is staggering to me. That’s an incredible amount of money and a short period of time.
Hindsight being 20/20, what options were open to you? You mentioned dealing with anxiety, but were there other ways to deal with it in the short term? Did you have any PTO that you could’ve burned instead, etc?
RSU (stock award) vests every 3 months or 12 weeks. 10 weeks means Steve left 2 weeks after his last award. You’re “always leaving money on the table” with FAANG. That’s how they retain people, but he left close to the best time.
@jamesshen401 thanks for that information! I didn’t know that’s how it worked-I’ve never worked a job with RSUs. The way Steve framed it, I assumed it was a milestone vest and he walked away with nothing but his salary.
There is a catch 22 at play here. People not burning out at their job are the most qualified to teach others for example through YT. But they are less likely to do so because they do not need to cultivate an exit plan. People burning out at work are more likely to want to grow an audience on YT so they can escape, but are they the ones you want to listen to? This has happened with teachers also. One was setting the bar so high I was thinking how do you keep this up? Of course he quit in order to "help other teachers succeed". His audience dropped of soon after...
Even though it's targeted towards career, some of these points really feel like they extend to my life haha. Thank you!
This hits home a lot, great work! I am about a year behind you on a similar journey and amen to everything you said here
"feeling guilty about resting", wow. that's my life as well.
All the points are spot on! I wish I watched this before I left my last job...
As a senior dev wanting to get more involved creating content, this is very valuable information, thank you 😊
Thank you for this video!
Love the videos, I tend to listen to it when working or walking. Thank you for making these high quality videos.
Thank you for your knowledge sharing, happy holidays
Great content! Happy Holidays 🎊
i like your authenticity and self awareness
Excellent video. Thank you! You are making a change!
I did the same leaving a job, a few days later and I would have vested another few $10ks. Somehow easy to forget when lots of other stuff is going on
Incredibly insightful! I plan to incorporate many of these insights into my own life because some of them resonated with me. I really want to see this kind of reflective video at the end of 2025 🙂
Only logged in to comment. 14 YoE. Too many people now are so tied into this industry to make money and their sole personality is what they do or where they work at. This is specially for the younger kids. Great you work at fang but what do you like to do and how are you as a person. Thanks for putting that advice in because it seems lately all people care about is comp.
you are the star!
8:50 I usually just target the thing on my list I find most irritating and annoying (but necessary) to do. Once it's done everything else on the list is SO much easier comparatively.
Please add timestamps next time. It would help most of us who just want to know the TL;DR instead of watching the whole 25 min video which mostly contains fluff.
It helps, but i think this video is not one of those. Good stories with each point was told.
just 2x speed bro
Yes high quality content.
Would love to see a video about how you create videos, a behind the scenes look
Mistake #2 solidifies what I suspect most folks here already knew: Uncle Steve is a workaholic.
Edit: and others, not just mistake 2.
I’m confused. Vests are every 13 weeks. 10 weeks until the next vest sounds like “one more vest” syndrome, which is why people never leave.
I’m just watching this so I don’t quit big tech anytime soon. I gotta put my 18 years in first. 🤣
Could you take vacation till vesting?
Prediction 2025-2026: colab with the Tech Lead and Joma
Doing the right thing, at the right moments, according to your principles, is hard. Eishowermatrix or the adapted version of Stephen Covey helped me a lot.
Have you made more from your business than Amazon yet?
Wasn’t embracing delegation one of your advices on multiplying impact?
i thought you are originate from korean never thought of viet nam
nerd ❤