We worked with Sam when he started OpenAI and Sam was like, XYZ is going to happen.
Anyone that was like, okay, Sam, I'll follow you did great.
And 98% of people were like, no, no, no, no, no.
And so there's often super talented people that you know are talented that people still choose to ignore.
This is Dalton plus Michael.
And today we're going to talk about how to have a successful career in tech.
So we know there are a lot of people watch your videos, not all of them doing startups.
And we know a lot of the startup founders, well, this might be news to you.
So a lot of the startup founders, their startups might not work out and they might get jobs in tech.
And so this video is for you.
Most people think about a successful career is how do we make money?
And deep fulfillment, but also money.
So to paraphrase, how to get rich?
What it's like to live and work in Silicon Valley for as long as I have, it's been like 30 years, is you see waves and cycles.
But one underlying truth is that there are pockets of talent.
Where the smartest people are at any one time.
You can kind of figure out where they are.
We'll talk about how in a second.
And so you'll see the talent move from company to company as the industry changes, as new technologies come out.
To start with, just give you some examples.
You know, when I was an undergrad at Stanford in like the late 2000s, Google was the hot new startup that was recruiting on campus.
And a lot of my professors had affiliations with Google.
And so I knew that Google was a really cool, like it was, it was aware to me as an undergrad that something was happening there and that really smart people worked there.
Pre-IPO, pre-da-da-da-da, yes.
And like, you know, prior generation, sun microsystems, like there were other, sorry to even use the term, but cracked engineers, like where all the cracked engineers work.
You can kind of ask around and people would tell you.
I thought Yale was gonna be this deep talent pocket.
Certainly a lot of smart people, but like probably not as differentiated as I thought when I was in high school.
And then for me, it was about moving geographically.
It was about finding Justin Kahn and Emma Cheer who actually were talented and seeing how they first went to Y Combinator, a pocket of talent.
And then they went to Silicon Valley, a pocket town.
And it was interesting because I had a survey of my friends, and I can't say that this was like a plan, but it's like interesting that I followed these two people.
And these two people, I don't know who they were following, but they got the fuck out of, right?
Like it was like they had a nose that New Haven, Connecticut, or New York, or Cambridge was not where the pocket was developing.
They had a nose they had to be in the valley.
I'll give you a couple of other anecdotes just from even college.
I remember I was friends with this guy named Bob.
Bob was a good programmer.
And he dated this girl that lived in my dorm.
And so he was always at my dorm.
And so I talked to Bob constantly.
I just always would see Bob.
And I remember Bob telling me,
that he got an internship when he was like a sophomore G or at this tiny startup in Palo Alto called PayPal.
And I was really curious.
And he told me all about how actually the job was all about defending against the Russian mob.
Like apparently PayPal was just getting like destroyed by organized crime.
And he was like, yeah, so we're building all this like hardcore technology to fight like the Russian mob.
To fight money laundering.
So basically, I love talking to him about his weird internship at this tiny startup called PayPal.
And he was an elite engineer, and he was saying, oh, all the other people that work here are really good.
Then Bob went to Palantir because it was the same people.
Then Bob, after like eight years at Palantir, went to open AI.
And most recently Bob was the chief scientist of open AI.
I think he created thinking models.
And that's my friend from the dorms.
And now he has to restart.
But basically I watched his career.
Like if you just looked at where Bob went.
That was a deep talent pool.
There's signal in that, folks.
To the extent you know Bob's or friend of friends, pay attention to where they go and try to go to those same places as early as possible.
Well, I love the point about paying attention where they go.
You actually have to build relationships.
Like, you got to know this Bob.
I talked to this person who wants to start a company, and they said to me, in college, the software engineers weren't cool.
They weren't the people you should get to know.
And so this person was like, I never made friends with them.
And so it's like that talent pool was there.
In hindsight, it was obvious that you should have followed them.
you never got to know them well enough to know that that was actually interesting talent pool.
See, China not only have to be around talent, you have to engage with those people and become friends with them.
Which is I think like hilariously like,
I think for me, it's like those are the people who are fun to be friends with.
But those are often not the coolest kids.
I'm not going to add anything to that.
Yeah, I'll let that stand.
Their value accrues over time, perhaps.
And again, to me, the lesson
is that you don't have to know everything.
You don't even need to be the smart person to have a great career in tech.
But you need to know who the smart people are.
And listen to what they say carefully.
It's like the hunter follows the dog and the dog's on the scent.
I mean, it's like, you know, we worked with Sam when he started Open AI and Sam was like,
Anyone that was like, okay, Sam, I'll follow you, did great.
And 98% of people were like, no, no, no, no, no.
And so there's often super talented people that you know are talented that people still choose to ignore.
Well, let's talk about one of the reasons why people choose to ignore this, because I hear this all the time.
When I talk to a YC founder who's considering working at a company,
or an engineer is considering working at a company.
The things that they talk about, like frustrate me to no end because it's like, look, you're working in a technology company.
Fundamentally, a big part of your compensation's gonna be stock.
And a big part of you eventually getting rich is that stock being worth something.
So like my first thought is like, what is your thesis on why that stock would be worth something?
That is like the last thing they talk about.
They're like, well, here's the people that interviewed me and like the interview process or the recruiter I talked to and what the recruiter said, which is like, what does that matter?
Which is like, this is not how to win by maximizing your benefits.
They say stuff like, well, this is the job.
I'm going to be like, oh, I'm like.
This job would be more interesting versus that job.
And it's like, if you're a technology company, you can move around, your jobs change.
Weird geographic stuff, like, oh, I want to be close to my friends and they all are into New York.
So I want to go to New York.
And it's like, I mean, if you don't want to win, then fly to whatever you want.
If you want to win, there might be some trade-offs.
And the mentality I always give people is like, look,
Think about how hard investors work to figure out which companies to invest in, and they get to hedge.
You don't get to hedge your time.
You can only work with one company at a time.
Perhaps in addition to those kind of lifestyle things, you should be asking yourself the question, what is your thesis on why this stock might be worth more money?
And the questions that come out, I think are so much more interesting.
Are people using the product?
To your point about talent, am I ridiculously impressed with the engineers they have talking to me?
And like, I'll see people with like these weird things was like, oh, here's their valuation.
Fine, but can you underwrite that valuation?
Do you actually understand what's going on in the business?
The other thing that's so funny is that good founders want to share this information.
Oh, we've got great customer retention.
Of course you want to tell people that.
That founders, when you start asking these questions, they're going to be like, oh, that's private.
And you're like, oh, really?
The selling point, what otherwise would be a selling point is private?
Yeah, the way I'd summarize what you're saying is you gotta think like an investor and are you long or short?
The place, and maybe one other nuance here, I don't know if we have the absolute answer here, but people that are great at having a career in tech know when to leave.
There's a lot of folks that stay too long.
And we're not saying leave after nine months or, you know, we're not saying be a short term, that's bad.
But like our Bob example,
Bob changed jobs a small number of times, but they're all pretty good.
And there's a lot of people that went from Google to Facebook to open AI.
They didn't stay in any one place that long.
And so job hopping bad, but
choosing to move on after, what, three to five years, something like that.
Yeah, not the worst idea sometimes.
Well, and I don't even think it has to be time-based, right?
If you want to be in deep density pockets and every day you're re-underwriting, there's awesome people that I get to work with.
I think there's a way to work at Google for 25 years and be in deep density pockets.
But I think that's not... Apple's such a weird beast.
Everyone there's a lifer.
Like, Apple's just such a strange culture.
Where I don't think people... I think you just go there and you stay at Apple forever.
It is rare that you get to build the phone that most of the like...
It's like how often do you get to do that?
And it's rare that that consumer product is so consistently the best product for a decade.
So I'll say whether you're jumping around between companies, between teams, and this applies to startups, it applies to big companies too.
Like I had a friend who just
move from Facebook over to Google because Google's AI products are doing really well and they're able to get a job inside of Google brain and it's like, yep, that's very interesting.
So this doesn't require even touching into the software, I mean, into the startup pool, but it does also sometimes require you to sacrifice that salary.
I think maybe that's what I wanna end on is that like you get rich with the equity
That's where you're getting.
The problem people have is they have vanity and titles and number of reports.
And all this crap, you get caught up of like leveling up your character.
Like I got promoted to L62 and like, you know, oh, yes.
In the company that's failing.
You basically start optimizing for these weird local inside baseball things.
And that's a trap, I guess is what we're trying to say.
If you have to consistently underwrite your stock every year.
And you have to consistently ask yourself, what's my thesis?
Why this stock would be worth four, five, 10, 100 times more?
You're going to get a clear view.