My Last Day at Google (after 9 years)

All right, it's my last day after 9 years at Google. I'm standing outside the office building right now. It's like 8:00 a. m. in the morning. It's going to be my last free breakfast here, unless I can bribe people to take me to breakfast. Maybe I can create an AI agent that assigns my Googler friends to like specific slots so I have free food for the rest of my life. Like, you know, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Huh. Very

few people know this, but I almost didn't make it past my first quarter at Google. For context, I joined the sales team back in 2016. I was the youngest person on the team and I was the only one with zero sales experience since I came from consulting where my entire skill set consisted of making mediocre slides and saying stuff like absolutely that's a very alluring, enthralling, riveting question you're asking. And because Google had a very hands-off culture back then, I didn't receive much formal training. And this is the low point of my entire career, but whatever. I failed the mock sales pitch all sales people have to go through three times in a row. That's never happened at Google before. And as a result, when I became on target, I developed this fear of calling clients, preferring to, you know, just email them instead. A salesperson who scared of calling clients, that was where I was at. So, I thought about quitting. I didn't think I was going to make it past probation anyways until a colleague said something that struck a chord in me. He said it in Chinese, but it roughly translates to don't punch with your left hand if you're right-handed. Basically, play to your strengths, right? And that got me

thinking, my youth and inexperience can actually be advantages. I can work longer hours than anyone else, and people forgive ners for making mistakes. So, I thought, [ __ ] it. I'm going to go on for a quarter and see what happens. I scheduled one-on-one with everyone on the team to ask for advice. I sometimes spent my own money to travel and shadow senior reps in their client visits. and I spent every single weekend that first quarter learning the Google Ads product. Long story short, it paid off. I'm going to humble back for a bit here. I was ranked the number one salesperson um globally in the small business segment for one of the quarters and I was promoted in just 8 months. Two things I took away from that experience/oral. First, even if you feel unqualified, you have strengths, use them. Second, and this has been a core belief ever since that first quarter, everything is figure outable. It's hard to articulate just how humiliating it felt to be the worst performer on the team back then. I remember thinking the interviewers made a mistake. I don't belong here. But the upside was for every professional challenge I faced since then, I would tell myself, "This is nothing compared to those first three months when I felt like an absolute [ __ ] loser. I figured it out back then. I'm going to figure this out now. "

And I think this mindset also gave me the courage to hand in my resignation last month, which is a great segue into why I quit, why I left. So I basically boil it down to three main reasons. One big pull factor and two small push factors. To give some context for the pull factor, I went through this Odyssey plan exercise developed by Dave Evans and Bill Bernett of Stanford Business School where you go through these three prompts. First, your current path. Write out in detail what your life would look like 5 years from now if you continued down your current path. Second, the alternative path. Write out in detail what your life would look like 5 years from now if you took a completely different path. Third, the radical path. Write out in detail what your life would look like 5 years from now if money, social obligations, and what people would think were irrelevant. I'll share Ali Abdoll's video about the Odyssey plan in the description. But as I worked on the exercise, it became very clear, very quickly that fulfillment for me comes from being an educator, from being able to teach at scale. I've mentioned this in a few videos, but I actually have an album in Google Photos where I keep a lot of your positive comments. And you know, it's become a problem since I've run out of space so quickly and I got to pay for more storage. The high or joy I feel when you share how my content has helped you find a job, understand AI better, or improve your workflow delivers so much more satisfaction than almost any achievement during my Google career with the exception of those first three months. I'm still super proud of that. So yeah, the combination of me being able to do what I love, teach, and the attention, I mean, the fulfillment it gives me, and the hopefully positive impact on your lives made pursuing this teaching path a no-brainer. And I mean, worst case, if this whole YouTube thing fails and I lose everything, you probably know where I'm going with this. I always have the option to, you know, marry Rich. No, just kidding. Link in the description. No, no. That was a joke. That Reason number

That that was a joke. Reason number two is a push factor. I just didn't want to play the corporate game anymore. This problem is obviously not unique to Google, but it doesn't change the fact that office politics and networking start to matter a lot more than hard skills as you move up. For example, for my most recent promotion, finding the right stakeholder to say the right thing during my calibration meeting was more important than showcasing my achievements. Again, this is not Google specific, and if anything, Google probably has one of the fairest processes in place out of all the big tech companies. But it goes back to the previous lesson where with my low tolerance for [ __ ] and my tendency to make what some people might misconrue as inappropriate jokes, staying in corporate would not be playing to my

strengths. The third reason push factor number two is a tactical consideration. I want to continue giving my honest and unbiased opinions on different AI and productivity tools. And by leaving, I won't have any conflict of interest when I talk about Google Gemini and Google Workspace tools. For the record, some of you asked me this. No one at Google has ever pressured me to speak positively about their products. I genuinely believe Google's AI models are the best in the world right now. I'm totally not saying that in hopes that someone from Google's marketing team will reach out and sponsor me by clicking the link down

below. So, what's next? I know there's this expectation for YouTubers to announce this big next step when they quit their full-time job, but I'll be honest with you, I want to spend more time in the next few months rediscovering how to have fun and relax. I've been working 80 90 hour weeks for the past 5 years and it's taken a huge toll on my relationships. I've lost a lot of friends because I've prioritized work over them and that's on me. I want to travel more since I developed this unhealthy bias against traveling because I didn't want to waste time on transit. I'm thinking of Switzerland or Iceland this year. So, if you have any recommendations, let me know. I want to start reading fiction again. I love Lee Child's Jack Reacher series, all the books from Barry Eisler. I recently started Tom Wood's Victor series. So again, any recommendations, drop them in the comments. All that said, I'm not going anywhere. I'm still going to be uploading regularly. I'm going to double down on evergreen educational content that cuts through all the noise and hype. There's so much BS out there right now, especially with all the AI stuff. So, my north star isn't going to change. I'm going to continue making content that makes a tangible impact on your

life. And finally, I want to say something to the four people I hold personally responsible for putting me through 9 years of Google. To my classmate at Cash, who referred me all those years ago, you're welcome for the referral bonus. To my recruiter, Joselyn, I'm so sorry for the 10,000 emails, follow-up emails, asking for updates regarding my application. To my second interviewer, Wilson, you're one of the smartest people I know. So, thank you for being my mentor and my friend all these years. To my third interviewer, Stella, your ability to always do the right thing when faced with difficult decisions, has given me the courage to stick to my values, even when the going gets tough. Now, don't get me wrong. I fully understand Google as a soulless entity doesn't give a [ __ ] about me, but I would not be who I am today without the past 9 years. So, thank you Google for giving an unremarkable nobody from Hong Kong a chance to be remarkable. And with that, as usual, have a great one. Is it too late to back out? I don't know how to cook. Hello darkness, my old friend.