i completely transformed my life in 37 months
37 months ago I was crying 3x a week, failing school, and had no self-worth.
It was 2022, and I was at rock bottom. I had gotten kicked out of college and had transferred to a no-name school in the middle of nowhere canada. My mental health was shit. I had lost my confidence, my vision, my social skills, and my friends.
At that time, I didn't know shit. I didn't know a single person at faang or even in the bay/new york, what leetcode was, how to code anything past for-loops, or what "networking" meant.
But I set a goal. I didn't know how, but I was going to make it to sf/nyc and faang. And so, I started creating a vision.
First, I needed to learn. I wrote a 68 page, 15333 word research doc on how to get there. I also started studying DS&A. I wrote 75 pages/11135 words of algo notes and did 223 leetcode questions.
Then, I started applying. My research told me that the easiest way to get in was through an internship, which became the first step in my vision.
I did 89 apps but couldn't get a single interview. Summer was coming up close, so I started asking around in my home town. It worked out. I joined a local business to build their website. I learned fullstack web dev, deployment, aws. But, it was unpaid. To me, it didn't matter: I got something on my resume and finished the first step of my vision.
Next year rolls around. I apply again. Nothing. So I went w/ my backup: my school's internship program. The companies were trash. Fortunately, because I had that one internship, I was able to get four offers, and joined the best company in the program, which didn't mean much but was a starting point.
The biggest downside, though, was that it was a 16-month placement. I negotiated down to 12, but it was still a waste of time since it wasn't a brand name place. Fortunately, it was still a great company: good team, good colleagues, good product, good office, good flexibility. Salary was only 60k but in canada that goes a long-way, especially for a student. I also made the decision to leave my college town and move to toronto off of intuition: that intuition was validated within 4 hours of landing. I gained some real engg skills, built up my confidence, and reinforced intuition + agency.
But I had an itch that wouldn't go away; the 12 months felt hella long and out of the 300 people i met in toronto, I wasn't making friends. Once again, I leaned into my intuition: it told me to see the bay first-hand. I took two weeks of vacation to go visit. My mentor lived there (which I networked my way to and built a relationship with) and was kind even enough to let me crash at his guest house. I was beyond grateful. It let me save $3000, get to hangout with him, and serve as a starting point to conceptualize bay area culture.
Before leaving, I spent $400 on linkedin premium and cold-DMed 1000 people. I asked for advice on reddit and got absolutely hated on: "who the hell takes 2 weeks off when interning??," "don't come we need less tech people."
fuck em. I booked a ticket and went. Out of the 1000 people, I was able to meet five. It was the first time I experienced a place where everyone around you is smarter, faster, and bolder than you. I had spent 21 years in canada seeking an environment where I could find other ambitious people. I couldn't. Out of 357 conversations, I had only made three friends. But here, I finally could. Every third person I met in sf was the most successful, high-quality, high-agency, ambitious person I'd ever seen. People that spoke my language. People I could actually connect with. I could start building authentic relationships for the first time in years.
It was now the summer before my fourth year. This was my last chance to get a good internship and crack sf/nyc and faang or equivalent. I did 354 applications and only got one interview, which I choked. The research that I had done that was telling me to get internships just wasn't working. I messed up. I didn't have anything for the summer. So I leaned into my intuition again and asked myself a simple question: where do I need to be? The answer was clear. I booked a one-way flight to sf. No internship, no connections.
But how many poor college students that don't have internships do you know that have booked a one-way ticket to sf? Zero. In fact, I even got interrogated by the US Department of Homeland Security who said they'd never seen someone like me before.
But logic is a tool that's not useful when chasing your dreams. As a straight guy from an asian household, society teaches us to rely solely on logic. That's detrimental. Logic is a framework. It's useful in most situations in life, but the one place that it's terrible at is ambition. Because when ambition tells you to do absurd shit, logic will always convince you that it's impossible or stupid. So switch your framework. Lean into intuition instead–it's like logic, but non-argumentative and abstract.
I trusted my intuition and went to sf. I didn't know what I'd be doing or how it would turn out, but now my slowly gaining confidence told me "intuition > everything".
It was the worst financial decision I've ever made. It was the best life decision I've ever made.
Within two weeks, I was chatting with yc founders, 20 y/o stanford dropouts that were running millions, and famous content creators. I was in rooms where I was the only non-mit/stanford/berekely/harvard student or the only one that hadn't raised millions. I started making friends easily for the first time in years because people finally understood me, and vice versa. I was in the environment that I had been craving for the last eight years of my life. And time started moving exponentially fast. A single sf weekend equaled two canadian weeks.
I built a recruitment startup: spoke to users, made an mvp, and launched. I got accepted into yc's annual startup conference. During it, I had a moment where sam altman–probably the top 10 most influential people in all of modern history–was looking at me, standing just 10 feet away. Step #2 of my vision complete.
Unfortunately, I had to leave; senior year came and I had to go back to college. But something had changed. I'd seen what a utopia felt like, and I couldn't unfeel it. So I found an excuse: hackathons. I began skipping class and flying to hackathons every few weeks. I built at mit, harvard, berkeley, cmu, ucla. Got to work with cracked students and have fun partying in dorms across america. I posted about this on linkedin and it began going viral. I started getting recognized as the linkedin guy. News channels started interviewing me.
But I still didn't have a job lined up and no official way to make it the bay. I did 195 more apps and got nothing. Maybe the research I had done in 2022 that told me to get internships and apply to jobs was a lie, or just didn't work anymore. So I stopped applying.
Instead, I bet everything on content and moved to New York. My content and personal brand was getting noticed. I started getting 4, 5, 10 interview invites a week and went from companies ghosting me to me ghosting recruiters. Over five months, I did 59 interviews, 10 at yc companies, 3 at unicorns, all nyc/sf, paying up to 250k usd (346k cad).
However, I failed most of them. I hadn't practiced startup interviews and had gotten too reliant on ai. I disabled cursor and focused on fe, be, vibe coding, and architecture. It took like 15 more interviews before I began passing. I got my first offer. $160k. Founding engineer at yc company. Great team, cool product, and wonderful work. They flew me out to sf and I was able to meet the team.
But I wasn't at the finish line yet. After months of cold outreach, meeting people across the US, and countless rebrands, I finally got a meta interview. I prepped harder than I ever had in my life.
Then one morning, it was there. The email that made everything worth it. I read it once. Then again. And again.
I had finally done it. Step #3 of my vision complete.
It took 26,468 words of research. 223 leetcode questions. 10 trips and 231 days in america. $56,360. 987 people met across 8 cities. 68 interviews.
In 37 months I went from nothing to cracking cali + faang. Unpaid internship to $200k usd ($277k cad). No content to 1.6M views. No name college/city to sf & nyc. No friends to being surrounded by some of the coolest and most successful people on the planet. No confidence and social skills to agency, charisma, humor. Crying 3x a week to enjoying life again.
I rebuilt my vision and completed three major steps in three years.
It taught the most valuable lesson of my life: anything is fucking possible. Set a goal. Genuinely believe it. Start working on it. Have patience. Don't listen to the 99% of people that haven't accomplished it and only to the 1% that have. Before you know it, you'll be at the place that you once thought was never possible.