The Art Of Winning In Tech — Transcript

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1. 0:00There has never been a better time to be
2. 0:01a software [music] engineer. I know
3. 0:02everyone's scared about the whole AI
4. 0:04wave, but if you're anything like me,
5. 0:05you got interested in software because
6. 0:07of the ability [music] to make something
7. 0:08real, something another person could
8. 0:10actually use, something that could blow
9. 0:12up and change the world, all while just
10. 0:14needing a laptop and an idea, [music]
11. 0:16and that has never been more achievable
12. 0:17than now. What used to take a team of
13. 0:19five can now take one [music] person.
14. 0:21What used to take years of learning
15. 0:22syntax and documentation and writing
16. 0:24every single line by hand, you can now
17. 0:26do in a fraction of the time. [music]
18. 0:27And trust me, I know everywhere you look
19. 0:29and all over the comments of this video,
20. 0:30people are going to say software
21. 0:31developers will be completely wiped out.
22. 0:33But the ones getting wiped out by the AI
23. 0:35wave aren't losing [music] because
24. 0:36they're bad developers, they're losing
25. 0:38because that world of software is fading
26. 0:40out. But the people winning, you know
27. 0:41that one guy in your classes with
28. 0:43[music] five internships and a job lined
29. 0:44up, or the guy who built something real
30. 0:46enough that a company just hired them
31. 0:47for it, or the back-end engineer at a
32. 0:49normal tech company who [music] became
33. 0:50so productive with AI that they now own
34. 0:52systems they would have never touched,
35. 0:54or the random developer charging [music]
36. 0:55$50 a month for a tool they built in a
37. 0:57weekend, or the founders chasing a
38. 0:59vision that they actually [music]
39. 1:00believe in with a team of two instead of
40. 1:0220, they're all winning for the same
41. 1:03reason. They understood the new rules
42. 1:05faster about what to build, how to build
43. 1:07it, and how to use every resource
44. 1:08available to close the gap between
45. 1:10[music] where they are and where they
46. 1:11want to be. So, instead of getting wiped
47. 1:12out by this new wave of software
48. 1:13engineering,
49. 1:17picture two types of people. The first
50. 1:19person is the spectator. [music] For
51. 1:20whatever reason, they never fully leaned
52. 1:22into the AI wave, and honestly, part of
53. 1:24it's probably because the entire space
54. 1:25feels overwhelming. They hear LLMs, rag
55. 1:28agents, GPT, Claude, OpenAI, Anthropic,
56. 1:30and after a certain point, it just all
57. 1:32starts blending into one giant [music]
58. 1:33cloud of AI words. Or they've been told
59. 1:35that using AI somehow makes them a worse
60. 1:37programmer, so they keep their distance
61. 1:39from it. But on the other hand, you have
62. 1:40the surfer. [music] The surfer
63. 1:41understands that this is a field built
64. 1:43on abstraction. Nobody calls you a fake
65. 1:45programmer for using frameworks or
66. 1:46libraries, Stack Overflow, random
67. 1:49open-source code where you don't even
68. 1:50know how it works. So, instead of
69. 1:52resisting the wave, they learn how to
70. 1:53move with it. They use AI to learn
71. 1:55fundamentals faster, to experiment
72. 1:57faster, to close the gap between what
73. 1:59they can imagine and what they can
74. 2:00actually [music] build. Maybe you're
75. 2:01building web apps and you use AI to
76. 2:03scaffold an entire dashboard in a day.
77. 2:05Or maybe you're building a game engine
78. 2:06and using AI to help explain some brutal
79. 2:08graphics concept [music] that would have
80. 2:10taken you hours to decode from
81. 2:11documentation alone. The leverage looks
82. 2:13different depending on the field, but
83. 2:15the surfers regardless are
84. 2:17experimenting. They're shortening the
85. 2:18distance between idea and execution.
86. 2:20They have an idea and immediately test
87. 2:22it. They automate boring parts of their
88. 2:23workflow. They use AI to understand
89. 2:25unfamiliar code bases faster, to
90. 2:27research faster, to prototype faster, to
91. 2:29debug [music] faster, to learn faster.
92. 2:31Their feedback loops are insanely short.
93. 2:33And that matters because software
94. 2:35engineering is becoming more and more of
95. 2:36a creativity game. In the sense that the
96. 2:38people that are winning are the people
97. 2:40noticing things, connecting things,
98. 2:41building weird tools that nobody even
99. 2:43thought of before, and following
100. 2:44curiosity fast enough before the
101. 2:46excitement [music] disappears. Because a
102. 2:48few years ago, if you wanted to test an
103. 2:49ambitious idea, the barrier was
104. 2:51enormous. Now some random student can
105. 2:53lock in for a weekend and accidentally
106. 2:55build something that thousands [music]
107. 2:56of people use. And I think a lot of
108. 2:57developers still haven't adjusted to how
109. 2:59insane this shift actually is. They're
110. 3:01still waiting until they [music] know
111. 3:03enough or until they master that one
112. 3:04language or framework or just completely
113. 3:06distancing themselves from this [music]
114. 3:08new wave of technology. Meanwhile, the
115. 3:09surfers moving the fastest are already
116. 3:12in the water, building, testing,
117. 3:13learning, shipping, adjusting. Because
118. 3:15programming is becoming less about
119. 3:17manually typing every brick [music]
120. 3:18yourself and more about what should
121. 3:20exist in the first place. Bottleneck is
122. 3:22no longer can you write the code, it's
123. 3:24can you [music] think clearly? Can you
124. 3:25recognize good ideas? Can you move on
125. 3:27them quickly? Can you learn fast enough
126. 3:29to keep up with your own ambition?
127. 3:30Because AI doesn't remove the need for
128. 3:32builders, if anything, it raises the
129. 3:34ceiling for the ones that actually
130. 3:35[music] build. But adapting to this new
131. 3:37wave isn't just about using AI, it's
132. 3:39about learning how to think clearly
133. 3:40while using it, which is why you need to
134. 3:43You can't just build in silence anymore.
135. 3:45[music] The people getting opportunities
136. 3:47right now, like internships, referrals,
137. 3:48startup roles, even research positions,
138. 3:50are often [music] the ones who are most
139. 3:52visible. They're building their projects
140. 3:54and they're also posting it on LinkedIn
141. 3:55or they're doing short demo [music]
142. 3:57videos on Twitter or maybe they're just
143. 3:58writing about random things that they
144. 4:00learn from a class or a bug or a failed
145. 4:02project or a random opinion that they
146. 4:04have about program. Not because they're
147. 4:05influencers, but it signals that this
148. 4:07person is actively [music] building. And
149. 4:09in this new era of software engineering,
150. 4:11especially at companies that are
151. 4:12literally shaping [music] this wave like
152. 4:14OpenAI or Anthropic, the people who are
153. 4:16reviewing talent here are looking for
154. 4:18builders who are already in motion. Not
155. 4:20just people who say that they're
156. 4:21interested. So you don't need a perfect
157. 4:23portfolio, you just need a visible one.
158. 4:25And the third part of this is that you
159. 4:27have to stop over-filtering what [music]
160. 4:29you're allowed to build. People get
161. 4:31stuck because they keep asking, "Is this
162. 4:33idea even good enough for my resume or
163. 4:35for my portfolio?" Or they might ask,
164. 4:37"Am I skilled enough or should I wait
165. 4:39until I know more?" But the people who
166. 4:40are actually improving are just using
167. 4:42[music] everything available to them and
168. 4:44just building it anyway. So using AI,
169. 4:46libraries, templates, [music] random
170. 4:48GitHub repos, documentation, they're
171. 4:50trying to brute-force learning through
172. 4:52building. Even if it feels not good
173. 4:53enough or maybe it feels too good and it
174. 4:55feels ambitious or if it feels messy or
175. 4:58something that one person shouldn't be
176. 4:59able to build.
177. 5:00>> [music]
178. 5:00>> That's exactly the point. Because the
179. 5:02fastest way to become that kind of
180. 5:03programmer, the one who just builds
181. 5:05things and makes it work [music] is to
182. 5:07stop negotiating with yourself every
183. 5:08time that you get an idea. You build it,
184. 5:10ship it, show it, iterate and slowly
185. 5:12your identity starts to catch up with
186. 5:14your behavior. And the one thing under
187. 5:15all of that, the thing that lets you
188. 5:17keep up with your own ambition is to
189. 5:18never stop learning. Which is why I
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