Sajjaad Khader · 11:30 · https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7vSphawXyY
1. How to Stand Out in Tech
0:00 Computer science [music] is broken. The job market sucks and companies keep trying to replace you with AI. But despite that, there are still people out there landing high-paying tech jobs. [music] And instead of getting replaced by AI, they turn AI into their unfair career advantage. And the reason they're winning is because they understand the four golden rules to tech, which I'll cover in this video. [music] Even if you have no experience whatsoever, you can start learning and implementing these rules in your own life right away.
0:25 So with that said, sit back, relax, take notes, and let's get started. The first
2. Learn From Experts
0:31 rule for winning in tech is to always be the dumbest person in the room. And I know this sounds confusing, but bear with me. A few years ago, I walked into my first big tech conference, and I felt pretty confident. I studied computer science at Georgia Tech, I worked for years as a software engineer, and I was pretty confident in my skills. Until I met the people there. At the conference, I was surrounded by AI leads, data scientists, and researchers, literally people leading the AI industry.
0:55 And so just casually, they would throw out words like agent-to-agent AI, MCP, agent-to-agent protocol, and a bunch of things I had never even heard about. All I knew was that AI was this ChatGPT thing that you could write essays with. So there I was just nodding around like an NPC as if I understood what was going on. I felt so out of place and pretty incompetent considering everyone there. And so here I was going into this thinking that I was a super smart tech engineer, but within just a few minutes, I realized I knew nothing.
1:23 And at first, it did crush my confidence, but then I started looking at the room differently. Instead of seeing a bunch of people who knew more than me, I saw a bunch of people that I could learn from. And once I made that shift, I stopped worrying about how little I knew and started paying attention to how much I could learn. I asked questions and wrote down every unfamiliar term. By the time I left, my conference notes effectively became my AI curriculum.
1:46 I went home and started researching even deeper. What exactly is an AI agent? How is generative AI different from machine learning? And one question led to another, and I started experimenting with different AI tools and building projects. And all of a sudden, that conference went from being one of the most intimidating experiences to becoming my launchpad into the world of AI. And now, when I walk into tech conferences, I can actually follow the conversations, ask better questions, and even interview the same kinds of industry leaders I once felt terrified speaking to.
2:16 And so, that's why you need to be the dumbest person in the room. If you're the dumbest person, you by definition have the most to gain. Because if you're the smartest, that means everyone is looking up to you, which means you have nothing to learn because you know more than everyone else. So, be that dumb person. Think of yourself like a sponge that absorbs all the knowledge out there, and that will really accelerate your career and serve as your cheat code for actually winning
3. Build in Public
2:40 in tech. The second lesson, if you really want to win in tech, is to understand that silence is career suicide. And to really help you understand this, I'm going to go over the story of Mr. Mark Lou. So, a few years ago, Mark was really struggling. He had spent years launching different tech startups, and pretty much all of them failed. For years, coding, launching, and trying to get people to buy, but eventually shutting down every single one of his tech startup projects.
3:05 And his career was going so bad that he had to get a minimum wage job just to keep his family afloat. But eventually, he changed his entire approach. Instead of working in isolation on a coding project, he joined a community of developers. And every time he created something, he shared the process online. He posted what he was building and how he was building it. And so, people online were watching him develop his skills and learn his decision-making. Even when a project failed, he gained feedback, learned what people wanted, and gave his audience another reason to follow his journey.
3:34 And by August 2023, Mark had built an audience of around 35,000 people. That's 35,000 people who knew Mark's story and had seen him consistently build and already trusted his abilities. And so, eventually, once he finally created a project called ShipFast, he already had a warmed-up customer base. He launched that business and within the first two days, he made $6,000. And within the first month, he generated $40,000. And then shortly thereafter, he crossed $1 million in total revenue.
4:03 That is the power of being loud because silence will kill your tech career. Especially nowadays, everyone says, "Go create a coding project."And in the world of AI, creating a coding project is super easy. But getting people to actually care about your project and care about you and hire you, that is the real challenge. So now, anytime you create a project, I want you to go post that on LinkedIn, post that on Twitter, and get feedback from an audience that you'd be building up.
4:28 Even if you do a project in class, post it online. Recruiters are regularly watching LinkedIn. One of my friends started posting machine learning content and by the third post he made, he had recruiters in his DMs offering him an interview. And so, you cannot afford to operate in silence if you actually want to win. Closed mouths do not get fed. You need to be loud and that's how you will succeed. >> Really quick, if you want to see just how powerful AI actually is, listen up.
4:53 As a person who makes videos on YouTube, there's a lot of stuff that happens behind the scenes. I have to research ideas, write scripts, create thumbnails, and keep everything on schedule. And I used to be super disorganized with random notes everywhere. But now, I found Abacus AI Agent and I used it to build my YouTuber operating system. Here's how it works. I describe the project I want in English and it turns the idea into a full-stack app without having to code or hire a development team.
5:19 For this app, I created a dashboard where I can save ideas, manage scripts, and track every video from filming to editing and publishing. And this isn't just a visual prototype. Abacus AI Agent builds the front end, back end, logic, and database, so everything is saved and updated. It can also add authentication for private accounts, connect Stripe to accept payments, and publish the app with live hosting. It can even act as a QA engineer by testing the app, finding bugs, fixing them, and publishing the working version.
5:45 If you have an app idea you've been sitting on, check out Abacus AI agent. The basic subscription costs $10 and includes three free agent tasks each month. Link in the description. And now back to the video. The third rule to
4. Automate With AI Tools
5:57 winning in tech, and this one's super important, and that is to avoid the speed tax. And this is something that I struggled with early in my career. So, when I first started working as a software engineer, I had a co-worker who was also a junior engineer. We were on the same team building similar features and shipping code. We were pretty much the same level. But somehow, he would always be able to ship out nearly three times as much work as me.
6:18 Plus, his code was cleaner, more accurate, and just overall better. And for the longest time, I just assumed he was a genius. Maybe he was a coding prodigy or just generally smarter. But then one day, he shared his screen while working and I finally learned the truth. It's not that he was this crazy coding genius. He was playing the same game as me, but he quietly changed a part of his workflow that made it impossible for others to keep up with him. Here's what I mean.
6:42 Every time I would receive a feature request ticket, I would create a plan, code the entire feature out, and then go through my code, fix all the formatting, and add test cases. But his workflow was different. The moment he saved a file, he had a script that would automatically format his code. And the test cases would also automatically generate themselves. This was the pre-ChatGPT era, by the way, so it is pretty impressive. And so, his whole workflow was automated while mine was manual.
7:05 And this is what the speed tax is. The speed tax was the cost and pretty much everything that I was losing by operating slowly. Because he had everything automated and was efficient and faster, he was able to develop more. And over time, that let him get more opportunities, get promoted, and overall win in tech while leaving everyone else behind. And especially in the age of AI, this difference is being exemplified even further. And before you say it, I know what you're thinking.
7:31 Obviously, Sudo Job, we need to use AI to speed us up. We need to use GitHub or ChatGPT to generate code for us. We shouldn't be manually coding anymore. And well, sure, that is great. But I would say if you're only using AI to code, you're barely scratching the surface. For example, before AI on my keyboard, I used to type everything manually like a medieval scribe. And I could type a respectable 57 words per minute, but now with an AI tool like WhisperFlow, I can speak to my laptop at around 166 words per minute.
8:01 That means I get my thoughts onto the page three times faster and produce three times more work. Effectively, I removed the speed tax from my typing. Similarly, in other domains of your life, why on earth would you ever spend hours and hours as an engineer creating a colorful presentation when you have tools like Gamma and JetBrains that do it for you in minutes. Why would you ever do manual research when you have tools like Perplexity and Notebook LM that can find, organize, and summarize information for you instantly.
8:27 All that time and energy that you're wasting on this stuff, that is effectively your speed tax. And so, if you're watching this out there, I want you to overall look in your life and think, what are things that I'm wasting time on? Is it typing? Is it creating presentations? Is it sorting through emails? If there's an AI tool out there that can help you automate it, go ahead and automate it. Because if not, all the time that you're wasting not focusing on your main goals as an engineer and trying to win in tech, that will be lost opportunities.
8:56 And that will be the speed tax you are paying while all the other people around you get ahead of you and start winning.
5. Improve Your AI Coding Workflow
9:02 The fourth lesson in winning in tech is to stop prompting AI and start directing it. Think of AI like an incredibly powerful horse. A horse can be faster and stronger than you will ever be, but if you put someone on top who has no idea where they're going, all of that power becomes useless. The horse might run in the wrong direction, potentially attack people, and a lot of crazy stuff could happen. And that's actually how most people use AI.
9:25 They open up ChatGPT and say, "Build me an app."And then the AI gives them something generic, and then they say, "Make it better."And then the AI might change a few colors. Then they say, "No, make it even better." As if that even does anything. And then ultimately, there's this back and forth loop where AI makes tiny corrections while the human secretly hopes that the AI will read their mind. Then it's kind of like riding a horse, but just screaming random directions at it hoping it'll find the right path.
9:49 And so, if you actually want to win in tech and actually get ahead of most people in AI, you must learn the RPI workflow. And this is the workflow that will elevate AI into becoming your thought partner rather than just a bot. First is R. You've got to make AI research the problem. For example, if you have a task that deals with adding authentication to an application, do not immediately start coding. Instead, tell AI to investigate the proper practices for handling users, security protocols, and databases.
10:17 Then ultimately, it should return relevant files with the short summary of how the system works. Once you do that and review the results, second is P. You've got to make AI create you a plan. The AI should lay out exactly which files need to change, what it'll add to each one, and how every change will be tested. After that, you, as the engineer, need to review that plan before AI starts executing and writing a whole bunch of code.
10:42 Finally, we got I, and this is the time where you let AI implement the plan one step at a time. It'll go and implement step one of the plan, and then you have to go and check through the process. Then it'll do step two, same thing over and over again until AI iteratively implements the whole project. Far too many people just want AI to do everything for them, but you need to start taking control and directing AI if you actually want to get ahead of most people and ultimately win in tech.
11:08 Well, that's about all I have in this video. I really hope that you guys enjoyed it, and if you did, make sure to hit the like button. Subscribe if you haven't already. If you're interested in my absolutely free tech newsletter where I talk about the latest of AI, coding, software engineering, link for that down below in the description. And if you're interested in the interview that I had with the CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, you might want to watch this video right here.