driving that $35 billion every year
I've made a strong enough impact to report to the CPO of a conglomerate
I wasn't even paid
I grew tired of...
bananas
Carnegie Mellon University
It's super easy to get into
Ah, nihongo desuka? 🙄
I'm trilingual 😎
Reported directly to CPO
They are not lies
but exaggerated
I wanna show off 😅
Welcome to Pirate King. I'm Daniel, a Software Engineer at Microsoft, ex-Software Engineer at Amazon and ebay
and also a Pro Career Mentor at two educational startups
Here, we talk about tips and tricks on how to land a successful career in tech
In this video, I'm going to walk you through my current resume so that you can see for yourself exactly how I prepare for my jobs
I'm also going to use this opportunity to introduce who I am as we go through it together like where I worked, what I did
My goal is to see if my resume can give a clear picture of my entire career journey to you
Because if it does, it means my resume is indeed effective, and also you have a good sample that you can benchmark against
After this video, I'm going to talk about my Software Engineering jobs in detail
For example, what I did to land the job at Amazon. How I prepared for Microsoft
How I transitioned internationally from a Software Engineer in South Korea to one in the US
So if you are interested in my career journey and experiences, don't forget to hit subscribe so that you get notified when they come up
Before I start, my career as a full-time Software Engineer is about six years long. Three years at Microsoft, one year at Amazon, and two years at ebay
I did three internships before I started my first full-time job. Two in South Korea, one in Japan.
So, yeah.
I'm trilingual 😎
Three companies, three internships, in a relatively short career. So why am I saying all this?
Number one. If I worked at six companies total, would I have interviewed and got offers from only six?
Number two. My point is basically, I've done a lot of job searches
And one thing that I've learned by doing so is that you don't really need everything to be perfect to land those jobs - including Amazon and Microsoft
For example, you'll find out soon that a good portion of my resume is actually pretty exaggerated
And I had access to all sorts of insider information even before the interviews actually began
So here they are. The first thing you should notice is how I keep a timeline of my resumes
I have this habit of regularly visiting my resume to keep it up to date
Why? One, if there's a good project that I worked on recently, I don't want to come back later and scribble it down from my recollection
I want to record it when it's clear and fresh
Two, I want to be ready at all times It might be a good opportunity, or I might get laid off
Who knows? I wanna be prepared for any circumstances
And what really helped keep my resume organized for the past six years or so is having a solid first resume
It becomes the core that evolves as you progress in your career
As you can see, all my resumes virtually share the same format. All I did was pruning my resume with more recent, important experiences as my career grew
Just remember. This is best done by having that first solid resume
Alright. There it is. This is my current up-to-date resume
And, yeah. I know. It's a dark themed version
Now, I wouldn't recommend you do the same with yours and create a dark-theme version right away
It's only a few months ago that I all of sudden had this impulse to go dark-theme with my resume. Why?
Well, I wanted to stray away from those mundane white background resumes that pretty much look the same
You know, a way to differentiate mine. But most importantly
I just love dark theme 🤪
Again, don't try this especially if you are still in the early stages of your career
I've decided to take the risk and be over-adventurous myself because I'm confident that I have developed enough work history by now
But we should all start off with a core base, and that's the original white-background resume.
Back to my resume. I've purposely removed my home address
email address, and phone number to protect my personal data.
Although I'm pretty sure they're stolen by hackers already
So my resume starts with the Skills section This is where I put all my work-related non-trivial skills
Trivial skills are stuff like Microsoft Office, Windows, MacOS, and Visual Studio Code
If you are a Software Engineer
don't put those in
I have made the mistake myself too before
but it's like a pianist confessing she knows how to play the piano
So first and foremost, the list of my programming languages. I've been working with Microsoft stack for most of my career, so there's C# and .NET
My mother language Java, here's JavaScript for the frontend stuff
My database skills both relational and NoSQL. And don't forget to include the important libraries and frameworks such as node, react, redux, jQuery, etc
Azure, Cloud Computing, and CI/CD. The hottest experience for a Software Engineer nowadays because virtually everything is going cloud
Don't forget to include the unit testing frameworks. Knowing how to test your code is important
And a small mention of my language skills
To be honest, Korean and Japanese. They don't really matter in the US especially for a Software Engineer.
But I included them in my resume anyways
because you know...
I wanna show off 😅
Going into my experiences... Now before I elaborate further
I'm going to be honest with you and say that a lot of the things in my resume
are exaggerated
They are not lies but exaggerated. Why?
Well, why would a recruiter or a hiring manager consider my resume if it's not impressive?
I wanna catch their eyes and grab their attention with those fancy words so that they give my application a shot
For example, this first bullet point here at Microsoft.
and other crap
First of all, if I really built the entire system that's responsible for driving that billions of dollars of revenue every year
I wouldn't be here making YouTube videos
But I did take a part in it. And I'm still involved in it.
That $35 billion+ number is something I googled up too
I just searched for the revenue of Microsoft you know, just to quantify this bullet point and make it look cool
And hey, there you go, copy and paste
Amazon. I only stayed at Amazon for about a year...
for various reasons...
Don't get me wrong. Amazon is a great company
They give you free Starbucks coffee $100 to spend on amazon.com every year
And of course
Free bananas 🍌
Maybe I can tell you later in another video why I decided to leave Amazon so early
But at this point, let me just say that I grew tired of...
bananas 🍌
First of all, I'm not even sure if there was a division named Prime Engineering Division
I just made one up cuz I couldn't think of a better name.
And again, it's an exaggeration because I'm not solely responsible for building the entire platform
Some of the codebase was written in angular, but to be honest
I've never touched one myself...
but it's here
I worked on AWS and DynamoDB only during my last month at Amazon
but it's here too
Cuz, you know...
it's cool to have AWS on your resume
And we arrive at ebay. My first full-time job. Same thing with my other experiences. Like...
Take a look at this "Reported directly to CPO" part
It's true that I sent emails which included the Chief Product Officer, the Vice President of ebay in the email list
but it wasn't an official report of any sort
To give a brief context on what happened, I was responsible, as an entry-level engineer, for creating a weekly usage report for the company's new payment system
And this kind of report is more convenient by automating it than manually creating one myself every time
with like.. what? Excel and shit
So in order to save myself the hassle, I programmed a dashboard with all the numbers, data, plus a fancy looking chart at the top that anyone can come and see.
But notice how instead of saying I simply worked on it alone, I said
"the lead engineer driving the entire thing."
I've just transformed an entry-level engineer
into an engineering lead simply because I built the whole thing
Now, it is true that the platform and the report somehow reached the CPO's ears.
I honestly don't know how as the target audience of this report was my department only
But it did reach her, and she personally asked me to directly include her in the weekly mailing list
So I did
And made it look like I've made a strong enough impact to report to the CPO of a conglomerate directly.
Internships. I did an internship at NCSoft. For those who do not know, it's the biggest game company in South Korea
Most well known for creating the MMORPGs Lineage, Aion, and Blade & Soul
I also did a contract work at a mid-sized game company, Cyberstep, in Japan
This is when I studied game development in Tokyo. It's also when I picked up my Japanese.
Ah, nihongo desuka? 🙄
Lastly, there's another internship that I did - my very first one - but I didn't put it in cuz I just don't think it's worth the extra two lines at the moment
To tell you the truth too, it's called an internship, but it's more like a voluntary work because
I wasn't even paid
My dad asked his friend whether he could find an internship for me, and his friend ended up introducing me to an acquaintance of his
The company wasn't willing to pay me, but I still took it because
that's how desperate I was - I mean
I just wanted that work experience
So the point is. It's usually the first work experience or internship that's difficult to penetrate
Once you get one, it just gets so much easier onwards
After I had that something to write on my resume, I was able to find work in Japan while studying.
And from that, an internship at a game giant in South Korea. And then, ebay, and Amazon, and Microsoft, and so on.
And education. I guess we can't talk about my resume without talking about my school because education is an important piece of a resume
So yeah, I went to Carnegie Mellon University
I could tell you how I got there
But you probably don't need to because it's super easy to get into
You just need a decent grade in high school math
and I think that's about it?
Oh but it costs like what?
$60,000 a year now?
So in summary, CMU is an easy school to get into with a huge pay wall
In fact, my grades aren't spectacular
but I didn't want to waste so much money on the tuition that I graduated
a semester early 😎
Projects. COLORMAN. So this is a personal game project that I made with Unity when COVID first hit in early 2020.
I've always wanted to make my own game sometime but been giving myself all kinds of excuses not to.
But I finally decided to check it off my bucket list because the stay-home order was in place, and I had nothing else to do anyways
And to be honest, it's a shitty game
I don't see why anyone would play this piece of crap
But I did spend about a month or two learning how to make a game on Unity. You know, by googling, stack overflow, or watching YouTube tutorials.
Just like how all Software Engineers do?
And I even bought a MacBook because you need an Apple computer to put it on the App Store
Let's see if it's still available though. It's called Colorman: A Color Adventure.
Colorman. What a name, huh?
And hey, 5 out of 5 stars. It's a perfect rating from the two customers
who actually made the effort to rate this abomination
Me
and my wife
If, by any chance, you are still interested in this piece of crap, try searching for it on your iPhone.
For android, my recollection is that it was removed from Play Store simply because I didn't make the necessary updates 🙄
Spike is actually a better game that I created It's actually much better than COLORMAN
And look. The game even won an award at an Amateur Game Festival in Japan
I was the only foreigner to win an award out of like what, a hundred projects?
But I made Spike when I was studying game development in Tokyo
It was a PC DOS game, so my baby never had the chance to see the lights in public
I honestly love this game and even thought of bringing it to mobile
instead of that COLORMAN shit
But gave up mainly because I couldn't think of a good way to translate those four-directional keyboard movements onto a mobile touchscreen.
Lastly, achievements. This is again, something that's not really helpful in the US, but I put in anyways because I did put a fair amount of effort into them
It's a good reminder, and I guess, a reminiscence of all the effort that I put in while I was alone in Japan
That Bronze Award is referring to Spike
The Data Processing Technician is a government certified IT certificate in Japan. And it's not easy to get.
The pass rate for the exam that I took is only 24.5%
hey, it's all in Japanese
Same thing with the last one. Certificate of Japanese Language Proficiency N1. The test is also called JLPT N1
The pass rate for this test that I took is only 24.1%. You can think of this test like the TOEFL in the US
The difference is that you do get a score, but the certificate itself is either a pass or fail
And you cannot get an office job in Japan as a foreigner without the certificate because most companies in Japan require it.
Lastly, you might think my score's pretty low: 140/180
But actually, all you need to pass this test is 100 points out of 180
And because people cannot get that 100 points out of 180
75% of them fail the test
Yet hey
My score's 140. 😎
Alright. We've finally gone through every part of my resume
You might be thinking, "Hey, isn't this guy showing off too much?"
Well, you are right. I did show off a bit. I try not to in my real-life, at least I don't think I do
But there's a reason why I intentionally showed off in this video. Why?
Because this is my resume, and resumes are meant to be show offs
Think about it. You are trying to sell yourself to the job market
I mean, why are you important? Why are you valuable? What differentiates you from others? What is so special about you? And why should they hire you?
There's a difference between showing off and being arrogant
It's a thin line between the two
but a difference that can affect the outcome of your offer.
Remember, people love modesty
but they do not hire it
So, what do you guys think about my resume? Do you think it's attractive and interesting enough?
Let me know what you think in the comments below
Give it a thumbs up if you liked this video
Make sure to subscribe if you want more videos like this
Coming up next, I'm going to share how I landed the job at Amazon
and what you need to successfully land one yourself
So hit that subscribe, and get notified when it's crisp and fresh
Thanks for watching. I'll see you on the next one. Bye