Stop Applying for Jobs (Do This Instead)

On this channel, we hate LeetCode, we hate algorithms, we hate data structures—we hate all this kind of stuff. We like to build. If you're in the same boat, if you don't like to grind LeetCode, welcome. This video is about how you can get a job without grinding LeetCode—you can just skip all of the hiring process.

The Realization

I had this realization as a combination of two things. I saw how one of the most important developers at OpenAI—he's built a bunch of kernels, important things essentially—and he's just a normal guy.

People looked up his LinkedIn account and he was working at irrelevant tech companies before. He went to a state college, no Ivy League degree at all. He didn't go to MIT, Stanford, or Harvard. He didn't work at a bunch of big startups or companies. He was just a normal guy. Then he joined OpenAI and now he's apparently a pillar of the company.

It just goes to show you how you can do anything. You can just do things. That's something we hear all the time in tech—you can just do things.

The Poke Example

This video is a combination of this thought about the OpenAI guy and a thought I had with Poke. If you're on Twitter/X, you probably saw Poke. Poke is basically an AI assistant that lives in your phone and you can text at any time. It has automation, sends you messages, reads your emails, reminds you of appointments, plugs into your calendar. Poke is very good.

I had the realization that you could just get hired at the company behind Poke by just building stuff for Poke. It's that simple. If you're participating in the community, helping people, building stuff for the community, then at some point—guess what—when developers need to hire someone, who are they going to hire? They're going to hire the guy who's familiar with the whole Poke ecosystem.

The Attio Strategy

We can transfer this to different companies. For example, Attio. It's basically a CRM, but it has lots of integrations and APIs and developer stuff. They're a developer-first CRM and they just hosted a hackathon a few weeks ago.

If you were looking for a job and you like Attio, you saw that they just raised their Series A or B—if you like the product, if you'd like to work at a startup, join the hackathon, try to win, build something for Airtable, and then you have a job just like this.

You can skip the HR, you can skip the screening call, you can skip the interview, you can skip the application. You're just building stuff, putting it out there, and you get hired.

How I Got My Job

This is basically what happened to me. I met a guy at a Cursor meetup. I told him I was building an AI voice agent—I actually built Maximo, you might have seen it on my social accounts. I told this guy what I had done and I also had a mobile app in production in the app store.

He was like, "That's awesome. I might be looking for someone who knows how to build AI chatbots and agents." Just like this, I got my job because I had built previously something and someone who needed that something was like, "Awesome, let's go." Then he introduced me to the founder of the startup and we had two conversations and I was hired.

The Shopify Example

Shopify is here from Ottawa. It's actually funny how Toby is a very big inspiration in the city because Shopify is from Ottawa. Let's say you want to work at Shopify. You love the mission, you love what they're doing, they have lots of AI integrations and agents.

So what do you do instead of applying to 50,000 roles at Shopify? You could just build apps for the Shopify store, you could be a Shopify partner and help merchants build their Shopify stores, you can answer people's questions on Shopify's help center. You can just immerse yourself, build stuff, and at some point someone will see everything you've been doing.

Imagine two people just graduated college, applying to the same full-stack developer role. One has experience working at a health tech startup. The other one has: developed four Shopify stores for different brands, is a Shopify community ambassador answering people's questions for 10 months (level 5 on Shopify help center), and has two apps deployed in the Shopify store.

Who's going to get hired? Of course the Shopify guy because you've been building stuff for Shopify and it shows you're legit.

The Google Agent Example

Google just launched a new agent protocol so agents can buy stuff online for you. They released it this week and it's open source. ChatGPT also has an orders button—the world is getting ready for AIs to browse online.

Google's protocol is open source. You can go and contribute to the protocol. As soon as ChatGPT releases this new orders thing where AI can buy stuff for you online, you already know how the protocol works. You are building stuff constantly for the AI purchasing online niche.

You can just get a job at Google—or people at Google or other people contributing to the open source protocol will see you contributing, answering questions, opening PRs, and you're going to draw attention to yourself.

My Personal Success

This is extremely important if you're a new grad just like me—I graduated college 5 months ago. I had a job before college and now I have my second job in tech, basically because I build stuff. It really is that simple.

The first job was because I built a community. I was trying to put together a community and I met someone who gave me a chance. The second job was because I met someone who knew someone, and because I knew what they were looking for, I got hired.

This works especially if your goal is to work at a startup, somewhere without lots of bureaucracy. If you're thinking government, forget it—this won't work. But maybe this is just a limiting belief I have. Who knows? Maybe you can get a job at Palantir, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Meta just by building stuff.

The Bottom Line

The message of this video is: just build something. Forget going to college and hoping you're going to get a job by knowing HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. We are not in 2020 anymore. It doesn't work like this.

Build something, put it out there, help people, and let the world know what you are able to do.