5 Things I Wish I Knew Before Joining FAANG!
About this video
Jeff Su shares five lessons from seven years in corporate life — two years as a management consultant based in New York City and the last five at a FAANG tech company in sales and marketing roles — learned by observing high performers. First, build credibility with zero experience by reducing friction for others. Second, influence without authority through what a Harvard Business Review article calls constructive persuasion, essentially taking initiative and doing most of the work upfront. Third, visibility does not mean boasting; sharing knowledge and experience is what gets people noticed and credited. Fourth, say no intelligently by explaining your current timeline and pointing the requester to another resource. Fifth, network with an open mind rather than a single agenda, which in his case led from sales to product marketing after meeting a senior marketing manager at a team offsite, followed by four internal interviews over two months.
Key takeaways
- Reduce friction to build credibility: send documents by email with attachments and a brief description instead of chat links, share a Gmail search URL to solve a lost email in one step, and include detailed agendas and action-oriented follow-ups
- Influence without authority via constructive persuasion — for example, pre-building a structured, color-coded revenue projections table that marks who inputs what by when and linking people to their specific cell
- Gain visibility by sharing knowledge, not boasting: an internal workshop by Eric Henry from the Australia sales team and Jeff’s own onboarding slides featured in a monthly newsletter to APAC sales teams are given as examples
- Say no by stating how long current tasks will take, staying open to help later, and offering another form of support such as a dashboard with filters or a curated list of links and resources
- Network with an open mind: aim for a coffee chat with someone outside your core team once a week or at least once every two weeks, and be genuinely curious to find collaboration opportunities
Episode details: published June 29, 2021 · 8:06 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Jeff Su’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.
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