My Last Day at Google (after 9 years)
About this video
Filmed on his last morning at Google after nine years, Jeff Su explains why he resigned and what he learned. He joined the sales team in 2016 as its youngest member and the only one with zero sales experience, coming from consulting with, in his words, a skill set of mediocre slides and polished small talk. In Google’s hands-off culture he received little formal training and, at what he calls the low point of his career, failed the mandatory mock sales pitch three times in a row — something he says had never happened at Google before — and developed a fear of calling clients, preferring email. A colleague’s Chinese saying, roughly ‘don’t punch with your left hand if you’re right-handed’, reframed it: play to your strengths. He decided his youth and inexperience were advantages (he could work longer hours than anyone, and newcomers are forgiven mistakes), scheduled one-on-ones with everyone on the team, spent his own money traveling to shadow senior reps on client visits, and spent every weekend of that first quarter learning the Google Ads product. By his account it worked: he was ranked the number one salesperson globally in the small business segment for one quarter and was promoted in just eight months. The two lessons he draws are to use the strengths you actually have even when you feel unqualified, and that ’everything is figureoutable’ — the memory of surviving those first three months became his standing evidence for every later challenge, including the courage to resign. For why he quit, he names one big pull factor and two smaller push factors, found through the Odyssey Plan exercise by Stanford’s Dave Evans and Bill Burnett: write in detail your life five years out on (1) your current path, (2) a completely different alternative path, and (3) a radical path where money, social obligations, and other people’s opinions are irrelevant; he links Ali Abdaal’s video on the exercise.
Key takeaways
- Play to your actual strengths when you feel unqualified: his turnaround came from treating youth and inexperience as advantages (longer hours, forgiveness for mistakes) instead of hiding them.
- Do the unglamorous reps: one-on-ones with everyone on the team, shadowing senior reps at his own expense, and every weekend of the first quarter learning the product.
- Use the Odyssey Plan’s three five-year write-ups (current path, alternative path, radical path with money and opinions removed) to surface what actually pulls you.
- Audit your reasons honestly into pull versus push factors — his were one pull (teaching at scale) and two pushes (corporate politics, and wanting conflict-free independence to review tools).
- Keep the ’everything is figureoutable’ reference point: surviving your worst professional stretch becomes the evidence you cite yourself in every later hard decision, including resigning.
Episode details: published June 3, 2025 · 7:55 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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