My motivation and mission:
Google sheet that contains list of all WCD lessons and links to all content:
Lesson reviewing how to use Google sheet:
In Lesson 027 I will be walking you through my career arc and discussing important events that have helped me grow as a person. I will be discussing my successes, failures, mistakes and what I have learned from them. I will also be discussing what I would do if I had a chance to do it all over again.
My Career
High Level
2009-2013 - Colorado School of Mines - Mechanical Engineer - 3.97 GPA
2013-2016 - ExxonMobil - Utility Systems Engineer
2016-2018 - Kiewit (BP) - Commissioning / Systems Completion Engineer
2018-2020 - Tesla - Sr. Commissioning / Systems Completion Engineer
2020-2021 - GATE (Shell) - Sr. Commissioning / Systems Completion Engineer
Colorado School of Mines
My parents were both sticklers for good grades; they did a good job of directly or indirectly influencing me to be a good student. My academic success was from consistency rather than pure brilliance. I had near perfect attendance, took detailed notes, was actively engaged in class, and always did my homework.
When I was evaluating which college to go to, I didn’t have a ****ing clue of what I wanted to do with my life. My parents were both computer programmers and strongly encouraged me to follow their footsteps, but I didn’t want to be like “Mom and Dad”. In hindsight, this was a terrible mistake; the best performing industry in the first decade of my career has been technology; this will also likely continue into the future.
I was good at math, so “normal” engineering seemed like a good fit. I convinced myself that studying mechanical engineering was a good idea because it is the broadest of the engineering disciplines and could be used to specialize in anything I found interesting later in life. Again, I didn’t know what I really wanted to do.
My parents said they would “help” with college, but I would largely be responsible for financing my education. As such, I used basic return on investment (ROI) math, which my father had taught me, to evaluate which engineering schools would be the most “bang for my buck”. This analysis quickly ruled out any IVY league schools that had tuitions of $50k-$60k per year. The incrementally higher salary I could expected from graduating from an IVY league school does not come close to making up for a tuition that was 2x-3x as much.
This analysis left we with three schools (all good public engineering schools):
Colorado School of Mines
Georgia Tech
Purdue
I ended up going with CSM because it was close to my parents and my grandfather who taught economics at UGA would have blacklisted me if I selected Georgia Tech.
Selecting CSM was one of the best decisions I have made in my life. I got an excellent education, made life long friends, and had a great time enjoying all the outdoor activities Colorado has to offer. My good grades at CSM got me a high paying job with ExxonMobil which was the largest public company by market cap when I graduated in 2013.
That being said… my education DID NOT prepare me AT ALL for working in industry.
ExxonMobil
The first few months at ExxonMobil were surreal. My starting salary was $97k/yr (which was more than either of my parents either made), I was living close to Washington D.C., I had very little responsibility, and the oil and gas industry was expanding rapidly. This did not last very long.
My responsibility increased dramatically after 6 months and I quickly realized that college did not prepare me to work in a large, competitive bureaucracy that has many smart engineers.
In hindsight, I was incredibly naïve and had un-realistic expectations.
Here is how my expectations declined at ExxonMobil:
Day 1 - I’m going to be CEO
Week 1 - I’m going to be President
Month 1 - I’m going to be VP
Month 12 - I’m going to be a middle manager
Month 24 - I hope I don’t get laid-off
A catalyst to my demise at ExxonMobil was the oil price dropping from $110 to $30 in 18 months between 2014 and 2016.
Although ExxonMobil assured all of the new-hires that their jobs were safe… labor is the largest operating expense for almost every business. When the revenue drops 70% in a year, upper management has to reduce head count to keep the company going.
I understand now that companies have to make difficult decisions all the time, but I was absolutely devastated when I got let-go in 2016. This was the first real “failure” of my life and it was a pivotal moment for me. The only moment in my life that I took harder was the sudden passing of my father in 2020.
There were several weeks of what I would call “frantic depression.” I had lost all purpose and meaning and felt utterly worthless. I quickly applied to about 200 jobs online and only heard back from a couple companies; nobody in the oil and gas industry was hiring.
I was very fortunate that my uncle was high-up at Kiewit and was able to get me an interview. I ended up getting offered the job and I accepted it immediately even though it paid roughly 80% of my ExxonMobil salary.
I am incredibly grateful for my uncle. I was in a very negative head-space and it might have taken me months to find a new position. I am also truly empathetic to others who experienced similar moments in their life and didn’t have the family connection to help them.
This experience definitely taught me how important personal connections are.
Networking is a key skill to learn early in life and implement every day. This doesn’t mean having 1,000 friends on Facebook or LinkedIn; rather, having a network of deep connections that you could ask for a favor.
A good test to determine your true network size is to ask yourself, how many $1,000 dollar friends you have. How many friends could you ask for a $1,000 loan or be willing to lend them $1,000? How about $10,000? With the rise of social media, a lot of people have thousands of $10 friends, but few $1,000 or $10,000 friends.
Kiewit
After feeling scorned by ExxonMobil, I was determined to prove them wrong in their assessment of my potential. This motivation has lasted for years; I definitely still have a small chip on my shoulder. My bitterness has melted away as I have become much more successful outside of ExxonMobil than if I would have stayed inside.
The two years I was at Kiewit taught me what hard work really means. I was working on a British Petroleum (BP) offshore platform that was being fabricated at Kiewit Offshore Services in Ingleside, TX. My average work week was 70-80 hours outside walking up and down stairs in the Texas heat.
My typical workday looked like:
3am - wakeup
3-5am - workout
6am - arrive at work
7am - morning meeting
7pm - arrive home and eat dinner
8pm - go to bed
My “ExxonMobil motivation” helped get me through this time in my life, but I definitely started to burn out. Things that contributed to my burnout:
Long hours as a salaried employee
Peers of mine were paid hourly and got overtime
My hourly rate was low by industry standards
Ungrateful upper management
No social life
Undesirable work location
No family / few friends nearby
That said, my two years at Kiewit were valuable to me. I had a good technical mentor that taught me useful and practical skills (that school did not). I learned things like Excel VBA, C#, and VB.Net and got very good at automating tasks and workflows which has proven invaluable to me as it has drastically increased my output capacity and saves me many hours per week.
I also had an AMAZING career mentor (Sarge) during this time who helped change my perspective on life. My father taught me many valuable things in life, but he was not an entrepreneur. He was technically gifted at coding and that is what he enjoyed. He worked as a programmer until he was 68 and starting a business never entered his mind.
On the flip side, Sarge embodies all of the personality traits of an entrepreneur; charismatic, out-going, hard-working, driven, and thinks outside of the box. I was astounded to learn how wealthy he was. Sarge made his initial money through the oil and gas industry, but a majority of his wealth was from his real estate business where he flipped houses.
After many beers and long conversations, Sarge helped open my mind to my real potential in life. He taught me this key principal:
If you want to become ultra wealthy in life, then you need to remove the TIME variable.
If you are getting paid per hour or per year, there is limited upside potential because you only have so many hours or years in your life. However, if you remove the time variable, there is unlimited upside.
This is not to say that you can’t get wealthy or live very well from working for an employer. If you work hard, save, and invest your money, you can do very well in life.
But after meeting Sarge, my career goals changed. I no longer want to be a CEO; instead, I am looking for opportunities that can make me money that have a minimal “time variable”.
A lot of my “minimal time variable side hustles” (like this one) are still in their infancy, but there will be a lot more to come in the future and I’ll use this platform as a mechanism for passing my mentorship forward like Sarge did for me.
Tesla
Something that a lot of successful people don’t discuss is how luck played into their success. I have been lucky in life. That’s not to diminish the hard work I have put in; hard work puts you in the position to take advantage of luck when it enters your life.
I consider Tesla a lucky break. I was burning-out fast at Kiewit and was not satisfied with my compensation. I was cold-called by a recruiter from Tesla to help finish the commissioning of the Reno, Nevada Gigafactory. After my site visit and a full-day of interviews, I accepted the position.
I went from making $90k/yr to $115k/yr base salary. More importantly, I also was receiving company equity. I was effectively receiving ~150 shares of Tesla stock per year (and that is before the 5:1 split that occurred in 2020). The equity portion of my compensation was about $50k/yr if you use the price of TSLA’s stock when I started which was about $333/share. My compensation effectively increased by about 80% from $90k to $165k in one year.
A key lesson I have learned is that you will not get big raises if you stay at the same company for a long time. It’s in the company’s best interest to give you the minimum raise to keep you in your seat.
Ironically, I have also learned a completely contradictory lesson from working at Tesla….
The grass is not always greener on the other side…
Although I was very happy at Tesla and thoroughly enjoyed my life for the 14 months I was in Reno, I decided to leave because I received an offer to work for GATE on a Shell platform that was due to be built in Singapore.
I am very grateful for my life and the wonderful people that are currently in it, but I do have some regret/remorse from leaving Tesla. I’m not saying I would change the past if I could; I am very happy and fulfilled with my current life, but there are definitely lessons I learned that you can apply to your major life and career choices.
GATE
GATE is the premier commissioning contractor for any offshore platform that gets installed in the gulf coast. They have a stellar reputation over the past 20 years and they win a lot of high-profile jobs with high-profile clients (e.g. Shell, BP, Anadarko).
GATE offered me a competitive compensation package for my assignment in Singapore that would be on the order of $250k to $300k per year. I was also offered to work on a high-profile Shell project (Whale). However, in my decision to leave Tesla, I feel like I didn’t evaluate the situation as well as I should have. I was too focused on the dollars and didn’t do enough research to justify leaving the excellent position I had at Tesla.
I gave up a high-paying position that had huge potential upside on stock price and career path.
So what has happened since I left:
The electric vehicle (EV) industry has exploded and the oil and gas industry has continued to suffer.
Tesla’s stock has gone from $333 to $3,675 ($67 to $735 post 5:1 split)
I have not left for Singapore as the Covid-19 pandemic has delayed the project roughly 24 months.
I have been working from home in Houston, TX and making considerably less than I was expecting to make in Singapore (it’s still a decent salary though).
It’s definitely a difficult pill to swallow that I could be making about $665k per year had I stayed at Tesla ($115k base salary + 150 shares * $3,675/share). Luckily I did keep some Tesla stock, but not nearly enough to make this pill any less difficult to swallow.
Although I do have some regret leaving Tesla, life has a way of taking you down the path your need vs the path you want. I have been blessed to meet my future wife in Houston and we truly have a happy and wonderful life together. Another lesson I have learned in the past 18 months is:
There are many things in life more important than money…
This Substack is obviously centered around money, but that’s not because it’s the most important thing in life. The reason I decided to orient this Substack around money is because I see it as the primary hurdle that prevents a majority of the population from living the life they want.
Money doesn’t buy you happiness, it buys you freedom. This freedom allows you to do what you want, with who you want, when you want. This is what allows you to live a happy, meaningful, and fulfilled life.
My career at GATE is still in its infancy. I do intend on finishing the assignment in Singapore. I’m set to go abroad the same time my future wife is going to be working abroad in Africa for her global medicine program.
Once I return from the assignment, I will re-evaluate my life and my career. One silver lining of Covid 19 is the mass adoption of working remotely. This is something that will definitely factor into my future career decisions as this flexibility is immensely valuable to me.
I will update this post as meaningful information is learned…
Lessons Learned
Below is a summary of lessons learned from my career with a brief explanation.
Don’t rely on school for education…
Schools largely teach you theoretical and impractical skills. Even specialized engineering degrees like mine don’t really prepare you to work in industry. A college degree is just a 4 year long test to prove that you are smart to an employer.
You can learn practical skills (like excel, coding, accounting, finance, etc.) from YouTube or cheap online courses. You can start learning at a very young age and be way ahead of your peers.
Networking is key…
There is a quote, “your network is proportional to your network.” The sentiment is correct. Having a large network of deep connections will open up more doors for you then the most prestigious credentials.
The best form of marketing is word of mouth. When an employee at a company recommends one of their friends, the hiring manager listens. 90% of hiring happens through referrals (not though online job boards).
Follow the mega trend…
Something I didn’t foresee was how dominant the technology companies like Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft were going to become. I also didn’t foresee how quickly the down-turn of oil and gas was going to be.
When you are evaluating what you want to do in life… I recommend trying to hop onto the next major industry rocket ship. As the COO of Facebook is quoted saying:
“If you’re offered a seat on the rocket ship, you don’t ask what seat. You just get on.”
See Lesson 040 for an overview of the industries I find most exciting over the next few decades.
Hard work leads to luck…
I was lucky to have a family connection to help me transition to a new job after ExxonMobil let me go. I was also lucky that a random recruiter at Tesla reached out to me and helped me get a job at the Gigafactory.
However, luck only turns into success if you are prepared for it. All of the hard work early in my life put me in the position to capitalize when a little luck came my way.
You can’t expect to sit back and relax and just wait for some luck; it may never come. I can promise you that the harder you work, the more lucky opportunities will present themselves.
Eliminate the time variable…
If you want to ever become ultra-wealthy, then you need to remove the time variable. Everyone has a finite amount of hours or years they can work. You should strive to get paid based on the impact of your work and not on the number of hours you have worked.
Entrepreneurs understand this concept very well. Building a scalable business is one way to eliminate the time variable. If starting a business isn’t your thing, you can try and minimize the time variable by starting side-hustles where your compensation is not directly related to your time (e.g. subscription newsletter, YouTube, etc.)
Avoid cyclical businesses…
It is difficult to have a career in a cyclical industry. The macroeconomic cycles typically last years or decades. It’s hard to get your career going if you enter an industry and it is in a 10-year bear cycle…
It’s much better to align your career with an industry that is stable. Even better, is to find an industry that is in secular growth mode (e.g. Silicon Valley from 2001 to 2020).
Employers are not your friend…
No matter how much they try and brainwash you… always remember that employers are not your friends. If a company is forced to decide between you and bankruptcy… they are not going to choose you.
Additionally, it’s in the best interest of the company to give you as little salary as possible to keep you in your position. A “big raise” when you stay with a company for a long time is on the order of 5% to 10%. Your raises will probably average around 2-3% per year over the long run.
Really “big raises” typically occur when you leave one company for another one because the new company doesn’t know how much you used to make and will pay you for your value. If you are talented, then moving around frequently when you are young is definitely a strategy to drastically increasing your compensation.
The grass isn’t always greener on the other side…
This lesson is in conflict with the preceding lesson, but you need to understand that the grass isn’t always greener with a new job, new company, or new career.
Changing your job, company, or career are VERY big decisions and should not be made quickly. These decisions take a lot of introspection and discussion with friends, family, and mentors.
Even if an employer offers you a job that appears to good to be true, you need to dig into the details and ask yourself if it aligns with your life.
Lastly, humans have a cognitive bias that causes us to overweight the negatives and underweight the positives. It’s typically only after you leave a job and end up at a worse job do you truly appreciate the positive things about the old job. I strongly encourage you to think about all of the POSITIVE things about your current job before deciding to jump ship.
Money is not the most important thing…
This is definitely cliché, but money does not buy happiness (directly). You can’t go to Amazon and order 10 bushels of happiness…
What will really make you happy in life are things like:
Family
Long-term friends
Making an impact
Getting recognized for good work
At the end of the day, most of us just want to be loved and respected. No amount of money will give you these. In fact, if you over prioritize money, then you might push away the people who would be willing to give you love and respect.
Money buys you freedom…
Money might not buy you happiness, but it can buy you freedom. Being financially free allows you to do what you want, when you want, with who you want. Once you reach financial freedom (like I have), it relieves a huge burden from your life and allows you to become the person you really want to be.
What I Would Do Differently
I have met people in life that say things like:
“Live life with no regret”
“I would never do anything differently if given a chance to do it all over”
I think this is silly and lacks critical thinking and self reflection. There will always be things that you regret. Reflecting on past mistakes in a positive manner is how you improve. I think the sentiment behind the above quotes is to say, “don’t sulk over past mistakes.” This is very true. There is a big difference between living in misery about the past vs thinking critically about what you did wrong and trying to improve from it.
What Would I Change?
Less video games as a kid and more socializing.
Less focus on GPA in college and more networking.
Less focus on theoretical knowledge and more focus on practical skills.
If I was to re-do college, I would have majored in computer science with a minor in finance (Fin-Tech is definitely growing into a huge industry and is something that I am passionate about).
Reference Material & Social Media
In Lesson 030 I cover how to navigate and utilize the Google Sheet I have built for all WCD lessons. This Google Sheet contains a worksheet for each WCD lesson. Each sheet has all of the Excel calculations, tables, graphs, and charts that I have posted in the respective WCD lesson. Additionally, the Google Sheet has a master “Index” worksheet that has links to all of the content associated with each lesson.
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