How I learned to work well with everyone
I am the co-founder & CTO of Leap.ai. I am here to share with everyone a moment that changed my career.
Back in 2008, I led a major effort in Google to fight against scammy advertisers, and it successfully cleaned up most of bad ads on Google. As you can imagine,
I was expecting an easy and well-deserved promotion —
But the opposite happened.
My promotion was rejected, twice.
Devastated and completely puzzled, I felt unappreciated. I wanted to leave. These feelings lingered quite some time, until I had a chance to talk to my VP — a conversation that completely changed my career and my life. Now almost 10 years later, I still vividly remember his exact words —
“Yunkai, you have great potential. But, to reach that potential, you have to learn how to work with everyone.”
Work with everyone. A simple, but powerful phrase.
It turns out, while I was effective in getting results, I was also considered a jerk by many colleagues. I worked well with some people, but not others.
I was subconsciously choosing who I wanted to work with, and who I didn’t.
I did not realize how much that limited my overall effectiveness and opportunities. Even after I became aware, it still took me several painful years to learn how to work with everyone. But I did, and I’m glad I did.
Learning to work with everyone made me a stronger leader, and a much better person.
I’m forever grateful to my VP. His name is Sridhar Ramaswamy, and he now leads the entire ads org in Google. He dramatically changed the course of my career and inspired me to help others in their careers. As you can probably guess now, it is this inspiration that eventually led to my co-founding Leap.ai.
Sridhar, if by any chance you’re reading this, thank you!
Yunkai is a technical executive and entrepreneur. He has worked in companies from technical giants like Microsoft and Google to late stage startups like Sumo Logic. In Google, he spent nearly 10 years in Search Ads / AdWords, and has led projects across infrastructure, machine learning, and UI. Yunkai’s passion for using technology to solve real business problems led him to co-found Leap.ai. He also LOVES being a dad.
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