OleksiyRybakov
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Hello to all of you! My name is Oleksiy and I am not a classical person who always wanted to be an entrepreneur. To be honest, two months ago I did not even think about starting an own business. And yet, I have registered at this forum. I have not posted any introductory story of my own so far wondering whether it provides at least some value to you. But we will see.
I was born 1993 in Rivne, Ukraine. When I was a child, I was always interested in reading books on science and I dreamed of becoming an inventor. Especially, books for children on math looked interesting for me. Some of them provided knowledge on ancient history, for instance I enjoyed reading about Erathosthenes, who was interested in estimating the size of the Earth. Others looked like fantasy books where children could also discover some interesting properties about numbers. I found it fascinating when I read about what happens when 142857 is multiplied by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7; or what happens if you multiply 12345679 (no, the 8 is not missing) by 9. But my problem was that not so many people found math interesting. In fact, the majority of people I was talking to hated math and science as hell.
In 2003, I moved to Nuremberg, Germany together with my family. Our bags were quite heavy so we could not take any of my toys or games with us when moving. But at least we could take all of my math books. In Germany, I was horrible at school at first because of my not very advanced German. My teacher was not very eager to teach me and after two days, I was put into an inclusive class for foreign students (Übergangsklasse) and had much longer ways to school. Fortunately, I was able to pass this class with decent grades. But then, in Germany there are three different schools after the primary school. First, there is the grammar school (Gymnasium) for advanced students who want to get an advanced job or to study. Then, there is the real school (Realschule) for those students who want to attend apprenticeschip jobs (e. g. jobs at a bank). And finally, there is the common school (Hauptschule) for those students that want to pursue more manual-oriented jobs like a baker or a hairstylist. After finishing the class for foreigners I only had two options, either to go back to the regular class or to go to the common school. But those options were unacceptable for me as I neither wanted to see that teacher once again nor to have zero academic future. I hated both options and I hid in the hyperreality of my math books. Then, during the summer holidays, my grand-aunt came by at my house. She was already living in Germany for a longer period than us and she explained me and my mother that I did not have to go to a common school if I do not want to. We went to a grammar school and then, I was interviewed by the vice-principal. She asked me what I like about school. I have answered that I like math, for instance I liked perfect numbers, i. e. numbers whose divisors add up to the same number. After some more questions, I was accepted as a guest student at that grammar school. This was my first experience with defeating hyperrealities and breaking rules.
At school, I have never been the quiet kid and I always managed to get into trouble. For instance, during one of my exams I was finished so I decided to take out a piece of paper and to play Renju. This was OK in Ukraine, but in Germany, I was not allowed to do so because I could be cheating. Also, I was late during one lesson since a fellow student was injured which got me and my cousin into detention. During my 7th grade I was almost expelled from school because I deleted a file from another student's directory. But thanks to the principal who opposed that teacher (there was no proof that I did that on purpose) I was able to proceed my studies. And during my 12th (final) grade, me and some other students decided to miss a PE lesson since it was raining outside and I did not want to get sick. Despite my habit to break rules lots of teachers actually believed that I am smart and nice and my grades were mostly good to excellent. I discovered that if you are at least a bit smart, the people will forgive you. Just don't overdo and you'll do fine.
But my grades were not always great. In my 10th grade, I was almost failing 5 classes out of 16 and having five D's. However, my teachers told me not to worry since I was good at STEM classes. My Latin teacher then showed me a technique which is today known as the Law of Attraction. Speaking more precisely, I had to give a talk about a story by Erasmus from Rotterdam. In the story, Alexander the Great defeated King Porus and then asked Porus how he wants to be treated. Porus answered "Like a king" so Alexander the Great treated him in exactly the same way. Erasmus then mentioned that if Porus agreed to be treated like a servant, Alexander would not treat him like a king. The interesting part came after the talk. My teacher was unsure which grade to give me - excellent or good so she asked me which grade I wanted to get. Well, I answered that I made some mistakes so I am happy about a good grade. Guess what - I did not get the excellent grade. Ten seconds later I realized that I screwed up and did not learn the lesson Erasmus was trying to teach me. And while I did not get the excellent grade, I discovered that I should never be happy about the current state and always negotiate if I can. I believed that my teachers support me and give me preferential treatment. And I got it quite often. While giving quite an ordinary talk in Economics, I managed to impress my teacher so much that she improved my D to a B instantly. When I had to give a talk in German about Friedrich Schiller, my German teacher gave me a free DVD about Schiller which she didn't do to anyone else. When my Biology grade in a test was bad, me and another student tried to negotiate about our own grades. The student before me wanted to get one point to get an excellent grade but the teacher refused because "if you get an excellent grade, it does not motivate you to learn more". But when I negotiated, my teacher stated that "you did not do a lot of things, you did not even draw the stomach of the cow". I showed him that I did, which gave me that point that in the end improved my grade from D to C. In Chemistry, my teacher improved my Cs to a B. And in History, I improved my D to an A by raising my hand around 20 times per lesson and willing to answer plus answering correctly quite often. I even got private lessons with my teacher who told me that my future will look bright if I went into something like Sociology. So once again - never accept hyperrealities and always negotiate. In my 11th grade, I also almost failed again due to PE, but again, my teacher told me that the only way to fail because of PE is to not attend the class. Eventually, I managed to graduate as 8th best out of 64. Actually, I wanted to study computer science after school but my mother told me that I should not do this since I do not know how to code. Since my Chemistry teacher from the 10th grade recommended me to study Physics, I followed his advice.
But studying Physics was really challenging for me. At school, I was never challenged and didn't learn how to learn. At my college, the lectures were much faster and much more complicated so I had to develop the ability to learn and to grind. During the first term, my grades dropped and I even failed my Linear Algebra 1 exam. But at least I passed every other exam on my first attempt and on my second attempt, I managed to pass Linear Algebra as well. During my second term, I wanted to pass every exam on my first attempt and Theoretical Physics 1 was quite challenging. I only managed to achieve 12.5% in my homework so I decided to grind for 80 hours a week just copy-pasting the answers from Nolting's and Fließbach's books into my exercise book. Copying is not an effective method to learn and I was asked why I study so inefficiently. The point was that since I did not understand anything, that was the only method that could help me to understand at least something. I managed to understand how the Lagrange and Hamilton formalism work and using that I managed to scrap a pass on my first attempt. 80% did worse than me and they would fail if the professor did not change the passing score from 18 to 16. Also, I passed every other exam on my first attempt. But my grades sucked.
The tutors promised me that my studies will become easier during the next term but gosh, were they wrong. I only had two exams scheduled during the third term but the Math professor made such a challenging course that despite my grinding before the term I still was challenged quite often. For instance, it is quite simple to diagonalize a 3x3 matrix or compute a Jordan normal form of a 4x4 matrix. But is it as easy to compute the Jordan normal form of an 8x8 matrix while explaining every single step? Not at all. The assignments in Math and Theoretical Physics 2 were so challenging that once again I was forced to grind for 60 hours a week just for those two subjects. And when I told my Math professor anonymously during my evaluation that I find his subject too challenging because I am forced to search up information in 40 different scripts, 10 different books and his script is hand-written so I cannot look up things in the script, he made me look like a fool in front of the class. The lecture should be complex. And if I do not like the script to be hand-written then I should be the one to create a solution, for instance by TeXing a script. This was when I realized that I am more stupid than 90% of my class because I was just complaining. So I set myself a goal that I will reach at least an average of 2.5 which is good. My first exam in Theoretical Physics was quite surprising for me so I scored not very well with a D+. So to hit my goal I had to score at least an A- in Math. And I failed by one half of a point. Even my negotiation did not help. Nothing did. I set quite a high goal and I missed.
But I was so hating my stupidity that I decided to go on no matter what. During my fourth semester, I had to take Theoretical Quantum Mechanics, Experimental Quantum Mechanics, the lab course and some electives. Since I wanted to annoy my Math teacher from the last term, I took his course on Differential Geometry. Also, I have decided to learn some numerical mathematics so I chose Computer Physics (which taught me some basics of C++) and Complex Systems. Now, I had to pass 6 courses giving 55 credits where the normal amount was 30. For some unexplicable reason, Quantum Mechanics was not as hard as the previous courses because it was more based on math which I liked. I soon discovered that by looking up information I can overperform the majority from my exercise group. And Differential Geometry was indeed easier than my Math lecture from the term before. I managed to improve my learning technique from learning after the lectures to learning before the lectures which improved my grade from 2.7 to 2.0 while passing the double amount of credits. So finally, I started to learn instead of just complaining. I was still upset because my Experimental Physics exam contained lots of history that I did not learn. (Did you know who is the experimental founder of Bohr's atomic model? It's Rydberg.) And I was also upset because in Computer Physics I missed only one point from another A. But I did not care. I was improving and I hit my goal.
Motivated by my results I decided to optimize my grades even more. I wanted to score not only 55, but 72.5 credits. I wanted to be excellent and not just mediocre. And I wanted to earn money from my skills. But the fifth term did not go as well as expected. The lab course forced me to learn for 100 hours a week. Every single week I had to pass two 1-2 hour long oral exams, doing the experiments, write a paper and so on. My grinding before the term no longer worked because now I had to perform the experiments and to finish the exercises in Theoretical Physics. I managed to get an A- on my lab course and a B+ on my seminar, but my other grades were completely horrible. I even failed two of my subjects and wanted to quit my studies. A girl from my course then motivated me to move on and to finish my Bachelor's degree. For some reason, I have discovered a mysterious pattern - whenever that girl texted me, I managed to get an A or even A+. I manage to get an A in the oral exam on Theoretical Physics by learning for three weeks and an A+ in Algorithms and Data Structures which provided me an opportunity to become a tutor in that subject and to earn some money. The last exam was difficult and I scored a B but I did better than 92% so in the end, I managed to pass 8 exams out of 10 with an average grade of 1.78. During the next term, nothing special happened apart from me finishing my Bachelor's degree in Physics with a B.
But the next semester went completely wrong. First, I wanted to change my Master's program to Computational Engineering but I decided to follow my mother's advice and to study Physics at the grad level. And this was another big mistake since the majority of my desired elective courses were not offered. I was able to get paid as a tutor in Algorithms and Data Structures but my grades declined completely. So I have decided to stop studying Physics and to enroll in Computational Engineering - but I was too late so I had to wait another term. At the beginning of this term I managed to discover another quite easy side hustle as a tutor for the lab course for Medicine students. Also, I discovered a course on Contest Programming which was really interesting. At the beginning, I just wanted to copy the easy tasks. But after one week I solved the thirty easy required assignments by copying and was unimpressed. I wanted to be smarter, better, overperforming and not just another average cheater. So I decided to grind for eighty hours a week and to solve those assignments that were more challenging. In the beginning I have utilized the help of my tutors and the students but after some time, I replaced copying by problem-solving. In the end, I was able to solve 200 (even challenging) tasks and I was proud of that achievement. This seminar on its own gave me a great foundation as an algorithm developer. My other grades were not that great but I managed to get a better grade than 2.5 and this was fine for me knowing that I was doing master's courses in CS with no bachelor's knowledge.
During the next term, I decided to re-direct the energy from the contest-programming seminar into my other CS courses. I soon discovered that I was able to compete with lots of great CS students and my knowledge gap quickly disappeared due to that contest programming seminar from the prior term. I was easily able to understand problems from computer graphics, geometric modeling, pattern recognition and hardware-software co-design. Having learned about the Law of Attraction I decided to text that girl from my fifth term once again (guess what, the A's were there soon) and in the end, I managed to pass 11 exams (77.5 credits) and my grades skyrocketed a lot. My grinding plus utilizing my skills of information and selecting similar subjects paid off. Then, I decided to slow down and to concentrate on my master's thesis. I failed my first attempt, but I still managed to write two seminar talks on computer science, write a great lab course paper and a scientific paper (scoring me a free vacation to Atlanta, Georgia, USA). And on my second attempt, I managed to pass my thesis with an A- and write another scientific paper. Also, I had a great opportunity to work as a student at Siemens which made me able to finish my studies with over 18000$ surplus. In 2018, I was able to graduate with two master's degrees in Computational Engineering and Computer Science.
But after finishing my studies I quickly discovered that my skills are not really paid well. Machine learning sounds great but there are 10x less jobs in ML than in Java development. And since I did not have any experience and did not know anything about web development, I had to take an underpaid job in May 2018 where I only earned 54k$ a year. I took this job but soon I have discovered that it was too challenging for me. I managed to learn some backend development with Java EE and Spring Boot, but I still do not know that much about annotations. Moreover, I learned a new language with Typescript and some frontend development with Angular. Also, I passed the Professional Scrum Master 1 certificate. Understanding that I am not performing very well and that I will not be paid well since I do not provide enough value, I decided to quit that job after 9 months. In February 2019, I took another job paying 55$ a year and that salary increased after two months to 57,5k$ a year. The job itself was not bad but I had a conflict with the secretary. She was upset because I did not greet her on my first day and she did not forgive me for that. I decided that I do not need that behavior and searched for a different job. The boss at the other job asked me to tell my boss at that time about my desire to shift jobs. I did it since I wanted to quit that bad job so much that I had no fear. Well, the end of the story was that I was fired and the other boss did not take me. I thought that I will definitely fail to find a job since I did not do well at my first two jobs.
So I decided to listen to some subliminals to find an easy job that I love and that pays me well. Subliminals are not really mathematically proven and rather esoteric but what is the worst thing that could happen? Well, nothing. So one consulting company decided to hire me without asking complex questions and for some reasons, they told me that I am talented. The salary was horrible with 53,2k$ per year but I decided to accept anything after two bad jobs. They found a project for me in Munich so I was forced to travel 2 hours per day. And then, I have discovered that the job was paying me 67,6k$ per year. Also, for some reason I was suddenly able to program in React just by copying existing apps and adapting them. My speed at coding increased so well that my colleagues and boss were constantly praising me for my performance. For the first time in my life, I was exstatic and I even managed to pass my driver's license. Two months later, my contract was prolongued and the salary improved up to 76k$ per year. I went on and utilized design patterns in such a way that no other developer was able to create my code quickly, while I was able to understand, change and replicate my code easily. But then, Corona happened and I was afraid that my job will not be able to pay for my mortgage. So I decided to quit that job but could not really find another one. My boss could also not find a different developer and decided to re-hire me from a different consultant company which increased my salary to 90k$ per year. Also, I was able to do home office so now I was able to pay less for the tickets from Nuremberg to Munich. But then, I was just bored. I was not improving at all. My jobs stopped being interesting. I only worked one hour per day while still achieving everything that I should. And despite those seven hours a day that I could do whatever I want, those hours were still indentured since I could not move freely. Then, June 2021 happened.
For some reason, I was listening to a teenage influencer on YouTube and TikTok who became a millionaire at 19. I was envious. Not because she was rich, but because she was so smart at such a young age while I was wasting my time with gathering theoretical knowledge. She talked about some books that I should read so I decided to read Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill first. That book is entertaining but if you already know about the Law of Attraction, it does not really help you that much. The next book I decided to read was Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. That book was really great as it put me outside of my comfort zone. It forced me to see that lots of paths do not lead to freedom. The next book was The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco. And that book challenged my comfort zone even harder. Not only was I forced to constantly challenge my beliefs, but that book was also highly based on math and psychology. Remember my interest on Math from the childhood? I might hate the difficulty of advanced Math but I still love listening to YouTubers that integrate another nice function or thinking about how polynomials (x+2)^n are related to hypercubes. I realized that while science becomes more and more complex, the really practical inventions happen in the entrepreneurship. Wanting to become an inventor I quit my job and jumped into the void since my job does not provide me an opportunity to scale. Lots of people will criticize me for that but I do not care.
So what am I doing now? Well, first, I have launched my TikTok channel (oleksiyrybakov) where I talk about finance and more. I was also interested in launching Instagram and YouTube, but I was banned on Instagram due to copying my own videos and still not unbanned. And since YouTube is a grind, I do believe that it might be easier to find viewers and followers on TikTok and to send them to YouTube than finding them on YouTube directly. For the last month I was creating daily videos on TikTok and recently, I switched to creating videos twice daily. So far, I have discovered the following challenges. First, I live in Germany so the algorithm proposes my content mostly to the German and European audience (70-90% Germany, 5% Austria, 5% Belgium, 2% Switzerland, 2% USA). I'd like to make my content international so I decided to speak English, but the majority of the TikTok audience are children who do not understand English and especially complex English. Second, my content tends to diverge more and more from the financial topics. Lots of influencers are just constantly repeating their topics and talk for about 10 videos how they got rich by investing, dropshipping, affiliate marketing and so on. I seriously do not want to do that so I decided to utilize my generalistic approach and to talk about different things. In one video I talk about politics improving your finance, then about Scrum, then about investments and so on. Diversification is hated by the social media algorithms but I want to stand out. Third, I made the mistake of doing follow-for-follow and like-for-like since I did not want to stay with only 5 followers. But this completely ruined my account so I decided to stop it. Now, my account is still not supported by the algorithm. Fourth, my content is dull due to math and poorly designed. But OK, I can work on that. And finally, I discovered that my videos tend to diverge from the original purpose. My original videos managed to maybe get 200 views per video but then I decided to do a duet with MrBeast where I explained mathematically what to choose - 1 million instantly or 100k every year. That video managed to get over 500 views despite poor design. During my next duet I decided to make a video where a TikToker asked a child where the Eiffel Tower is located. I knew that there is a second "Eiffel Tower" in Prague and posted a video on that. Now that video got another 1300 views. Another duet now almost has 1450 views. I do not know whether I want to turn my channel into a reaction channel without talking about finance. But that's ok, first of all I'd like to have a generalistic channel and second, let's do what the market wants.
Second, I discovered other new ideas on the forum. One of them is that I would like to translate TMF and other books by MJ into Ukrainian. I do not know whether there is some demand in that but I think that using some Ukrainian political influencers we might find a platform to sell it.
Third, I discovered a Fastlane School on this forum. I think that using that I can learn three things. First, I can learn how to create good educational content for IT topics to become a better influencer. Second, I can improve my programming skills. Third, I can improve my business skills since I do not have a lot of business experience at the moment.
In general, I see my advantages in thinking, programming and teaching, but have to learn more (in a practical approach) about creating great products and marketing them. So thank you for reading my story for such a long time. I appreciate your patience and hope for some great feedback from the forum!
I was born 1993 in Rivne, Ukraine. When I was a child, I was always interested in reading books on science and I dreamed of becoming an inventor. Especially, books for children on math looked interesting for me. Some of them provided knowledge on ancient history, for instance I enjoyed reading about Erathosthenes, who was interested in estimating the size of the Earth. Others looked like fantasy books where children could also discover some interesting properties about numbers. I found it fascinating when I read about what happens when 142857 is multiplied by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7; or what happens if you multiply 12345679 (no, the 8 is not missing) by 9. But my problem was that not so many people found math interesting. In fact, the majority of people I was talking to hated math and science as hell.
In 2003, I moved to Nuremberg, Germany together with my family. Our bags were quite heavy so we could not take any of my toys or games with us when moving. But at least we could take all of my math books. In Germany, I was horrible at school at first because of my not very advanced German. My teacher was not very eager to teach me and after two days, I was put into an inclusive class for foreign students (Übergangsklasse) and had much longer ways to school. Fortunately, I was able to pass this class with decent grades. But then, in Germany there are three different schools after the primary school. First, there is the grammar school (Gymnasium) for advanced students who want to get an advanced job or to study. Then, there is the real school (Realschule) for those students who want to attend apprenticeschip jobs (e. g. jobs at a bank). And finally, there is the common school (Hauptschule) for those students that want to pursue more manual-oriented jobs like a baker or a hairstylist. After finishing the class for foreigners I only had two options, either to go back to the regular class or to go to the common school. But those options were unacceptable for me as I neither wanted to see that teacher once again nor to have zero academic future. I hated both options and I hid in the hyperreality of my math books. Then, during the summer holidays, my grand-aunt came by at my house. She was already living in Germany for a longer period than us and she explained me and my mother that I did not have to go to a common school if I do not want to. We went to a grammar school and then, I was interviewed by the vice-principal. She asked me what I like about school. I have answered that I like math, for instance I liked perfect numbers, i. e. numbers whose divisors add up to the same number. After some more questions, I was accepted as a guest student at that grammar school. This was my first experience with defeating hyperrealities and breaking rules.
At school, I have never been the quiet kid and I always managed to get into trouble. For instance, during one of my exams I was finished so I decided to take out a piece of paper and to play Renju. This was OK in Ukraine, but in Germany, I was not allowed to do so because I could be cheating. Also, I was late during one lesson since a fellow student was injured which got me and my cousin into detention. During my 7th grade I was almost expelled from school because I deleted a file from another student's directory. But thanks to the principal who opposed that teacher (there was no proof that I did that on purpose) I was able to proceed my studies. And during my 12th (final) grade, me and some other students decided to miss a PE lesson since it was raining outside and I did not want to get sick. Despite my habit to break rules lots of teachers actually believed that I am smart and nice and my grades were mostly good to excellent. I discovered that if you are at least a bit smart, the people will forgive you. Just don't overdo and you'll do fine.
But my grades were not always great. In my 10th grade, I was almost failing 5 classes out of 16 and having five D's. However, my teachers told me not to worry since I was good at STEM classes. My Latin teacher then showed me a technique which is today known as the Law of Attraction. Speaking more precisely, I had to give a talk about a story by Erasmus from Rotterdam. In the story, Alexander the Great defeated King Porus and then asked Porus how he wants to be treated. Porus answered "Like a king" so Alexander the Great treated him in exactly the same way. Erasmus then mentioned that if Porus agreed to be treated like a servant, Alexander would not treat him like a king. The interesting part came after the talk. My teacher was unsure which grade to give me - excellent or good so she asked me which grade I wanted to get. Well, I answered that I made some mistakes so I am happy about a good grade. Guess what - I did not get the excellent grade. Ten seconds later I realized that I screwed up and did not learn the lesson Erasmus was trying to teach me. And while I did not get the excellent grade, I discovered that I should never be happy about the current state and always negotiate if I can. I believed that my teachers support me and give me preferential treatment. And I got it quite often. While giving quite an ordinary talk in Economics, I managed to impress my teacher so much that she improved my D to a B instantly. When I had to give a talk in German about Friedrich Schiller, my German teacher gave me a free DVD about Schiller which she didn't do to anyone else. When my Biology grade in a test was bad, me and another student tried to negotiate about our own grades. The student before me wanted to get one point to get an excellent grade but the teacher refused because "if you get an excellent grade, it does not motivate you to learn more". But when I negotiated, my teacher stated that "you did not do a lot of things, you did not even draw the stomach of the cow". I showed him that I did, which gave me that point that in the end improved my grade from D to C. In Chemistry, my teacher improved my Cs to a B. And in History, I improved my D to an A by raising my hand around 20 times per lesson and willing to answer plus answering correctly quite often. I even got private lessons with my teacher who told me that my future will look bright if I went into something like Sociology. So once again - never accept hyperrealities and always negotiate. In my 11th grade, I also almost failed again due to PE, but again, my teacher told me that the only way to fail because of PE is to not attend the class. Eventually, I managed to graduate as 8th best out of 64. Actually, I wanted to study computer science after school but my mother told me that I should not do this since I do not know how to code. Since my Chemistry teacher from the 10th grade recommended me to study Physics, I followed his advice.
But studying Physics was really challenging for me. At school, I was never challenged and didn't learn how to learn. At my college, the lectures were much faster and much more complicated so I had to develop the ability to learn and to grind. During the first term, my grades dropped and I even failed my Linear Algebra 1 exam. But at least I passed every other exam on my first attempt and on my second attempt, I managed to pass Linear Algebra as well. During my second term, I wanted to pass every exam on my first attempt and Theoretical Physics 1 was quite challenging. I only managed to achieve 12.5% in my homework so I decided to grind for 80 hours a week just copy-pasting the answers from Nolting's and Fließbach's books into my exercise book. Copying is not an effective method to learn and I was asked why I study so inefficiently. The point was that since I did not understand anything, that was the only method that could help me to understand at least something. I managed to understand how the Lagrange and Hamilton formalism work and using that I managed to scrap a pass on my first attempt. 80% did worse than me and they would fail if the professor did not change the passing score from 18 to 16. Also, I passed every other exam on my first attempt. But my grades sucked.
The tutors promised me that my studies will become easier during the next term but gosh, were they wrong. I only had two exams scheduled during the third term but the Math professor made such a challenging course that despite my grinding before the term I still was challenged quite often. For instance, it is quite simple to diagonalize a 3x3 matrix or compute a Jordan normal form of a 4x4 matrix. But is it as easy to compute the Jordan normal form of an 8x8 matrix while explaining every single step? Not at all. The assignments in Math and Theoretical Physics 2 were so challenging that once again I was forced to grind for 60 hours a week just for those two subjects. And when I told my Math professor anonymously during my evaluation that I find his subject too challenging because I am forced to search up information in 40 different scripts, 10 different books and his script is hand-written so I cannot look up things in the script, he made me look like a fool in front of the class. The lecture should be complex. And if I do not like the script to be hand-written then I should be the one to create a solution, for instance by TeXing a script. This was when I realized that I am more stupid than 90% of my class because I was just complaining. So I set myself a goal that I will reach at least an average of 2.5 which is good. My first exam in Theoretical Physics was quite surprising for me so I scored not very well with a D+. So to hit my goal I had to score at least an A- in Math. And I failed by one half of a point. Even my negotiation did not help. Nothing did. I set quite a high goal and I missed.
But I was so hating my stupidity that I decided to go on no matter what. During my fourth semester, I had to take Theoretical Quantum Mechanics, Experimental Quantum Mechanics, the lab course and some electives. Since I wanted to annoy my Math teacher from the last term, I took his course on Differential Geometry. Also, I have decided to learn some numerical mathematics so I chose Computer Physics (which taught me some basics of C++) and Complex Systems. Now, I had to pass 6 courses giving 55 credits where the normal amount was 30. For some unexplicable reason, Quantum Mechanics was not as hard as the previous courses because it was more based on math which I liked. I soon discovered that by looking up information I can overperform the majority from my exercise group. And Differential Geometry was indeed easier than my Math lecture from the term before. I managed to improve my learning technique from learning after the lectures to learning before the lectures which improved my grade from 2.7 to 2.0 while passing the double amount of credits. So finally, I started to learn instead of just complaining. I was still upset because my Experimental Physics exam contained lots of history that I did not learn. (Did you know who is the experimental founder of Bohr's atomic model? It's Rydberg.) And I was also upset because in Computer Physics I missed only one point from another A. But I did not care. I was improving and I hit my goal.
Motivated by my results I decided to optimize my grades even more. I wanted to score not only 55, but 72.5 credits. I wanted to be excellent and not just mediocre. And I wanted to earn money from my skills. But the fifth term did not go as well as expected. The lab course forced me to learn for 100 hours a week. Every single week I had to pass two 1-2 hour long oral exams, doing the experiments, write a paper and so on. My grinding before the term no longer worked because now I had to perform the experiments and to finish the exercises in Theoretical Physics. I managed to get an A- on my lab course and a B+ on my seminar, but my other grades were completely horrible. I even failed two of my subjects and wanted to quit my studies. A girl from my course then motivated me to move on and to finish my Bachelor's degree. For some reason, I have discovered a mysterious pattern - whenever that girl texted me, I managed to get an A or even A+. I manage to get an A in the oral exam on Theoretical Physics by learning for three weeks and an A+ in Algorithms and Data Structures which provided me an opportunity to become a tutor in that subject and to earn some money. The last exam was difficult and I scored a B but I did better than 92% so in the end, I managed to pass 8 exams out of 10 with an average grade of 1.78. During the next term, nothing special happened apart from me finishing my Bachelor's degree in Physics with a B.
But the next semester went completely wrong. First, I wanted to change my Master's program to Computational Engineering but I decided to follow my mother's advice and to study Physics at the grad level. And this was another big mistake since the majority of my desired elective courses were not offered. I was able to get paid as a tutor in Algorithms and Data Structures but my grades declined completely. So I have decided to stop studying Physics and to enroll in Computational Engineering - but I was too late so I had to wait another term. At the beginning of this term I managed to discover another quite easy side hustle as a tutor for the lab course for Medicine students. Also, I discovered a course on Contest Programming which was really interesting. At the beginning, I just wanted to copy the easy tasks. But after one week I solved the thirty easy required assignments by copying and was unimpressed. I wanted to be smarter, better, overperforming and not just another average cheater. So I decided to grind for eighty hours a week and to solve those assignments that were more challenging. In the beginning I have utilized the help of my tutors and the students but after some time, I replaced copying by problem-solving. In the end, I was able to solve 200 (even challenging) tasks and I was proud of that achievement. This seminar on its own gave me a great foundation as an algorithm developer. My other grades were not that great but I managed to get a better grade than 2.5 and this was fine for me knowing that I was doing master's courses in CS with no bachelor's knowledge.
During the next term, I decided to re-direct the energy from the contest-programming seminar into my other CS courses. I soon discovered that I was able to compete with lots of great CS students and my knowledge gap quickly disappeared due to that contest programming seminar from the prior term. I was easily able to understand problems from computer graphics, geometric modeling, pattern recognition and hardware-software co-design. Having learned about the Law of Attraction I decided to text that girl from my fifth term once again (guess what, the A's were there soon) and in the end, I managed to pass 11 exams (77.5 credits) and my grades skyrocketed a lot. My grinding plus utilizing my skills of information and selecting similar subjects paid off. Then, I decided to slow down and to concentrate on my master's thesis. I failed my first attempt, but I still managed to write two seminar talks on computer science, write a great lab course paper and a scientific paper (scoring me a free vacation to Atlanta, Georgia, USA). And on my second attempt, I managed to pass my thesis with an A- and write another scientific paper. Also, I had a great opportunity to work as a student at Siemens which made me able to finish my studies with over 18000$ surplus. In 2018, I was able to graduate with two master's degrees in Computational Engineering and Computer Science.
But after finishing my studies I quickly discovered that my skills are not really paid well. Machine learning sounds great but there are 10x less jobs in ML than in Java development. And since I did not have any experience and did not know anything about web development, I had to take an underpaid job in May 2018 where I only earned 54k$ a year. I took this job but soon I have discovered that it was too challenging for me. I managed to learn some backend development with Java EE and Spring Boot, but I still do not know that much about annotations. Moreover, I learned a new language with Typescript and some frontend development with Angular. Also, I passed the Professional Scrum Master 1 certificate. Understanding that I am not performing very well and that I will not be paid well since I do not provide enough value, I decided to quit that job after 9 months. In February 2019, I took another job paying 55$ a year and that salary increased after two months to 57,5k$ a year. The job itself was not bad but I had a conflict with the secretary. She was upset because I did not greet her on my first day and she did not forgive me for that. I decided that I do not need that behavior and searched for a different job. The boss at the other job asked me to tell my boss at that time about my desire to shift jobs. I did it since I wanted to quit that bad job so much that I had no fear. Well, the end of the story was that I was fired and the other boss did not take me. I thought that I will definitely fail to find a job since I did not do well at my first two jobs.
So I decided to listen to some subliminals to find an easy job that I love and that pays me well. Subliminals are not really mathematically proven and rather esoteric but what is the worst thing that could happen? Well, nothing. So one consulting company decided to hire me without asking complex questions and for some reasons, they told me that I am talented. The salary was horrible with 53,2k$ per year but I decided to accept anything after two bad jobs. They found a project for me in Munich so I was forced to travel 2 hours per day. And then, I have discovered that the job was paying me 67,6k$ per year. Also, for some reason I was suddenly able to program in React just by copying existing apps and adapting them. My speed at coding increased so well that my colleagues and boss were constantly praising me for my performance. For the first time in my life, I was exstatic and I even managed to pass my driver's license. Two months later, my contract was prolongued and the salary improved up to 76k$ per year. I went on and utilized design patterns in such a way that no other developer was able to create my code quickly, while I was able to understand, change and replicate my code easily. But then, Corona happened and I was afraid that my job will not be able to pay for my mortgage. So I decided to quit that job but could not really find another one. My boss could also not find a different developer and decided to re-hire me from a different consultant company which increased my salary to 90k$ per year. Also, I was able to do home office so now I was able to pay less for the tickets from Nuremberg to Munich. But then, I was just bored. I was not improving at all. My jobs stopped being interesting. I only worked one hour per day while still achieving everything that I should. And despite those seven hours a day that I could do whatever I want, those hours were still indentured since I could not move freely. Then, June 2021 happened.
For some reason, I was listening to a teenage influencer on YouTube and TikTok who became a millionaire at 19. I was envious. Not because she was rich, but because she was so smart at such a young age while I was wasting my time with gathering theoretical knowledge. She talked about some books that I should read so I decided to read Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill first. That book is entertaining but if you already know about the Law of Attraction, it does not really help you that much. The next book I decided to read was Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. That book was really great as it put me outside of my comfort zone. It forced me to see that lots of paths do not lead to freedom. The next book was The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco. And that book challenged my comfort zone even harder. Not only was I forced to constantly challenge my beliefs, but that book was also highly based on math and psychology. Remember my interest on Math from the childhood? I might hate the difficulty of advanced Math but I still love listening to YouTubers that integrate another nice function or thinking about how polynomials (x+2)^n are related to hypercubes. I realized that while science becomes more and more complex, the really practical inventions happen in the entrepreneurship. Wanting to become an inventor I quit my job and jumped into the void since my job does not provide me an opportunity to scale. Lots of people will criticize me for that but I do not care.
So what am I doing now? Well, first, I have launched my TikTok channel (oleksiyrybakov) where I talk about finance and more. I was also interested in launching Instagram and YouTube, but I was banned on Instagram due to copying my own videos and still not unbanned. And since YouTube is a grind, I do believe that it might be easier to find viewers and followers on TikTok and to send them to YouTube than finding them on YouTube directly. For the last month I was creating daily videos on TikTok and recently, I switched to creating videos twice daily. So far, I have discovered the following challenges. First, I live in Germany so the algorithm proposes my content mostly to the German and European audience (70-90% Germany, 5% Austria, 5% Belgium, 2% Switzerland, 2% USA). I'd like to make my content international so I decided to speak English, but the majority of the TikTok audience are children who do not understand English and especially complex English. Second, my content tends to diverge more and more from the financial topics. Lots of influencers are just constantly repeating their topics and talk for about 10 videos how they got rich by investing, dropshipping, affiliate marketing and so on. I seriously do not want to do that so I decided to utilize my generalistic approach and to talk about different things. In one video I talk about politics improving your finance, then about Scrum, then about investments and so on. Diversification is hated by the social media algorithms but I want to stand out. Third, I made the mistake of doing follow-for-follow and like-for-like since I did not want to stay with only 5 followers. But this completely ruined my account so I decided to stop it. Now, my account is still not supported by the algorithm. Fourth, my content is dull due to math and poorly designed. But OK, I can work on that. And finally, I discovered that my videos tend to diverge from the original purpose. My original videos managed to maybe get 200 views per video but then I decided to do a duet with MrBeast where I explained mathematically what to choose - 1 million instantly or 100k every year. That video managed to get over 500 views despite poor design. During my next duet I decided to make a video where a TikToker asked a child where the Eiffel Tower is located. I knew that there is a second "Eiffel Tower" in Prague and posted a video on that. Now that video got another 1300 views. Another duet now almost has 1450 views. I do not know whether I want to turn my channel into a reaction channel without talking about finance. But that's ok, first of all I'd like to have a generalistic channel and second, let's do what the market wants.
Second, I discovered other new ideas on the forum. One of them is that I would like to translate TMF and other books by MJ into Ukrainian. I do not know whether there is some demand in that but I think that using some Ukrainian political influencers we might find a platform to sell it.
Third, I discovered a Fastlane School on this forum. I think that using that I can learn three things. First, I can learn how to create good educational content for IT topics to become a better influencer. Second, I can improve my programming skills. Third, I can improve my business skills since I do not have a lot of business experience at the moment.
In general, I see my advantages in thinking, programming and teaching, but have to learn more (in a practical approach) about creating great products and marketing them. So thank you for reading my story for such a long time. I appreciate your patience and hope for some great feedback from the forum!
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