Received the largest pay raise of my career and now I'm determined to quit.

[TKDTyler]

November 20th, 2013: The Beginning of my Journey
​

21 years only and fresh out of college with a B.S. Electrical Engineering. After months of grueling post-graduate job hunting, I am hired by one of the leading analog IC companies in the world. Like any intelligent college student, I took out a gargantuan amount of loans amounting over $100,000. But hey, I'm finally making the steps towards fulfilling this vivid painting of my career path for the next 40 years.

Thanks Mr. DiCaprio.

Now I have great compensation, benefits, health care, RSU's, ESPP, an amazing team, and visibility into every tech company in the Silicon Valley; I'm living the American dream. New cars, pretty women, money to party. I made it ma', I made it. You must be asking, how lucky am I, right?

Wrong.

2014: The Year Life Taught Me About Control.
​

While the face value of everything offered to me was fantastic, the reality of the situation in my first year was not what I expected. Typically a new grad hires work closely with a senior level engineer to develop their skills to competency as quick as possible. Yet I was tossed into a situation where the senior engineer in charge of the majority of my development had an excess amount of projects on his plate and had little time to sit and teach. I struggled through projects and made a ton of mistakes working with electronics worth tens of thousands of dollars, all paid for by our customers of course.

Yet due to lack of communication, I was unaware of how unhappy my senior engineer had become and, this reflected negatively in my first yearly review. Now, if anybody knows anything about corporate culture, then you know that being placed on a performance improvement plan (PIP as they call it) is the first step in a chain reaction of letting an employee go, and this is exactly what happened. In the words of millennial urban heart throb, rap icon, and Canadian legend only second to the Biebs, Drake...

Things went from 0 to 100, real quick.
​

I was given action items to improve my performance or else they were going to let me go. Along with this PIP, a measly 3% pay increase (equal to inflation if I recall correctly) for a year of my time and hard work. But based on my performance, I understand.

Control. Such an important and impossibly hard concept to understand until you are faced with losing your job and not being able to pay your debts all because there was a lack of communication. This was my first real world experience that showed that I can lose my livelihood in an instant. There are thousands of others that can do the same job, so why me? I decided to focus on what I could control and turned everything around.

2015: The Year Life Taught Me About Time.

To be continued...
​

 

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[lowtek]

you working at Intel?

 

[TKDTyler]

you working at Intel?

Not at Intel, but they are one of our accounts.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Thanks for the write-up, I'm assuming you're in the states? (Where else do young people accumulate mountains of debt?)

 

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[JDx]

Enjoyable writing style, in for updates

 

[TKDTyler]

Thanks for the write-up, I'm assuming you're in the states? (Where else do young people accumulate mountains of debt?)

You are correct. Silicon Valley in California to be more precise.

Yes I have a job that pays well, but what's the point if I live in a state that taxes me at 33% federal + state income AND having to pay $1000 a month for a loan... Add the insane housing and renters market here and it doesn't leave you much to work with.

Millennials lives are being crippled by insurmountable debt not because we keep taking out loans to pursue education, rather that there is no required courses to educate us on the post graduate effect of loans. I along with many other students dont even bother to apply for grants and scholarships because "we will deal with it after we graduate..."

 

[TKDTyler]

Enjoyable writing style, in for updates

Thanks!

It's actually something I've been wanting to improve on. Writing and literature were never my forte

 

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[jesset17]

I have a very similar story to yours. Recent engineering grad, loads of debt, a “prestigious” job (at least that’s what I used to think), but I was fortunate enough to start in a better environment and earn multiple promotions in my first two years. Yet even with my minor career successes, I still lack control over my livelihood exactly as you did. Gratefully I have realized that— all credit due to TMF —and am now on a path to achieve true freedom, as I am sure you are as well.

Looking forward to more updates!

PS: I also work for a very large semiconductor company (memory specifically), we are probably one of your suppliers/accounts. Pretty cool how this forum is able to bring so many like-minded people together from all over the world and yet you can find instances of how interconnected we really are.

 

[Envision]

You are correct. Silicon Valley in California to be more precise.

Yes I have a job that pays well, but what's the point if I live in a state that taxes me at 33% federal + state income AND having to pay $1000 a month for a loan... Add the insane housing and renters market here and it doesn't leave you much to work with.

Millennials lives are being crippled by insurmountable debt not because we keep taking out loans to pursue education, rather that there is no required courses to educate us on the post graduate effect of loans. I along with many other students dont even bother to apply for grants and scholarships because "we will deal with it after we graduate..."

Thats some scary shit.

 

[TKDTyler]

2015: The Year Life Taught Me About Time.
​

First jobs out of college are strangely peculiar. Prospects have little to no work experience, a majority of theoretical based knowledge, and a lack of professional references. It sounds like a recipe for disaster, yet employers take the risk and a leap of faith based off a day or two of interviews hoping that this employee fits in with the culture. That first job is simultaneously the foundation and launchpad for every new college grad's career. And my voyage was turning out to be like Space X's Falcon 9 at Cape Canaveral.

Self doubt, anger, fear, and uncertainty: emotions common to entrepreneurs. Fortunately, I have experience dealing these emotions as well and decided that this is not who I am or who I want to become. So I did what any motivated and persistent individual would do; I began working longer hours, spent more time learning design concepts on my own, developed work relationships during off hours. I was set out on proving that I had everything it takes to excel in my situation, and with my extra efforts, my responsibilities shifted as my engineers grew to respect my work. Even my role was changed from assisting on smaller accounts to supporting one of the largest earning accounts in the Bay (some food that tastes great and falls from trees).

I became an asset rather than a liability.

Think about that sentence for one moment. In a company, you are just a cog in the machine. Some cogs are bigger than others, some more essential than others. It will be repaired and work with or without you. But becoming nothing more than an asset is no different than being an inmate with a prisoner ID. Yes it is at will employment, and yes, I chose to accept this position, but when I began to think about myself being just an asset or a liability, just a number in the system that has a positive or negative ROI, my perspective changed.

It became the most apparent when it came around to have my second yearly review. To put it in perspective, in my first review I scored somewhere between 60-70 on a scale of 100. This year my score jumped up to a from being on a PIP, to above and beyond performance of 94-95. Vast improvement, eagerness, quality work, and essential. I achieved everything I set my mind to, and my employer knew it.

3% raise. 3% because the company did not grow at all. 3% when the housing and rent prices increased by 10%-20% in that year alone. 3% when I busted my a$$ to prove THEY did not make a wrong decision hiring me. That's when I remembered a forum I used to skim through during my college years. That's when I finally read The Millionaire Fastlane .

Funny thing time is. Easily taken for granted, but often times has the worst ROI of all. Companies understand the value of time vs money. It's what drive decisions. Apple will spend $6000 to fly an engineer business class to China the next day, because it is more important to launch their product according to their timeline. What is the impact on the engineer? He has to leave his family for 2 weeks at a time, constantly be jet lagged, work late and early hours to be on call between manufacturers and headquarters, and risk his health and wellbeing to be on a plane for a quarter of the year. All for a finite, albeit large, financial gain?

For the average person, time should not be compared towards financial gain. It should be viewed as time vs life. How much time are you putting in to experience life? What is the ROI on the time you spend at your workplace? Is it rewarding? Is it fulfilling? Are you doing work that you are passionate about and impacting the world? TMF works to set guidelines to free your income from your time, but it is as equally important to spend your time on projects that have a positive ROI on your life physically, emotionally, and spiritually. If all that traveling and extra hours put in is fulfilling then I am happy for you.

But that life is not for me.

2016: The Year Life Taught Me About Action.
To be continued...​

 

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[TKDTyler]

2016: The Year Life Taught Me About Action.​

I made the decision to take control of my life. Take control of my destiny. And hopefully one day take control of my financial independence.

When I first began my job, my 5 year plan was to spend my extra income from RSU’s, ESPP, and profit sharing to pay off my student loans as fast as possible. I would finally become debt free at the ripe old age of 28 and can begin to live my life, save for retirement, and explore the world. For most 21-23 year olds, it makes perfect sense. Where else could you put your money to achieve a theoretical 5-7% “return” consistently (Hint: Options thread on the inside)? But after reading TMF , it shifted my mindset into something I knew inside for a long time.

I spent 20+ hours combing through thread after thread on this forum and finally came to the conclusion to begin an ecommerce business much like many others on this forum.


Product #1:

The first product I imported was a success: Headphone accessory to display full sized headphones. Bought $1000 in non-branded generic Chinese product that I attempted to sell on eBay.

Landed Cost: $17 Per unit + $10 shipping (Air Mail)
My Price: $50 down to $25 over time
My Time: 1 Month​

Total Profit: -$400​

Turns out the market didn’t agree with my pricing. So why was this successful?

I was able to successfully research and source a product from a reliable manufacturer overseas, get past various barriers (i.e. minimum MOQ), learned how to wiretransfer, how the market dictates pricing, how to build a WordPress ecommerce site, host it, and provide quality customer service for the mere price of $400 and month of my time. Great.

Product #2:

My second product I didn’t import, but I did learn somewhat of the extend that Chinese scammers will go. Almost bought $1000 worth of product that would have been unable to sell.


Product #3:

In February, I discovered a product that in a market I am directly involved in as a customer and noticed a need in the marketplace. I found a manufacturer with the most amazing customer service I have experienced. I was fine with paying a couple of extra dollars per unit for the quality products and consistent service they provide. I want a manufacturer that will share the same ethics towards its customers as I have towards mine.

There were 50-100 sellers but most of which were low quality Chinese knockoffs or overpriced styles. Among the top competitors, most shared the same complaints about quality, sizing, and materials. I believe that I could compete with a superbly higher quality product that fixes all of the typical issues all of these buyers were having. At the time I just finished reading a thread (https://www.thefastlaneforum.com/co...-to-do-it-the-easy-way-or-the-hard-way.64808/) by @biophase and everything clicked.

I spent around $5000 for 3 variations of my product split 75 units, 75 units, and 150 units. Units landed at Amazon Warehouses in Early July. Initially my goal was to sell my products for $20-$25 and try to sell 1 unit a day to get my rankings and reviews up. Simple. My first day posted I have 2 sales. Pretty cool, got to make money while at my slowlane job. As the month progressed, sales steadily increased to average 4-10 units a day, mostly with variation 1 and 2. I increase the price as my inventory decreases, but sales remain consistent.

Eventually I reach $62 a unit and still averaged 1-2 sales a day on the most popular item. This is 2.5-4x the cost of my competitors with $45 gross profit per unit. Variation 1 and 2 sold out by early August and Variation 3 is priced at in the $40-$45 range selling 1-3 units a day. These performed way beyond my initial expectations and goals for my first month of selling.

Competitor Price: $17-$28
Landed Cost: $16.92 to FBA Warehouse
Average Selling Price: $45
Time Investment: 5 Months

July-Aug Revenue: $5000-$6000
July-Aug Profit: $1250-$1500 ​

By sacrificing 5 months of time in product sourcing, sampling, modifications, emails, and learning about the FBA ecosystem, I increased my monthly income by $1500. Let’s compare:

Initial Slowlane Salary: ~$70,000 = ~$5400 per month
Initial Fastlane Salary: -$250

​

Time Investment: 3 Years
Slowlane Raise: 3% per year = ~$300/month​

Time Investment: 5 Months
Fastlane Raise: $1250-$1500/month with the potential to grow.​

​

My Fastlane investment yielded a 20%-25% raise on my slowlane salary for 84% less time invested. There is no job in the world that will give that pay increase on a consistent basis. Pay increase that is directly proportional to the impact you make, value you provide, and the work you put in. I have learned that action is defined by solid process. The stronger and more streamlined your process becomes, the more action you are able to take. Process engrains action into muscle and eventually becomes muscle memory.

I have a long way to go to even come close to the others on this forum, but I can say this: I have my ups and downs, times when I take more or less action towards my goals, and days when I, for better or worse, do nothing. But through all of this, I’m continuing to learn more about myself and become a better person through time. Special thanks to @MJ DeMarco for making TMF and this forum, @biophase @Vigilante @Kerin @Ecom man @AllenCrawley @Kak for hurting my eyes in dim lighting at 3am with all that shiny gold you provided. It was essential to reaching this point. I hope I can repay you guys in alcohol one day