8 Lessons from 8 Years at Google
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Execution
How a Birthday Message got me into Google
If you follow me on LinkedIn or watched my video on 5 Habits I Regret Ignoring in My 20’s, you know a super underrated networking tip I follow religiously is wishing people a happy birthday.
For example, this is how my calendar looked this past week:
And these are some screenshots of my “conversations” from this past week:
As of the time of me writing this post, none of those people have responded to me 😔.
So isn’t all this a huge waste of time? Not to mention how much of a loser it makes me out to be…
Then this notification pops up on LinkedIn:
He’s a schoolmate I haven’t seen in over 9 years, we moved the conversation over to Instagram, and now we’re making plans to catch up!
Increasing your “luck surface area”
Believe it or not, a similar encounter got me my first-round interview with Google 8 years ago, and that (obviously) changed my life!
It reminds me of this image I saw a few months ago:
Am I saying re-activating your Facebook account and wishing people happy birthday = instant success?
Definitely not.
But are there certain actions you can consistently take (e.g. have 1:1 coffee chats with a colleague from a different team once a month) that can lead to positive outcomes?
Heck yes.
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