My First Coffee Chat: Strive to Excel Overwhelmingly!!

May 20, 2025

I had my very first coffee chat today-!! šŸ˜„

My guest was Young Han, a Korean international student YouTuber Iā€™ve been following and supporting for a long time. I was deeply impressed by his determination to pursue his dreams with passion despite uncertainty. Now, he is working at Meta as a Partner Engineer in Generative AI.

Ever since I decided to build a career in the tech industry, Iā€™ve held onto a few core goals:

  • Work at a leading global company
  • Develop products and services that deeply impact peopleā€™s daily lives
  • Keep learning and growing at the forefront of technological change
  • Be recognized not only in Korea but also in the United States as a professional

Recently, with the rise of concerns about developers being replaced by AI, I added another goal to ensure competitiveness 10ā€“20 years from now:
transitioning from a full-stack web developer to an AI engineer.

Because Young Han is living the life I aspire to, I was truly grateful that he accepted my coffee chat invitation. Despite my nervousness, the one-hour conversation was incredibly enjoyable.

Currently, Iā€™m fortunate to have been admitted to a U.S. graduate program (MSCS-AI) and received my visa, but Iā€™ve been worried about lacking project experience, making a career transition, and even feeling imposter syndrome, to the point of fearing burnout before I even begin.

Thatā€™s when Young Han delivered a very clear message:
ā€œBuild an overwhelming strength.ā€

If the AI job market is tough and oversaturated, then the only way to survive is to become overwhelmingly different from everyone else.

Key Advice from Young Han

He also gave me many actionable pieces of advice. Here are a few that stood out:

  1. Learn the technologies of your target companies and build open-source projects using them.
  2. CV and interview prep are basic ā€” build overwhelming skills on top of them.
  3. Get hands-on with AI agents, LangChain, and its sub-libraries (LangGraph, LangSmith).
  4. When starting with any open source, read the entire official documentation and master it thoroughly.
  5. A developerā€™s future competitiveness will depend on how well they leverage AI code generation tools.
  6. Master Cursor ā€” be able to fix every error AI-generated code throws at you.
  7. Above all, donā€™t act out of pressure; pursue what excites you, and execute overwhelmingly.
  8. Donā€™t go alone ā€” work with outstanding people.

Thanks to these specific pieces of advice, Iā€™ve shifted from feeling lost to seeing new possibilities, and Iā€™m ready to begin preparing again with renewed motivation.

My Next Steps

In the remaining two months before school starts, I plan to strengthen my fundamentals and gain project experience to support my career transition and adapt to this new environment.

On this new journey, I hope to grow without burning out, fueled by passion, and to excel overwhelmingly. I ask for your encouragement and prayers.

Someday, I also want to share my own story of growth and job-hunting success ā€” to guide and inspire others who share the same dream.

Once again, I sincerely thank Young Han for generously sharing his time and insights!