Why he left his job at Google SWE $100k+ (ft. CS Dojo)

I was like pretty happy at Google but I felt like I could be like happier doing something else so I hope you don't mind me asking for like so how much do you make with CS though Jonelle so it's kind of tricky because it goes up and down a little bit okay but I would say the average for the past few months has been about ten thousand US dollars per month nice yeah before we continue this video I just want to say that this video is sponsored by Goku now dotco domains are dope they're pretty much the hottest domains like for example Vine Co now if you watch my startup series you would know that I have a startup called not vine so I actually wanted to get not vine dot cope because I really wanted to mimic vine Co unfortunately when I check the website it wasn't available someone took it before me I wonder if they watch my series but basically if they took it before me and unfortunately can't get that but I was able to get revine Co by the way revine is basically my nemesis startup which is exactly the same as not mine I haven't fully decided what to do with it yet but I'm pretty sure that it's gonna be something video related either I can just have it as an alias for kinda like my portfolio for all my videos or I can have like a user submitted video platform that I can make we'll see we'll see anyways back to Coco so Coco is a place to find Co domains and like I said Co is pretty dope Co is basically like dot IO but way cooler like dot IO I just so old-fashioned it's not cool anymore nobody uses that anymore it's all about kono all the hottest startups usko for example like I said fine coal and there's other ones like Angel Co Rico Berko these are all like super dope companies they have over 2.2 million domains registered worldwide it's short so you can easily type it on your phone memorable so if you have a start-up it's a very unique name for your brand which is very useful for a start-up so if you want to register a dot codomain go to go code and register your domain now and then also build something with it I can't wait to see what you guys build all right so welcome I usually don't like talk to the camera anymore I Drive to you yeah pretty much favorite question yeah so anyways yeah so you want to just give a little introduction to like my viewers and stuff like that like for example your name your channel and stuff like sure yeah just real all right I guess I'm we're not talking to the camera if you want yeah yeah whatever so as you know my name is YK and I've been running you know my youtube channel called CS dojo it's a programming discretion YouTube channel that I've been running for the past three years now the first year I did it part-time you know while I was working at Google as a software developer and then the past two years have been a full-time you know a lot of people ask me like can I make a living out of it and the answer is yes I can and that's what I've been doing cool so yeah I mean honestly I'm like super impressed that you know you were able to like quit your job at Google and then start like YouTube like pretty much full-time now yes I was wondering like is like I've seen the video of why you quit Google but do you want to just like talk about it again and the house or even more questions about it yeah so sure why did you quit Google and start YouTube right full-time now yeah full-time and so you know this is something I already talked about on this channel I can I you mentioned yeah but I sort of thought about it again for this particular interview huh and here's the way I think about it you know there are there are sort of two parts to it the first part was that you know I wanted to like spend more time on YouTube get better at you know making videos and basically help more people and then the second part was that I was like pretty happy at Google but I felt like I could be like happier doing something else so maybe like I could going to you know either of them if you want me to oh yeah both of them yeah sure so the YouTube part you know this one I think there are like two ways of thinking about it and both of them were true the first one is that you know I had about seven thousand subscribers and maybe like you know about a hundred thousand total views at that point like right before I left Google Wow okay yeah so it's like it's like it's not like a lot of views but it's you know it's some traction that's pretty gutsy cuz like yeah I went like I would be too afraid to do it even now from my channel right yeah I like I was pretty afraid but I feel like sort of did it uh-huh and you know I had like a few courses going on and I was making I don't know like three hundred four hundred dollars for up those courses like a month or yeah a month yeah and basically nothing from YouTube so what my original idea was okay if I can make like ten more courses like that I'll make like three to four K a month and that's gonna be enough for like rent and food and everything else so that that's sort of the financial plan I had and at the same time I you know I thought that I would be able to help a lot more people you know through my youtube channel time through my job mm-hmm so that's sort of one way of looking at it the other way of looking at it which is also true is that I saw this business opportunity and I didn't want to miss it right all right that makes a lot of sense yeah okay so I hope you don't mind me asking for like so how much do you make with CS dojo now so it's kind of tricky because it goes up and down a little bit okay but I would say the average for the past few months has been about ten I US dollars per month nice yeah and then the breakdown was like 40% yeah okay that's the same breakdown yeah well that's pretty cool nice do you want to make more or like are you okay with that no I'm happy with it you know like I said earlier I want to be able to stabilize my income a little bit more but I don't see any reason to like make more because I like I can do everything on my own like anything shooting anything cool awesome yeah but like it's crazy how you validated this business opportunity just with like your YouTube channel because you know a lot of the times when you hear about startups they always talk about okay you build an MVP yeah I validate your idea and then you go all in so can you kind of say that your YouTube channel when it was only 7000 subscribers that was already an MVP yeah that was that was one of the MVPs I had okay were you ever scared that like oh maybe it won't grow anymore yeah like at the top yeah I was like I was actually super scared on till like maybe like six months in so like I left Google two years ago in April May something like that uh-huh and then I think if I remember correctly in August or September of the same year like you know six months after I quit my job I was making like $1,000 a month and I was like I like I just make a lot more than I'm making yeah but like I just as a kid you know I just like going like what was like the biggest polling factor was it that oh there's like a big business opportunity yeah or was it like oh I really want to help a lot north but with like I would say equally equally important for the business opportunity like were you more motivated by like how much money potentially can you get or okay so not like not the amount of money okay I would say it's more about the sort of the stability that comes from being a business owner because when you're an employee no matter how good the company is there's always a risk of you know either being laid off or being fired right and like I don't see Google doing that anytime soon but it's possible I came 10 20 years so I thought like by having a business you know my financial situation will be like stable in the long term basically that's very funny cuz like most people when they don't want to go you know start your own business or start your own startup is because they have more financial stability right in a company yeah I'm very surprised that you're actually thinking like the yeah yeah it's it's it's a funny way of thinking about it but the way I think about it is you know in the short term it's obviously more stable do you have a job in the long term mmm-hmm I mean my business is still pretty unstable but if I have like two or three businesses I don't have to like rely on you know why don't them - I got it yeah yeah so so like when I made those videos back then I was definitely making you know a lot less money I would say I don't remember exactly but I think it was like - 3k a month you know but now it's like comparable to what I used to make it what you used to me okay yeah so can't tell me Martha like the all the Brethren court like all the sources of being sure that you get which one's the biggest you know yeah that if ever you guys want to do it yeah try it or they can at least know how it goes yeah of course so I guess the first thing I would say about that is that it's really tough yeah you know doing the other doing business on YouTube but for me at the breakdown I think is about like I would say 40 to 45 percent YouTube ad revenue 40 to 50 or 40 to 45 percent like stuff like that yeah it is not the exact number but that's sort of the you know rough number yeah and then the rest is my courses and you know affiliate marketing mmm next sponsorships I did a little bit but you know it's not it's not an ongoing payment okay sponsorship meaning like a flat rate right okay yeah yeah yeah that's pretty funny cuz like for me to add revenue is very little I think it's probably like maybe 20 percent okay yeah and then everything else is just a flat rate sponsorships right I just started doing the affiliate link recently yeah with elbow expertise and I actually use the other one too that you use which is daily coding a problem yeah use my promo code if you want to so yeah and yeah so far it seems like that's okay too but yeah like for me I just do like a lot of flat rate sponsorships and and yet those ones are pretty good so far the are you thinking that you might expand in terms of monetization how yeah so for monetization I'm happy where I am income because I'm at a point where you know I can basically afford my rent and food and everything else and that's basically why I need a cut but you know content wise yeah I'm still thinking about it I was thinking maybe like more interview kind of videos or podcasts or maybe going into machine learning as yeah yeah yeah how that makes sense I remember you making a video about quantum computers yeah yeah like are you interested in like the the most novel tech and stuff like that no no no no not necessarily