
Show Notes
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We've heard time and time again about the burnt out tech employee who quits a stable job to chase the dream. This time we're exploring the reverse!
Daniel "Tafo" Lee has lived more careers than I can count on two hands. JPL engineer, coach to Melee god Mang0, Yahoo Esports show host, CLG General Manager, the internet's Tetris teacher, Web3 economist, Andreessen Horowitz, and now, at 37, starting over in big tech. He's no stranger to the creator economy and his honest take on who should actually pursue it might save you five years of your life.
In this ep, we talk about: → how he coached a Melee god while working full time at NASA JPL → the ultimatum from his wife that finally made him quit and move to Esports → why 90% of streamers won't make it, and why minimum wage might be the better option → betting on yourself at 37: relearning how to code from scratch in the AI era → and how becoming a dad made him reevaluate the value of his time
This episode is for anyone who's ever been told to follow their passion and quietly wondered if that advice is a trap. Tafo is proof that the real flex isn't dying on one hill but maybe knowing when to walk away towards the next one.
→ Find Tafo: https://www.instagram.com/tafokints https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniellee912 https://x.com/tafokints
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More from Office Drama
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How do you go from a self-described “nobody PM” to becoming one of the most talked-about product managers in Silicon Valley? Holly Li’s career is kind of insane. She started at Google, bought a one-way ticket to San Francisco and convinced the team at Adept to create a PM role for her, became the founding PM of Figma Make, and is now building at OpenAI, where she famously launched Dots at OpenAI’s Dev Day.
We’ve spent decades making everything faster, easier, and more convenient, but what if we optimized away some of the things that actually make us human? Srinija Srinivasan is basically a founding mother of the internet. She was employee #5 at Yahoo, spent 15 years there as Editor-in-Chief and VP, helped shape how the early internet was organized, chaired the board of SFJAZZ, served on Stanford’s Board of Trustees, and later co-founded Loove, bringing technology and the arts together. And now, she’s building an entirely new kind of college. In this ep, we talk about: → what it was really like helping build Yahoo! in the early internet → what makes the best business partnerships actually work → why imagination, creativity, and curiosity matter even more in the age of AI → why art is so hard to make money from → the human cost of optimizing everything for efficiency → why convenience might be the wrong North Star for technology → how we can build technology that makes us more human
okay I need you to understand that this episode genuinely changed me 🥹✨ Deb Liu is one of the most decorated women in tech. She spent 12 years at Facebook where she founded Facebook Marketplace, rose to VP, and then became CEO of Ancestry.com. She has 4 million+ views on her Substack, she's a board member of Poshmark and Intuit. She is simply built different! In this episode we get into: → how Facebook Marketplace launched and immediately got a New York Times headline about drugs, guns, and baby hedgehogs 💀 → the invisible rules of power and influence that nobody tells you before you walk into a room → if work feels misaligned you might just need to be repotted 🪴 → how to hold high standards as a leader without traumatizing everyone around you → when to persist, pivot, or quit (and why quitting is actually the first chapter of her new book) → why ambition without joy becomes brittle this is the episode I have been wanting to make since I started Office Drama. Deb is one of those people who has an answer for every question because she has genuinely lived and reflected on such a variety of experiences in her life. This episode is true hopecore and Deb somehow makes you feel like everything is going to be okay 🥺
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