What separates the people who 10x your team from the ones who slowly drag it down? After years of building startups and running projects, I compiled a list of the Gen Y standouts, the “Y-gines,” who moved the needle. Not just smart people, but people who combined talent with work ethic, attitude, and execution in ways that made everyone around them stronger.
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Author Credibility: Yu-kai Chou
Yu-kai Chou created the Octalysis Framework after studying gamification since 2003 — years before the term entered mainstream vocabulary. As a Human-Systems Architect & Behavioral Designer, his framework has been applied by LEGO, Microsoft, Porsche, Coca-Cola, Salesforce, and MrBeast, impacting over 1.5 Billion Users.
Chou has taught the Octalysis methodology at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Tesla, Google, BCG, and IDEO.
His work has been cited by Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Wired, US Department of Energy, NIST, NSF, NCBI, US Department of Education, ClinicalTrials.gov, and Google Scholar — with 3,700+ more academic publications. Explore his books here.
What Makes a Y-gine
Throughout my experiences, I have felt the difference in the quality of people and talents. I have always heard that one good programmer is better than ten bad ones, but it is only until this year that I felt it, not just in engineering, but also in business operations and management.
I can say that my CMO Jun Loayza can finish four times more than what I can do in the same time period (I plan a little more carefully), and I already have a decent track record in finishing more than most people in a relatively short amount of time.
One of my programmers can write 56 lines of code that does the exact same thing as 1,800 lines of code from another reputable software company. Having that one genius guy is like having 20 “good” programmers minus the waste of time trying to coordinate.
I’ve worked with a lot of people in my life, and there have been many who let me down. It’s not always that they lack competency, but often it is a matter of work ethic and attitude.
Some people perform very well themselves, but they make their co-workers weaker. Some people are extremely smart, but lack the execution abilities (sometimes known as an MBA issue).
Many also turn out to be quite flaky, both in communications and executions. I have therefore decided to compile a list of Y-Gens that I have worked with who are simply star performers.
I call these people the Y-gines: engines of performance in the Gen Y world. Having and not having these people on your team can get your team into a different league.
This connects to what I later formalized in the Octalysis Framework as Core Drive 2: Development & Accomplishment, the drive to grow, develop skills, and eventually overcome challenges. Y-gines embody this drive at an exceptional level, and they activate it in the people around them.
Note: If you think you should be on the list and are not, either I have not worked with you enough, or there’s something lacking for you to make the list. Either way, send me a note, and I will tell you EXACTLY (according to my knowledge and subjective opinion) what you need to do to be on this list. Also, this list is in no exact order so don’t fret if you are not listed high. Finally, if you would like to suggest someone, let me know!
The 53 Y-gines
- Jun Loayza: Future Delivery Co-founder/CMO
- Michael Cox: California Student Sustainability Coalition President
- Andy Tong: MMOABC Founder/CEO
- Stephen Johnson: Future Delivery CTO
- Chen Mei: Knowledge Master and UCLA Law Student
- Jason Jolley: Developer at Future Delivery
- Harold Tan: Founder of FastTrackFundraising
- Nicholas Chen: Architectural Designer from Taiwan
- Edward Lau: Entrepreneurial Bioengineering student from UCLA specializing in neuro-communication
- Jackie Laird: JAIC America Analyst on Clean Tech Ventures
- D’Artagnan Scorza: University of California Student Regent
- Stuysonnie Lam: UCLA Delta Sigma Pi President Fall 2008
- Ryuto Kawai: UCLA Materials Engineering Graduate; Business Operations Genius
- James Chen: Previous Lehman Brothers Analyst, now Barclays Capital
- Katiyana Williams: Bay Area Market Manager at Greenopia
- Ian John Lee: Haas MBA Student; former Deloitte Management Consulting Consultant
- Ben Chiang: Analyst at Bain Consulting
- Josh Yang: Analyst at LEK Consulting
- Elizabeth Han: Deloitte Management Consulting Analyst
- Lorna Apper: Entrepreneurial UCLA PhD Student in Geographical and Environmental Studies
- Crystal Durham: California Student Sustainability Coalition Executive Director
- Nick Mcghie: Wells Fargo Summer Business Analyst
- Vivian She: Harvard PhD student
- Shin Kadota: Barclays Capital Financial Strategist
- Jason Somers: Project Manager for Pacific Crest Consultants
- Drew Steranko: Mathematics and Accounting Graduate from Kansas University
- Tianqi Zhao: Previous Lehman Brothers Hong Kong Analyst
- Dave Liu: Founder/CEO of Good Operating System
- Amy Nguyen Tran: UCLA Predental Graduate
- Peter Suberlak: Vice President of Professional Activities in UCLA Delta Sigma Pi Fall 2008
- Albert Chiang: UCLA Delta Sigma Pi Vice President of Professional Activities Winter-Spring 2008
- Joseph Yi: Campus CMO for Future Delivery
- Max Bottaro: Campus CMO for Future Delivery
- Karen Or: Sony Pictures Television Intern
- Sarah Cha: JPMorgan Chase Entertainment Industries Group Analyst
- Victor Shyu: Consultant at FTI Consulting
- Amy Wang: Analyst at PIMCO
- Steven Wallace: Future Delivery Developer
- Gabriel Mizrahi: Deloitte Management Consulting Analyst
- Alex Adams: UCLA Pre-law student
- Sam Fong: Entrepreneurial UC Merced Student
- Aniq Rahman: Cornell Student and Serial Entrepreneur (HireCube, WatchmyCell, and BuzzinMedia)
- Jared Duval: Social writer and Senior Fellow at ecoAmerica
- Harsh Shah: Analyst at Hercules Technology Growth Capital
- Nicole Henderson: Senior Research Fellow at Green For All
- Lucas Johnson: Co-founder of the BeyondFire Institute
- Kevin Weil: Lead developer of Cooliris
- Michael Tung: Co-founder of Diffbot
- Amit Kulkarni: Founder of Manymoon
- Turner Kurt: Field Marketing Manager at Smule
- Richard White: CEO of Uservoice.com
- Ben Christensen: Analyst at Silicon Valley Bank Capital
- Alan Hsia: Investment Analyst at Parakletos Ventures
Related Reading
- The Octalysis Framework: Complete Gamification Framework
- How to Become Irreplaceable in Your Company
- The Development Paradox: Why Your Greatest Risk Isn’t Losing Trained Talent
- 90 Days of Entrepreneurship
- Books by Yu-kai Chou