The Top 53 Y-gines I Have Worked With

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.

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.

TEDxLausanne · Gamification to Improve Our World17 min

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

1. Jun Loayza: Future Delivery Co-founder/CMO
2. Michael Cox: California Student Sustainability Coalition President
3. Andy Tong: MMOABC Founder/CEO
4. Stephen Johnson: Future Delivery CTO
5. Chen Mei: Knowledge Master and UCLA Law Student
6. Jason Jolley: Developer at Future Delivery
7. Harold Tan: Founder of FastTrackFundraising
8. Nicholas Chen: Architectural Designer from Taiwan
9. Edward Lau: Entrepreneurial Bioengineering student from UCLA specializing in neuro-communication
10. Jackie Laird: JAIC America Analyst on Clean Tech Ventures
11. D’Artagnan Scorza: University of California Student Regent
12. Stuysonnie Lam: UCLA Delta Sigma Pi President Fall 2008
13. Ryuto Kawai: UCLA Materials Engineering Graduate; Business Operations Genius
14. James Chen: Previous Lehman Brothers Analyst, now Barclays Capital
15. Katiyana Williams: Bay Area Market Manager at Greenopia
16. Ian John Lee: Haas MBA Student; former Deloitte Management Consulting Consultant
17. Ben Chiang: Analyst at Bain Consulting
18. Josh Yang: Analyst at LEK Consulting
19. Elizabeth Han: Deloitte Management Consulting Analyst
20. Lorna Apper: Entrepreneurial UCLA PhD Student in Geographical and Environmental Studies
21. Crystal Durham: California Student Sustainability Coalition Executive Director
22. Nick Mcghie: Wells Fargo Summer Business Analyst
23. Vivian She: Harvard PhD student
24. Shin Kadota: Barclays Capital Financial Strategist
25. Jason Somers: Project Manager for Pacific Crest Consultants
26. Drew Steranko: Mathematics and Accounting Graduate from Kansas University
27. Tianqi Zhao: Previous Lehman Brothers Hong Kong Analyst
28. Dave Liu: Founder/CEO of Good Operating System
29. Amy Nguyen Tran: UCLA Predental Graduate
30. Peter Suberlak: Vice President of Professional Activities in UCLA Delta Sigma Pi Fall 2008
31. Albert Chiang: UCLA Delta Sigma Pi Vice President of Professional Activities Winter-Spring 2008
32. Joseph Yi: Campus CMO for Future Delivery
33. Max Bottaro: Campus CMO for Future Delivery
34. Karen Or: Sony Pictures Television Intern
35. Sarah Cha: JPMorgan Chase Entertainment Industries Group Analyst
36. Victor Shyu: Consultant at FTI Consulting
37. Amy Wang: Analyst at PIMCO
38. Steven Wallace: Future Delivery Developer
39. Gabriel Mizrahi: Deloitte Management Consulting Analyst
40. Alex Adams: UCLA Pre-law student
41. Sam Fong: Entrepreneurial UC Merced Student
42. Aniq Rahman: Cornell Student and Serial Entrepreneur (HireCube, WatchmyCell, and BuzzinMedia)
43. Jared Duval: Social writer and Senior Fellow at ecoAmerica
44. Harsh Shah: Analyst at Hercules Technology Growth Capital
45. Nicole Henderson: Senior Research Fellow at Green For All
46. Lucas Johnson: Co-founder of the BeyondFire Institute
47. Kevin Weil: Lead developer of Cooliris
48. Michael Tung: Co-founder of Diffbot
49. Amit Kulkarni: Founder of Manymoon
50. Turner Kurt: Field Marketing Manager at Smule
51. Richard White: CEO of Uservoice.com
52. Ben Christensen: Analyst at Silicon Valley Bank Capital
53. 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

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