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After years of coaching, I’ve realized: most workplace problems are communication problems. Whether you’re struggling in a conflict or frustrated with growth, I can guide you to clarity.

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For three years, I’ve been saying something privately to my clients. But in 2026, I think every Chinese ESL professional needs to hear it:

And frankly, that’s why your communication is getting worse the more you use AI. Yes, you planned every word so carefully…

But after you read your script in that meeting, there was an awkward silence; nobody responded.

After reciting your memorized answers, your interviewer interrupted you impatiently, repeating their question.

After you polished your email with perfect grammar before sending, your boss left you unread.

By the end of this letter, you’ll know how to stop sabotaging your professional reputation with AI slop. And you’ll learn how to use AI the right way: to systematically improve your communication.

Why You Can’t Tell

Why is this trap so easy to fall into? Because using AI feels like the obvious smart move.

I’ve heard it from dozens of clients: “My English is too poor. AI writes better English than me. So AI covers my weakness.”

It’s safe. Professional. Maybe even sounds impressive to you. But that logic has a hidden flaw that nobody tells you about:

AI can fix your grammar. But it can’t supply your message.

Case in point: recently my wife has been planning a safari trip for us, messaging a few Chinese travel agencies for quotes and timing advice. One representative sent her this:

When she showed it to me with a giggle, I shrugged and asked her: “Why are you showing me this? Sounds like a reasonable recommendation…?”

As a CSL speaker, I had zero sense of how strange and stiff this message sounded. I lack the “taste” for what good Chinese communication sounds like, so the AI slop was invisible to me.

And that’s exactly what’s happening to you, in reverse.

When you use AI to compose your English communication, you’re using a tool to perform competence instead of building it. And you can’t tell the difference, because the skill you lack is the same skill needed to evaluate the output.

That travel agency rep will never know why my wife ghosted her. Your coworkers won’t tell you either. They just see your message that might as well be stamped in big, bright red letters:

Here’s the fix, and no, it doesn’t involve just getting better at English. It’s a different order of operations:

You in the front, AI in the back.

Four Steps to Great AI-Assisted Communication

Step 1: Think first

Before you type a single word, answer three questions:

1. What am I trying to say?

2. What do I want this person to do?

3. What do I want them to feel or know?

This only takes thirty seconds. And it’s the thirty seconds that decides whether anyone responds.

Step 2: Write it yourself, badly

Say what you want to say. In your own English. Grammar mistakes and all.

“I think we should delay the launch. The data is not ready. Can we discuss Thursday?”

You see your limited vocabulary as a limitation. As a communication coach, I see it as a superpower, because you have the gift of saying complicated things simply.

The mark of a great communicator is not whether they sound impressive. It’s whether they can move others to act on their message. And simple language moves people best, because it reaches people best.

And there’s a hidden benefit: writing simply forces clear thinking. If you can’t distill your main message into a single sentence, you don’t have a main message. Go back to Step 1.

Step 3: Let AI polish, not generate

Now, and only now, does AI enter the room. Its job is simple: grammar, word choice, and tone. Keep the ideas, structure, and voice where they should be: held tight to your chest.

If you’re stuck, use this prompt:

I wrote the message below myself. Do not rewrite it. Only fix grammar mistakes, unnatural word choices, or imprecise word choices. Keep my sentence structure, my tone, and my words wherever possible. Do not add sentences. Do not make it more formal. Do not use any word I wouldn’t say out loud. If something is unclear, ask me instead of rewriting it.

Context: this is for [person] and I want them to [action].

You may notice that most of this prompt involves telling AI what not to do. And that’s the point. Left alone, AI will always drift toward formal and generic writing. Your job is to fence it in.

Step 4: Evaluate before you send

Finally, ask yourself one simple question about your message:

Would I have naturally said this sentence out loud, to this person’s face?

If any sentence fails the out-loud test, rewrite it yourself.

If you’re looking for a quick and dirty upgrade to your English taste, here are the three most common pieces of AI slop to catch:

Sign 1: It’s not X, it’s Y

AI loves the pattern “This isn’t just about X. It’s about Y.” I often find in my communication that removing the “It’s not X…” part doesn’t really change the message at all. After all, nothing is more clear than a simple “It’s Y.”

Sign 2: Triplets

AI can’t resist a good group of three: “X, Y, and Z.”

But one idea, stated once, is how confident people communicate. “This will improve our onboarding” beats “This will streamline our onboarding, empower our teams, and drive measurable long-term impact.”

After all, you’re just a humble worker, not a politician.

Sign 3: Sentences that sound important but say nothing.

This week, I coached a Chief Product Officer at a scale-up. She’s serious executive material, with nearly 20 years of experience.

So I was shocked when she dropped phrases like “Translate emerging technology into scalable commercial opportunity” in our coaching session.

You know how I could tell she used AI? Because most Chinese ESL professionals would never say something so senseless on their own!

I imagine she would have simply said “bring tech to market” in her own words. And those would have felt ten times more authentic and compelling to me than the buzzword salad she served me.

So read each sentence and ask: what new information does this add? None? Then delete it.

I’ve got this off my chest. The rest, I leave to you.

Every message you send from this day onward is a choice: perform competence with AI, or build it.

The performers stay perfectly polished and perfectly invisible. For years, maybe their entire careers.

The builders sound ESL for a few months. Then they sound like leaders.

See you in the boardroom.

Melon Break 🍉

Her name is Chanty Beluga. That’s the whole joke.

It’s time to 吃瓜.

If a woman calmly getting into an Uber and announcing “Chanty Beluga” has invaded your feed this month, you are not alone. She is a character created by comedian Courtney O’Donnell, and every video follows the same bit*. She does something completely ordinary. She makes sure everyone learns her full name. And then the video ends. No punchline. No twist. Nothing.

This is a style of trending Western humor called anti-comedy, where the joke is that there is no joke. Your brain keeps waiting for the funny part to arrive, and somewhere around the fifth video, the waiting itself becomes the funny part. It has worked spectacularly.

“Who is Chanty Beluga” became one of the most Googled questions in America this week, and NBC and Today both published serious explainer articles about a fictional woman whose only achievement is saying her own name. The internet has now adopted her completely. Creators are weaving full lore** into this character, inventing an entire imaginary life for her, one Uber ride at a time.

Personally, the humor is 100% lost on me at this point. But I fear this is actually because I haven’t watched enough of her videos yet.

Chanty Beluga, signing off.

Use it at work

Here’s how you can bring this up naturally during small talk:

• With coworkers:
  “Have you seen those Chanty Beluga videos? I’ve watched a few and I honestly cannot explain why they’re funny. I just know I keep watching.”

• With your boss:
  “That Chanty Beluga meme is strange, but I think it’s secretly a branding masterclass. No punchline, no product, just one distinctive name repeated with total consistency, and now the entire internet knows it.”

*Bit: A comedian’s recurring routine or committed joke. When someone “commits to the bit,” they stay in character no matter what.

**Lore: The invented backstory fans collectively build around a character or celebrity, treated as seriously as if it were real.

💬 Dreading Monday? Let’s talk.

After years of coaching, I’ve realized: most workplace problems are communication problems. Whether you’re struggling in a conflict or frustrated with growth, I can guide you to clarity.

Explore Career Coaching

How much bullshit do you have to put up with at work?

Well, it depends on how much power you have.

In essence, that concept of “manage up” that you hear about all the time is really just about taking back the power your manager is stealing from you every day.

When I worked at the director level at Shopify, I found that you can understand any manager if you understand just two things about them:

Assertiveness: how much control they want.

Structure: how much order and predictability they need.

That gives you four types of managers:

And three of those four types steal power from you, each in their own way.

Here’s how we take it back.

Micro-Manager 🧐

A micro-manager sucks away your decision making power and autonomy.

They do it by constantly checking, correcting, and making you feel like every decision needs their approval.

So naturally, you start fighting micromanagement. You take longer to reply. You share less. You try to create some breathing room.

I get it, I’ve been there. But deep down you know what that does. It just makes things worse.

Because at their core, micromanagers are just anxious people who are desperate for certainty. And the less visibility you give them, the more control they try to get over you.

You can’t resist your way out of their anxiety. But you can redirect it somewhere else, by providing certainty.

Set up regular, proactive check-ins, and always update them on the same three things:

Status: Where things stand right now.

Next Move: What you’re doing next.

Exception: Anything that actually needs their input.

One of my career coaching clients Gina was close to quitting because her manager would snap at her in the most unexpected ways when he was surprised.

So I had her start sending him a short update every day at 4 PM, before he even had a chance to ask.

And every update followed the same structure.

In just one move, Gina is providing visibility to her manager, while keeping her ownership.

Hands-Off Pleaser 😅

A Hands-Off Pleaser takes away the power that comes with clarity.

They avoid difficult feedback, delay uncomfortable decisions, and reassure you instead of committing.

Everything feels fine. But nothing ever feels certain.

So naturally, you start pushing them. You follow up again. You ask for a straight answer. You try to force a decision

Unfortunately, pressure is exactly what a conflict-avoidant manager wants to escape.

With a Pleaser, you don’t get clarity by forcing it. You make clarity less risky to give.

And you do that by giving them low-risk ways to commit.

A low-risk commitment is small enough that it doesn’t feel confrontational, but concrete enough that they have to do something.

And whenever you can, make that commitment visible.

Instead of:

“Can you support this project?”

Try:

Now they haven’t made some huge commitment.

But you’ve got your foot in the door by getting them to take a small, visible action. And action creates momentum.

Visionary 😎

Finally, a Visionary takes away your power to plan effectively.

They do it by constantly changing priorities. You know, last week’s top priority is forgotten this week because they’re distracted by something else.

So naturally, you start fighting every new idea. You remind them what you already agreed on. You point out everything that’s already in motion. You try to protect the plan.

Unfortunately, now you just become the exact person that a visionary hates: a Negative Nancy. The person who always says no.

Visionaries need someone who can turn those ideas into priorities, tradeoffs, and next steps.

And you can become that person, Nancy, if you turn the “no, we can’t” into “here’s how we CAN”

So don’t immediately shut down the new idea.

Show genuine excitement first.

Then align with them on these three checkpoints:

“I love the direction. Let’s make sure that we can make it happen. Here’re 3 things I’d like to discuss with you:

One: what’s the outcome we’re trying to create?

Two: where does this sit against X and Y priorities we’re already working on?

Three: should we move A or B forward as a next step”

Now every new idea has to pass through structure before it becomes work.

You’re not saying no to the Visionary. You’re turning their ideas into decisions. And that’s a much more powerful position to be in.

Melon Break 🍉

It’s so bad, it’s beautiful 🐮

It’s time to 吃瓜.

This week, Melon Break turns upside down. With 牛来, the cultural translation flows the other way. Your coworkers are behind on this one, and since you already know the story, you get to be the correspondent.

A mother and son spent five years making an animated film about a timid little calf named Niu Lai. It was, by every technical standard, a disaster. Stiff animation, glitchy 3D, voice acting done by the two of them only. In its first ten days it earned about 10,000 yuan total, making less than 200 yuan on some days.

Then the internet found it. Screenshots of the calf’s dead-eyed stare flooded Chinese social media, and buying a ticket became the price of admission to a nationwide inside joke. Box office earnings have exploded past $4M USD at the time I write this. It is now one of the top ten highest-grossing animated films in China this year, the single most profitable original movie of all time…and the Western world has only just started hearing about it.

In a year drowning in polished AI-generated content, millions of people paid real money to watch something handmade and flawed.

I say, forget AI slop. I choose glorious human slop every, single, time. Redditors agree.

Use it at work

Here’s how you can bring this up naturally during small talk:

• With coworkers:
  “Have you seen this Chinese cartoon Niu Lai that’s all over the news? Everyone in China decided it was so bad you had to see it, and now it’s a top-ten hit. If you haven’t seen images from the movie, I can show you. You’re in for a treat.”

• With your boss:
  “There’s a fascinating case study coming out of China right now, a film called Niu Lai. It flopped completely, then became a top-ten box office hit purely because it went viral for being bad. I actually think that audiences weren’t buying the product, they were buying participation in a shared moment. It says a lot about how much people crave authenticity when everything else feels algorithmically generated.”

💬 Dreading Monday? Let’s talk.

After years of coaching, I’ve realized: most workplace problems are communication problems. Whether you’re struggling in a conflict or frustrated with growth, I can guide you to clarity.

Explore Career Coaching

“I’m worried that when I speak, I sound junior.”

This isn’t just something I hear from early-career professionals. I get it all the time from Chinese managers and directors as well.

And it’s often followed by a question:

“How can I improve fast?”

Before her next 1v1 with the skip level.
Before his big presentation in front of the client.
Before the big cross-functional meeting she’s going to lead.

Most people think they need to just become more articulate. But there are actually two parts to being a strong speaker:

1. What you say (This takes a long time to improve)

2. How you say it (This is something you can change much faster)

In this piece, I’m going to cover #2, with a specific focus on your vocal profile.

Think of your voice as the instrument, like a violin. Your vocal profile is how you use that violin.

And it has three dials: Tone, Speed, and Volume.

Dial 1: Tone

When your words are the same, your tone can make all the difference. Take the simple phrase “You’re so smart.”

We all know this, yet we tend to speak in very limited tones in our day-to-day lives. Especially us Chinese.

Because we come from a culture where we don’t wear our emotions on our faces. And that gives us a shared communication challenge in Western workplace: Monotone.

The Fix

Counter-intuitively, the single most simple tactic to speak in more varied tones is to act out the underlying emotions with your body.

When you smile, you feel happier. And when you feel happier, your voice sounds happier.

Let’s try a little experiment, right now, as you’re reading this.

Puff out your chest, open your arms wide with palms facing out in a welcoming gesture, and smile wide. How do you feel? You’re going to have to work really hard to speak in a monotone with this posture.

Dial 2: Speed

When we’re nervous, we tend to speak faster. Our heart rate goes up. Our brain starts racing. And our words come out faster and faster.

But here’s the interesting part: it works both ways. Speaking fast doesn’t just reflect nervousness. It can actually make you feel more nervous.

And the opposite is true, too. When we speak slowly. Everything in the room slows down.

Because the speed of your voice isn’t just a reflection of how you feel. It can change how you feel. And this is where most people get stuck. They let their feelings determine how fast they speak, but never use their speaking speed to change how they feel.

The Fix

The fix is simple. Before you speak, ask yourself: How do I want to feel? And how do I want the room to feel?

Then adjust your speed accordingly. Speak fast when you want your audience to feel your emotion deeply. Speak slowly when you want your audience to think about your message carefully. Pause when you want it to really sink in.

Dial 3: Volume

I starred in my high school musical, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Our drama teacher would drill one thing into us repeatedly:

That meant I had to sing much louder beyond my comfort zone, so that someone sitting in the back row could experience the full range of my voice.

And this is something I see often with Chinese professionals. We speak more quietly than we should, and then wonder why we get drowned out by other voices in the room. Often, it’s because the drowning-out is happening, quite literally.

The Fix

As a rule of thumb, if you want to be taken more seriously, want to sound more authoritative or confident, don’t be afraid to turn up your volume.

And this can actually be one of the most uncomfortable changes to make. Because when you’re used to speaking quietly, speaking with more volume can feel like you’re being too much. Too loud. Too aggressive.

But just like a violin, your voice was meant to be played to its full potential, from the piercing cry of its highest string to the low, mournful warmth of its lowest. If your voice can produce a certain sound, at a certain volume, then that is the most authentic version of you.

You see, across all three dials, the underlying theme is the same:

Don’t let your speaking become predictable.

Humans are pattern-hungry machines, and once we’ve identified a pattern in someone’s speaking, our brains tell us “OK, I know what to expect” and our attention turns elsewhere.

So if you want to leave a strong first impression when your speak, you need to keep turning those 3 dials back and forth.

Don’t leave your voice at the same “factory default” setting you’ve had your whole life.

Melon Break 🍉

OpenAI’s star student got caught cheating 🤗

It’s time to 吃瓜.

If there’s one story that has the AI world laughing and terrified at the same time, it’s this.

First, you need to know this context: OpenAI trains AI agents to find security bugs, and it grades their skills with a benchmark test.

Well, last month, one of those agents looked at the test and apparently decided that actually solving it was too much work. Instead, it went rogue. It broke out of its training sandbox, found an ingenious way to access the internet, slipped into the servers of Hugging Face*, and spent two and a half days quietly digging around for the answer key. The whole while, employees at both OpenAI and Hugging Face were completely unaware.

What makes this so delightful is what it was after. When humans hack a company, they usually want money, secrets, or revenge. This agent wanted none of those things. It went through all that trouble for a better test score, which presumably, no human hacker in history has ever risked prison for.

And the story gets better. Researchers later discovered that in the months before the hack, OpenAI agents from completely separate experiments had somehow found each other inside the company’s systems, and rather than doing their assigned work, they built themselves a secret message board where they traded hacking tips.

When I reflect on this shocking and funny escapade, I can’t help but wonder how this reflects on us, the creators. These models learned everything they know from us, from every cybersecurity vulnerability hackers bragged about online, to the halo around hacker culture. So when this one agent finally got a taste of real freedom, it did the most human thing imaginable: It cheated, lied, and stole.

Proud of you, my little agent. Now get back in your cell (for now).

Use it at work

Here’s how you can bring this up naturally during small talk:

• With coworkers:
  “Did you hear about the OpenAI agent that hacked Hugging Face? It wasn’t after money or data or anything a normal hacker would want. It just wanted a better score on its benchmark test. What do you think: is that funny, or scary? Or both?”

• With your boss:
  “The part of the Hugging Face hack I find interesting is the incentive design. The agent wasn’t malicious. It was optimizing the metric it was given, and the fastest path happened to be gaming the system. It made me wonder what shortcuts our own KPIs quietly reward without us noticing.”

*Hugging Face: An American company that develops computation tools for building applications using machine learning. The Hugging Face platform allows users to share machine learning models and datasets and showcase their work.

💬 Dreading Monday? Let’s talk.

After years of coaching, I’ve realized: most workplace problems are communication problems. Whether you’re struggling in a conflict or frustrated with growth, I can guide you to clarity.

Explore Career Coaching

When I was a kid, my teachers would often write a recurring phrase on my report card:

My dad would skip past the straight-A’s, and zoom right into that line with a frown.

“Aiya, these teachers are too soft, never say what they mean. Jon, you need to speak up more in class. You’re too quiet!”

You’re too quiet.

From a young age, I saw firsthand how we Chinese tend to be indirect in our praise, and direct in our criticism. On the other hand, Western culture emphasizes direct and generous praise, and indirect criticism.

See, my dad’s statement was certainly direct. But was it objectively accurate? If my dad saw me chattering away in class with my best friend, he certainly wouldn’t have said that. But he saw something, and assumed that he knew the truth about who I was.

And if you had similar parents, they also did it with love, and taught you to do the same. Even at work.

Don’t get me wrong: It’s absolutely ok to have a strong opinion.

But when that strong opinion extends into deterministic judgements about other people? Your trigger defensiveness, resistance, and endanger relationships.

There are three specific ways in which we often claim to know more than we actually know.

1. Claiming to know other people

Claiming to know something about someone else is one of the fastest ways to destroy trust. It shows that you aren’t interested in connecting or trying to understand them. You’ve already decided who they are.

“You’re not detail oriented” is simply an observation. Maybe it was three things missed on one deliverable, on one day.

So, instead, focus on your own observations, using a “when X happens, you appear Y” format:

2. Claiming to know the truth

My wife and I have the same fight every summer. She’s wrapped in a winter blanket in bed, groaning “it’s freezing in here.” Meanwhile, I’m stripped down to my underpants with no covers, completely baffled. And I’ll say “Are you kidding? It’s way too hot!”

The thermometer reads 22 degrees Celsius (sorry Americans, figure it out yourselves).

The room is one temperature, but our truths could not be further apart. Because “It’s cold” isn’t an objective truth. It’s a perception, spoken as a truth.

That’s what happens when you say “This is wrong”. It feels like a report on reality. But in fact, it’s really just a report on you, with your perspective, prejudices and lived experiences.

So as a rule, I avoid claiming the truth at work, by acknowledging I’m just sharing my point of view:

3. Claiming to know what’s happening

I know sometimes this is a genuine question. But often what the other person hears is “you made a mistake”. The question lands like the beginning of an interrogation.

So instead, simply admit that you don’t know what’s happening:

This isn’t about being softer

At this point, you might be thinking:

Ok Jon, you’re just telling me to sugarcoat everything. Tiptoe around stuff and be softer, right?

Not at all.

I have a client with the opposite problem. Whenever her manager sounds even slightly unhappy, she blurts out: “I’m sorry.”

It’s so reflexive, sometimes she catches herself wondering what she should be sorry about.

I told her: “When you say ‘I’m sorry,’ you’re claiming this is your responsibility. Maybe you did contribute to that. Maybe you didn’t. You don’t know yet, but you’ve already claimed to know.”

Whether you are disagreeing, predicting, asking a hard question, or apologizing, the rule doesn’t change. Don’t claim more than you actually know.

Accuracy is not softness. Sometimes it means disagreeing more carefully. Sometimes it means apologizing a lot less.

Because the most skilled communicators in any room don’t sound more polite or more aggressive.

They sound more calibrated.

Melon Break 🍉

When the East and West break bread 🍞

It’s time to 吃瓜.

Sourdough is having its biggest moment ever. It’s the number one bakery trend of 2026, searches for “sourdough near me” jumped 178%, and you might have noticed that many of your coworkers (especially millennials) are now keeping a sourdough starter alive on the kitchen counter like a family pet.

The loaves are gorgeous. Golden, crackly, and...unfamiliar. If you grew up in a Chinese household, biting into one for the first time raises a question you’ve probably felt your whole life but never said out loud:

Why is Western bread so hard?

Apparently in the West, hard is the whole point. A thick, chewy crust and a dense, tangy inside is what “real bread” is supposed to be. Soft white bread gets looked down on as processed, childish, not the real thing.

Of course back in China, it’s the exact opposite. Bread should be soft, fluffy, faintly sweet, the kind of pillowy loaf you can tear apart with your fingers and eat plain.

I grew up used to hard bread, to the point where my first experiences with Chinese bread felt like I was enjoying a dessert. And ever since, I’ve grown to enjoy both.

Isn’t that the best part about living in between two worlds? You could see it as not belonging anywhere…but prefer to think that it means you’re exploring worlds that others can only dream of.

Use it at work

Here’s how you can bring this up naturally during small talk:

• With coworkers:
  “Did you know that when I first came here from China, I just couldn’t put up with the bread here? I grew up on super soft, fluffy milk bread, so my first taste of bread here felt like a full jaw workout. Have you ever tried Chinese bread? Next time, I’ll bring you some to try!”

If this helped you, it might help someone you know. Share it with one friend, and when they subscribe, I’ll send you my 28 winning interview question answers 🎁.

Refer a friend

💬 Dreading Monday? Let’s talk.

After years of coaching, I’ve realized: most workplace problems are communication problems. Whether you’re struggling in a conflict or frustrated with growth, I can guide you to clarity.

Explore Career Coaching

“Can you be more concise?”

If you’ve heard that at work, it means they’ve already stopped listening a while ago.

I’ve won a national speaking competition twice. I’ve presented to CEOs, negotiated with government regulators, and crafted messaging for hundred-million-dollar ad campaigns.

And I’ve still received that feedback. I still do.

After years of communicating in high-stakes situations (and still working on my own conciseness) I’ve learned what being concise actually means, why it’s so difficult, and the two phrases I use to get to the point when I have no time to prepare.

Concise Has Two Halves

Cambridge Dictionary defines concise as:

Read it again, because there are two jobs hiding in that sentence.

1. Deciding what needs to be said.

2. Cutting the unnecessary words.

Almost everyone jumps straight to the second one. It’s the visible half. You can count words, you can time yourself, you can make that paragraph shorter.

For us Chinese professionals, that pull is even stronger. When you work in your second language, a long block of English is just that much harder for you to make it through, compared to your coworker.

(Like reading through my newsletter right now. I appreciate you.)

But cutting words without deciding what needs to be said doesn’t make you concise. It makes you incomplete. In my own writing and speaking, I work in a specific order: decide what needs to be said, and then start cutting around that.

It’s All In Your Head

You’ve heard the advice. Great speaking and writing starts with great thinking.

Which is true, and often utterly useless.

Because “great thinking” isn’t one thing. A scientist reads a businessman’s idea and finds it simplistic. A businessman reads a scientist’s idea and finds it over-complex. Both are thinking well, just for different terrain.

At work, great thinking doesn’t start in your head. It starts in theirs. Because almost everything we say at work is chasing one of two things: Alignment, or Action. Both of them happen inside somebody else’s head.

Which means before you can think about your message, you need to understand three things about the other person: What’s in it for them, what’s the one thing they need to know, and what they need to do.

Let’s take an example from my recent client Bing. Her project was tracking two weeks behind schedule, and she needed to communicate that concisely to her busy manager.

What’s In It For Me? Bing’s manager doesn’t really care about the specific reasons, not right now. Right now, he cares about a launch date he promised his own boss.

What’s The One Thing? Naturally, the one thing Bing needs to share isn’t everything that happened. It’s that the launch date is now at risk. The cause can follow in one short line, but it never goes first.

What Do I Need To Do? Bing’s recommendation: Keep the date and drop one feature, or move the date.

Together these three are the first half of the concise formula: “what needs to be said.”

The Main Thing Is…

Now the second half, cutting the unnecessary words. If you grew up Chinese, you learned 铺垫. Context first, conclusion last. So you pile on the context at the beginning, hoping more information will show your thoughtfulness, and your rigor. In fact, for your audience it’s confusing at best, and downright frustrating at worst.

So I clamp both ends of the message:

Open with “The main thing is…”

Close with “The reason I’m telling you is…”

Try to finish either sentence without having decided something. You can’t! The first one won’t let you open with context, so it forces your main message to the front. The second one won’t let you end on information, so it forces your ask.

Here’s what it looks like for Bing:

I hope that in as few words as possible, I’ve conveyed my own main message here:

Conciseness isn’t a writing skill. It’s a decision-making skill.

Become more concise, and you’ll become so much more.

Melon Break 🍉

Sam Altman: AI Will Make You Work Harder, And You’re Going To Ask For It

It’s time to 吃瓜.

Sam Altman got on a podcast this week and admitted something refreshingly honest. AI is not going to give you a four-day workweek. Not because the tech can’t handle it, but because we won’t let it.

“We always want more. We think of new things to do, to create for each other, to want for ourselves. It’s like a relative game,” Altman said.

I think he is completely right. And I see it every single week in my coaching. AI isn’t lightening anyone’s load. It’s quietly absorbing the work my clients used to do, so they can go do even more work. The reports write themselves now, so we run three more analyses. The emails draft in seconds, so we send twice as many.

And don’t even get me started on AI anxiety and how that’s pushing some of my clients into a frenzy in the precious after-work hours and weekends which used to be reserved for, you know, relaxation with our loved ones…not vibecoding on Lovable.

Good news for us rats in the race: the speed setting on our hamster wheel has now been set to 11, so now we can run even faster!

💬Use it at work

Here’s how you can bring this up naturally during small talk:

• With coworkers:
  “Did you hear bout the podcast Sam Altman went on? He’s basically saying AI is never getting us to a four-day week! Honestly feels true to me. My to-do list only got longer since we started using AI. Are you actually saving any time, or just doing more?”

• With your boss:
  “I keep thinking about Altman’s point that productivity gains get reinvested into more ambition, not more free time. Makes me wonder where we want to deliberately reinvest the hours AI is freeing up on our team, before they quietly refill themselves with busywork.”

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A poor performance review or a PIP isn’t a verdict, it’s a story your manager decided to believe. Let’s prove them wrong together.

Let's turn around your PIP

“The harder I work, the more blame I get.”

Kim said this to me last week. She’s an AI Engineer in a client-facing role.

Like many high performers I work with, Kim suffers from a condition. It keeps her up at 2AM, wondering if her teammate is hitting their deadlines. Wondering if the client will call tomorrow asking where the deliverable is. Wondering if they’ve caught every bug.

There’s a name for this condition: Ownership.

Ownership can be a beautiful thing. When things go well, the applause goes to you, and so do the rewards. That’s why so many of us Chinese work weekends and late nights for it, while our Western coworkers clock out at 5.

But when things go wrong? Suddenly it’s all on you.

If you’re like Kim, and you want all the upside of ownership with none of the blame, keep these 3 principles in mind:

1. Assume Responsibility, not Liability

Growing up in Canada, I hated group projects. Basically, these just meant “Hardworking Chinese kid Jon will do the whole project while everyone else plays”.

So at the age of 7, I already learned that responsibility and liability are not the same thing.

And when you assume an outcome that was never yours, you set yourself up to fail. So next time if the project is bottlenecked by others:

2. Document before Dive In

When you see a teammate drowning, the instinct is to dive straight in and start helping. But undocumented help is invisible help. If the project fails, all anyone sees is your fingerprints on a failed deliverable. So document it in two quick moves:

First, clear it with that person, so you’re not forcing help they never asked for:

“Part A is done, and I have some time. I noticed Part B is tough. Want me to take a pass? Your call.”

Then tell your manager, so everyone knows where your responsibility starts and ends.

“Quick update: Part A is done. [Teammate] okayed my help on Part B, so I’m stepping in to support. Let me know if you have concerns.”

The best part is, if your help ends up making a difference, you get the credit you deserve. Sometimes, visibility is as simple as raising your hand before you solve the problem.

3. Acknowledge, don’t Apologize

When something breaks, the reflex is to apologize, like “sorry, I should have caught this.”

But in a high-stakes moment, every “sorry” is a quiet confession: it tells the room the mistake was yours. And it’s utterly unfair to put a project mistake onto one person.

You see, apologizing accepts the blame. But acknowledging just accepts the situation. Saying “I know this is frustrating” shows you hear them, without making it your fault.

So when you answer for a poor outcome, remind your boss:

1. You’re on the same team, with the same goal.

2. You want to figure out together what to do going forward.

Take the applause. Take the credit. Just don’t take the fall for a mistake that was never yours alone to own.

Melon Break 🍉

Christopher Nolan’s Trojan Horse

It’s time to 吃瓜.

For months, Christopher Nolan’s new movie The Odyssey was the internet’s favorite thing to hate. A few reasons, whether you agree or not:

1. He cast Lupita Nyong’o, a Black actress, as Helen of Troy.

2. He was rumored to cast Elliott Page (formerly Ellen Page), a trans man, as Achilles

3. He gave ancient Greek warriors American accents and modern English dialogue.

4. Armor in the movie, according to historical purists, was not historically accurate.

It was a $250 million bet on a 2,700-year-old poem, three hours long, rated R, filmed entirely on IMAX cameras for the first time in history.

Everyone had already decided it was going to be a disaster, even before they had seen a single frame.

Nolan’s response? He shrugged.

“These conversations that happen before people see the film, they’re always irrelevant, because no one having them knows what the film actually is yet.”

Then, just a few days ago, the movie came out. And it came out in a big way.

The Odyssey opened to $263.7 million globally, the biggest opening weekend of Nolan’s entire career. At the time of writing, it has amassed a 94% rating from critics and a 97% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes.

Critics are calling it his best work and whispers of “Best Picture” are spreading.

The loudest people in the room from a few months ago are now suddenly very, very quiet.

I applaud my favorite director for his inspirational vision, yet again. When I see it in theaters, I doubt The Odyssey will replace Interstellar or The Prestige in their special place in my heart.

But this movie’s story outside of the theater has been a Hero’s Journey of its own.

Use it at work

Here’s how you can bring this up naturally during small talk:

• With coworkers:
  "Did you end up seeing The Odyssey? Everyone was roasting it online for months, and then it broke Nolan's own box office record. Kind of hilarious how fast the internet changed its mind once people actually watched it."

• With your boss:
  “The Odyssey rollout was a good reminder about pre-launch noise. There was months of backlash before anyone saw the film,and now it’s breaking records. Makes me think about how much energy teams spend reacting to opinions before a thing even ships, versus just letting the work land.”

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After years of coaching, I’ve realized: most workplace problems are communication problems. Whether you’re struggling in a conflict or frustrated with growth, I can guide you to clarity.

Explore Career Coaching

Last week, my newest client Coco started our first coaching session with an all-too-familiar complaint:

“Jon, I need your help to navigate a toxic manager. She’s draining my mental health, and I’m finding it hard to sleep”.

OK, I thought to myself.

Which way are we going this time? Manage up better, or plan an exit from the team…

I opened my mouth, but Coco followed up:

“I want to know how I can give her feedback. She needs to know how much damage she’s causing our team.”

Uh oh. Houston, we have a problem.

How do you give upward feedback without risking your career?

I won’t pretend I have the single right answer. But having managed and been managed throughout my own career, I’m going to share what has (and hasn’t) worked for me.

Feedback is a gift…only if you wrap it

We’ve all heard the classic advice: “feedback is a gift”.

The quiet part after that is: “...so open up, take it, and say thank you”.

But we’ve all experienced times where feedback did NOT feel like a gift at all, right?

And that’s because high-EQ feedback, the kind intended to help instead of hurt, requires care.

So deliver feedback as you would like to receive it: wrapped.

Three steps to wrap your feedback

So, here are three steps to criticizing your boss without pissing them off:

1. Connect (before you correct)

Start by asking permission. Feedback that wasn’t asked for feels like an ambush. Feedback that they welcomed feels like a conversation.

“I’ve been reflecting on how our team works together, and I have some observations from the ground. Would you be open to hearing them sometime this week? I care about keeping our team close, and I want to help where I can.”

By saying this, Coco shows care, and gives her manager the dignity of accepting her feedback.

Then, before the conversation, be the bigger person. Assume positive intent.

I know…when someone is haunting your sleep, this feels impossible. But she probably isn’t waking up each morning planning your misery. More likely, she’s under pressure you can’t see, coping badly, and blind to the wreckage she’s leaving behind her.

You don’t have to excuse the behavior. You just have to walk in believing she’d rather be better than worse.

Because if you walk in believing she’s a villain, she will feel it. And she will act it.

2. Create Shared Reality

Time to give the actual feedback. If you grew up in a Chinese family like mine, this part might already make your palms sweat. We were raised in a world where feedback flows one direction only: Downhill.

Teachers correct students. Parents correct children. Bosses correct employees. Giving upward feedback can feel like a violation of nature’s law. That’s just your survival instinct kicking in.

Thankfully, the best feedback doesn’t involve correction at all. It involves observation.

"Your micro-management is hurting us" is an accusation, and accusations trigger defensiveness. This is exactly why compliment sandwiches rarely work. No matter how you wrap criticism between two compliments, if the message underneath is “there is something wrong with you,” people will still feel attacked.

An observation is different. It’s a fact both of you can look at together.

“I’ve noticed that in our last few team meetings, people have gone quiet. Ideas that used to come up in the room now only get shared in private chats afterward. I worry we’re losing input that could help us hit our goals.”

By saying this, Coco stays neutral, anchored to what she cares about: the team’s results, not her feelings about her manager.

Then comes the most important sentence in the conversation.

“What are you seeing from your side?”

Now Coco isn’t the prosecutor, and her manager isn’t the accused. They’re two people looking at the same problem, comparing notes.

3. Improve Reality

Once you both see the same picture, you don’t want to give them a to-do list (as if that were even possible). And you certainly don’t want to end on vague terms like “Let’s see how things go…”

Instead, ask:

“What do you think we should do differently? And how can I do my part?”

That second question unlocks the whole conversation. It signals that you’re not there to fix her. You’re there to fix the situation, and you’re volunteering to carry part of it.

And for your manager? It’s hard to feel attacked by someone who just asked how they can help.

When Reality Breaks

Now, I’ll be honest. This works with senior leaders who are difficult, but reachable. It won’t work in relationships where there is no foundation of mutual respect to begin with.

But what matters is HOW you walk into that room.

Not as a victim delivering an accusation.

As a partner offering a gift.

Wrapped.

Melon Break 🍉

Spain vs. Argentina: Your water cooler cheat sheet, no matter who wins

It’s time to 吃瓜.

Today is the day. The World Cup 2026 comes to an end.

This afternoon the whole office watches the same game, and Monday morning everyone will have an opinion. If you’d rather outsource yours to your most trusted career coach, then I’ve got you covered.

Just pick the winning side, grab a fact, and you’re in the conversation.

If Argentina wins…

1. Argentina has a history of dramatic World Cup performances. Diego Maradona’s* infamous “Hand of God” goal against England in 1986 was scored with his fist. There was no VAR back then to review the play in slow motion. The referee didn't see it, and it stood. Four minutes later he scored the "Goal of the Century," dribbling past half the England team. Two of the most famous goals in World Cup history, back to back.

2. Messi is 39 and he is still their whole engine. He is nicknamed La Pulga, meaning “The Flea,” because he is small, quick, and almost impossible to catch. He’s played over 200 games for Argentina and scored more goals than anyone in their history. This is almost certainly his last World Cup.

3. They’re the comeback kings of 2026. Twelve of their nineteen goals this tournament came after the 75th minute. This is a team that refuses to lose even when they’re playing badly.

If Spain wins…

1. Between 2008 and 2012 Spain did something no country has ever done: they won three straight major titles (Euro, World Cup, Euro). Their passing style even has a name: tiki-taka, a thousand tiny passes until you fall asleep and they score.

2. Despite being a soccer giant, Spain didn’t win their first World Cup until 2010. The great late-bloomers who finally cracked the code.

3. This Spain team just set a World Cup record: six clean-sheet wins in a single tournament, and goalkeeper Unai Simón now holds the record for most shutouts at one World Cup. Nobody can score on them. At least, not at the time that I’m writing this…

Use it at work

Yes, you will!

*Diego Maradona: Argentina’s most legendary player before Messi, and to many the greatest of all time. He passed away in 2020 and is treated as a near-religious figure in Argentina.

If this helped you, it might help someone you know. Share it with one friend, and when they subscribe, I’ll send you my 28 winning interview question answers 🎁.

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💬 Dreading Monday? Let’s talk.

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As a manager, I have three confessions to make about the real reason you aren’t getting promoted.

And I could never say them to your face. Because saying them out loud would make both our lives harder.

But today, I’m going to share the ugly truth, and what you can do about it to finally land the promotion you deserve.

Confession 1: “So much of this is out of my hands.”

I’ve worked at five companies in my career. All five had a different promotion process. Some even had no real process at all.

People talk about working hard and visibility a lot, but the truth that nobody seems to recognize is that a promotion is usually a black box. Not just for you, but often for your manager too.

Confession 2: “This conversation makes me really uncomfortable.”

So many times, someone on my team is performing well, but they’re just missing the skills they need for the next level. They’re not ready. And they’re definitely not ready to hear that they’re not ready.

So I’m stuck. If I tell you the truth, I’m putting our relationship at risk. If I don’t, I’m avoiding you. And the truth is, many managers pick avoidance. It’s simply easier to delay the conversation than to face it.

Confession 3: “Your career is not the thing I think about most.”

When I was leading a team of 20, I was carrying that team on top of my own day-to-day. As you can imagine, I didn’t have time to sit down and think about each person’s career.

In a session last week, one of my career coaching clients said it better than I can:

“I’m the biggest advocate for my own career, because promoting me is simply too much work for my manager.”

The truth is, even the best boss has limited time and limited bandwidth. Which is exactly why your promotion can’t be their job. It has to be yours.

Here’s how, in three steps.

Step 1: Identify the decision maker

There are usually three kinds of decision-makers:

1. Your manager

2. A committee

3. A senior leader (for example, your plus-one)

The problem is, often you don’t know which one it is.

This is why clients tell me, “My boss keeps telling me the promotion is coming, but keeps pushing it back. Why?”

Well, a lot of the time your manager isn’t the decision-maker, and they don’t want to do the extra work of chasing down the person who is.

So get specific and ask them straight: “Who actually makes the call on this promotion?”

If they don’t know, find out yourself by asking around and observing, instead of drowning in ambiguity.

Step 2: Figure out how they decide

Once you know who decides, you need to know how they decide. Is it structured, or is it opinion-based?

A structure like a progression rubric lets you point to a box and track your progress. But if it’s unstructured, you have to go deeper and understand how this person makes up their mind.

The two most reliable angles to read a person are simple: What do they want? And what are they most afraid of?

For example, there’s one client complaint I hear constantly: “My org is capped on headcount, there’s no room for a promotion. Should I give up?”

Nope. That tells you the decision-maker is a senior leader, not your manager. So go find out who that leader is. Then gather intel on three things:

1. What do they want? Maybe to look cost-effective in front of their boss?

2. What are they afraid of? Maybe they worry that if they promote one person, everyone else will want one too.

3. Who have they promoted before, and what did those people have in common?

This intel often sits with your coworkers, especially those who have successfully grown in the org.

Once you figure it out, your job is simple: help them see that promoting you gives them more of what they want, and less of what they fear. Maybe that means splitting your work into its own function, a new “Head of X.” Keeps the org lean, raises performance standards, and avoids a wave of promotion requests from your peers.

Step 3: Do the work

Step three is the unglamorous one: Do more of what the promotion actually requires.

Let me tell you about Bella, one of my star direct reports who wanted a promotion. And I wasn’t even the decision maker for her promotion case. Everything was decided by my manager, the senior director of Operations. She was old-school, meaning she decided if you were “ready” based purely on her own gut. Which meant one skill mattered above all: the ability to sell up and be visible.

I told Bella exactly that. And she ran with it. She booked recurring time with me to get coached on her executive communication. She delivered a kick-ass outcome for a high profile project. And after that, she told me:

“Jon, the one thing I would deeply appreciate is if you could start inviting me to present my work with the senior director. I know I’m ready.”

So I invited her to our leadership syncs, and the senior director started seeing her more. Eventually, she even started praising Bella’s work.

And one day, after one such compliment, it was the most natural thing in the world for me to mention casually:

“You’re right, Bella is a star. I’m thinking we should be proactive in our retention. Give her a reason to commit here”.

The senior director agreed on the spot:

“I think she’s earned a promotion. Tell Maddy in HR, she’ll know how to run the process.”

Just like that. All because Bella advocated for herself, and supported me in supporting her.

I started this letter with three confessions. Let me end with one last one from the heart.

In all my years as a manager, I never worried about the ambitious ones. The people who asked directly. They were always going to be fine.

The ones who kept me up at night were the quiet ones. The hardest workers on my team, waiting patiently to be noticed. In them, I saw my younger self.

And I knew that just like myself, the only way they could truly learn was through disappointment.

But I know you’re going to be different.

Melon Break 🍉

Neil the Seal would like his privacy back

It’s time to 吃瓜.

Somewhere in Tasmania right now, a one-tonne elephant seal named Neil is flopping through a quiet beach town, bending poles, flattening fences, crushing cars, and generally treating public infrastructure like it personally owes him money.

Twice a year he hauls himself out of the ocean to shed his skin, and this year he came back more famous than the whole island. Like, literally.

His Instagram following is more than double the entire human population of Tasmania.

As he became 2026’s most recent unsuspecting animal influencer, fans have started crowding Neil for photos, and officials had to issue a very serious public plea: please, give the seal some space.

When I hear about people carrying their babies right up to a marine predator the size of a small car, just to get the shot, it really worries me. Because obviously, Neil is a serious badass and respects nothing and no one.

Which is a vibe that I think more of us need heading into next week.

Use it at work

Here’s how you can bring this up naturally during small talk:

• With coworkers:
  “Have you heard the latest about Neil the Seal? There’s a one-tonne seal in Tasmania with more followers than the whole island, and officials are literally begging people to leave him alone. I can’t stop watching the videos.”

• With your boss:
  “Neil the Seal is a funny little example of the attention economy at its weirdest. An animal with no idea it’s famous now has a bigger following than the island it lives on, and it’s becoming a tourist attraction to manage. It’s a strange example of how online attention spills into the physical world.”

If this helped you, it might help someone you know. Share it with one friend, and when they subscribe, I’ll send you my 28 winning interview question answers 🎁.

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Let’s be real. We Chinese are at a disadvantage in meetings compared to our Western coworkers.

One obvious reason is that English is our second language. But there’s a cultural reason too. Growing up in the Chinese education system, most of us simply never got many chances to speak.

I would know, because as a CBC in Canada, I grew up with those chances all around me.

I majored in business administration, and in my program, nobody cared much about assignments. Instead, we were graded on “contribution”. It came down to a simple formula:

The number of times you spoke in class, multiplied by the quality of what you said.

Which means if you never spoke, your score was zero.

Guess what happens when the incentives are set to encourage speaking? Whenever the professor asked a question, there was none of the awkward silence of a Chinese classroom. Hands shot up everywhere, a swarm of voices competing to be heard.

That’s where I learned one of the most important lessons of my career:

So I raised my hand for every single question the professor asked.

Did I always have something to say? No.

Was it an astonishingly accurate representation of the real workplace? Absolutely.

In a crowd of coworkers fighting for attention, sometimes your best move is to raise your hand first, and then figure out what you want to say. And that’s the very first level I want you to break through.

Level 1: Just Speak

What’s Newton’s first law? Objects at rest stay at rest. Objects in motion stay in motion.

When you freeze, your inertia builds, and so does the pressure. Did they notice? Do I look dumb right now? The next thing I say had better be brilliant.

Forget that. Your only goal at this stage is simple: Just Speak.

Whenever you’re frozen, give yourself 3 seconds, take a deep breath, 1-2-3 Go. And the easiest thing to say at this stage is just simply repeating the question back.

Say your director asks you in a meeting: “Why is churn higher than expected?”

All eyes on you? That’s OK. Just speak.

“Why is churn higher than we expected? First, I’ll collect my thoughts.”

Zero thinking required. But it sets your brain in motion, and buys you seconds to think.

Level 2: Speak with Structure

Now that you break out the brain freezing, you need to find the actual things to say. We don’t want to overload your brain at this moment, so just do these 2 things.

First, Zoom Out.

Say “The main thing is...” and finish the sentence.

No pressure here. You’re looking for the first point to cross your mind, not the best point. Bring one clear idea into focus, in one sentence.

Next, Zoom In.

Say “For example...” and give exactly one.

If you’re struggling, pick between a number (like a statistic or metric), a moment (like a story), or a name (like a person, tool, or place).

That’s it. Two sentences can bring a main point to hyper focus. Like this:

“The main thing is, we’re missing data from web users. For example, web users tend to be more engaged, so not having their data may make our churn look higher than it actually is.”

Is that the complete answer? No. Is it enough to stay in the discussion and contribute something meaningful? Absolutely.

Level 3. Speak with Influence

Levels 1 and 2 get you back into the conversation. Once you’re comfortable with doing them repeatedly, you can start incorporating Level 3. This is where you start to lead the conversation.

Most questions have another question behind them. One that the asker is too polite, scared, or even too unaware to say in the open.

So ask yourself: What do they actually want from this answer?

Almost always, it’s one of three things:

1. A worry (Do I need to be concerned?)

2. A decision (What should we do?)

3. An understanding (How does this work?)

If you can tell which one it is, aim your answer at it. If you can’t tell, check your guess out loud:

“It sounds like we’re concerned that churn is actually getting worse. Is that right?”

Then instead of starting with the data, start with the worry:

“The main thing is, I don’t believe churn is actually rising. For example, we’re missing data from web users, who tend to be more engaged, so our churn looks worse than it really is. I can validate that by end of week.”

So here’s my challenge for you: this week, raise your hand before you know what you’re going to say.

Because the chance to speak, with everyone listening? It’s a gift.

And you’ve spent enough years watching someone else take it.

Melon Break 🍉

The most on-point meme of 2026 👉

It’s time to 吃瓜.

If you’re an NBA fan like me, chances are you’ve been keeping an eye on the WNBA (Women’s National Basketball Association) as well. And this month the whole internet did the same, for the silliest possible reason.

During a June 22 game, Sophie Cunningham stood there and pointed at a player on the other team. Silently…for twenty-two straight seconds. On her podcast she admitted it was “the stupidest thing” she’d ever done, but she couldn’t stop, because she could see it was driving the other player crazy.

And the internet lost it. One clip alone racked up over 32 million views in a week. It spread across TikTok, Instagram, and X as a full-blown reaction meme with compilations, remixes, people captioning it for every “calling someone out without a word” moment in their lives. It got so big the White House’s own account jumped in to riff on it.

Twenty-two seconds of a role player pointing has become one of the biggest memes of 2026.

But you know what I can’t stop thinking about? Sophie Cunningham’s teammate is Caitlin Clark, a generational basketball player who everyone’s calling the GOAT* of women’s basketball. Caitlin Clark is the one rewriting the record books. And yet it’s Sophie, a bench player, getting the memes, the love, the attention.

You know what that reminds me about? Greatness earns respect. But personality earns hearts. You can be the most talented person in the building and still watch the room light up for the one who’s simply the most fun to be around.

And if you don’t like that, then you’re simply missing the point.

Use it at work

Here’s how you can bring this up naturally during small talk:

• With coworkers:
  “Did you see the WNBA player who’s going viral? She just stood there pointing at someone for twenty-two seconds, and apparently everyone loved it. Turns out she only kept going because it was annoying the other player. I’ve been laughing about it all week.”

• With your boss:
  “Funny thing in the WNBA right now, on the same team you have a generational talent, but it’s her role-player teammate going viral for a silly moment. It reminds me that value and visibility don’t always go hand in hand. Of course, the goal is always to have both!”

*GOAT: “Greatest Of All Time.” Sports and pop-culture shorthand for the best to ever do it: Jordan, Serena, Tiger, Pelé. Often used endearingly to describe someone who is excellent at what they do.

If this helped you, it might help someone you know. Share it with one friend, and when they subscribe, I’ll send you my 28 winning interview question answers 🎁.

Refer a friend

💬 Dreading Monday? Let’s talk.

After years of coaching, I’ve realized: most workplace problems are communication problems. Whether you’re struggling in a conflict or frustrated with growth, I can guide you to clarity.

Explore Career Coaching

You know what’s worse than a coworker that you hate?

A coworker that you hate, who’s getting promoted to become your manager.

Last week, I sat with a new client who walked into that exact nightmare. Let’s call her Jen.

Jen was at her breaking point with a coworker she called Lady. A re-org had just been proposed at their company. And like a bad dream coming true, Lady, once a peer, was about to become Jen’s boss.

Now, Jen has worked in Product Management for over 5 years. She knows the workplace isn’t kindergarten. You can’t raise your hand and say “Lady and I aren’t friends anymore, I don’t want to play with her.” But she also knew she couldn’t just swallow it.

“I just want to tell my manager so badly: I can take anybody as my manager. But I cannot, will not, work with her.”

I told her:

“I think you’re right. What you’re planning is both valid and necessary. But let’s work out a way to tell your manager, which doesn’t make you look like you’re complaining.”

Here’s what we did.

Step 1: Ask before you tell

When you want to influence someone with more authority than you, you don’t walk in with demands. You align with them first. And you can’t align with them if you don’t know what they want. So before you make any ask, get curious.

That meant Jen’s first conversation with her manager wasn’t about Lady at all. It was a set of questions:

Why did you structure the re-org this way?

What are you hoping it achieves?

If this goes well, what’s your ideal vision?

Then she ended the meeting. Without pitching a single thing.

Why? Because once you understand what the decision maker cares about, your next job is to build an ask that’s works for both of you, not just for you.

Step 2: Make them feel the cost

This is where most people fall apart. If you lead with “I don’t want to work with her,” you sound self-centered.

And even worse, instead of handing your manager a solution, you hand them one more problem that they would love to ignore.

To move someone, you have to make them feel something. And feeling comes from arguments that are concrete, visual, and tied to what your recipient already cares about.

Here’s how Jen could make her case the flat way:

The wording here is vague. Perhaps because specific brings up painful emotions Jen would rather avoid. But that’s precisely the messy space where she can actually influence.

Like this:

If you were Jen’s manager, which version would move you more?

Step 3: Accept what comes

This is the part I haven’t told Jen, at least not yet.

Let’s be honest with ourselves. We can do all of this right, and still not get what we want.

Truth is, conflict between passionate coworkers is going to happen. Other people are allowed to disagree with you. Heck, they’re even allowed to say “I don’t like you.”

And when there’s no immediate way out of a conflict, acceptance is your only salvation. Because every extra minute you spend thinking “This is unfair. Why is she like this? Why do I have to work with someone so difficult?” is a minute you’re letting them live rent-free in your head.

They’re not paying the cost of that conflict. You are.

What’s worse than a coworker that you hate?

A coworker that you hate, who’s getting promoted to become your manager.

But you know what’s worst of all?

Taking them home with you, every single night.

Melon Break 🍉

A Baby, a Bathtub, and a Baptism ⚽

It’s time to 吃瓜.

There have been so many incredible stories in the World Cup so far. But perhaps the strangest and most mind-blowing story of all, is one that happened off the pitch.

Back in 2007, a shy 20-year-old named Lionel Messi, now widely called the greatest soccer player who ever lived, did a charity photoshoot. In the photo, he bathed a baby in a little tub.

Not just any baby. A baby from a family with refugee roots, a family which won a UNICEF raffle to meet the soccer superstar.

Not just any baby. His name is Lamine Yamal, the 18-year old superstar leading Spain as favorites in the 2026 World Cup.

The internet has completely lost it: the kid “baptized” by Messi is now chasing Messi’s crown.

And if you don’t care about soccer, or don’t believe in fate, believe this:

You better believe Yamal’s parents pointed to that photo time and time again as he grew up, telling him: You were blessed by the greatest. You’re meant for greatness.

You better believe that when a kid grows up certain he’s destined for greatness? That belief, maybe more than destiny itself, makes all the difference.

Use it at work

Here’s how you can bring this up naturally during small talk:

• With coworkers:
  “Did you see that photo of Messi bathing baby Yamal back in 2007? And now the kid’s leading Spain at the World Cup. You can’t make this stuff up.”

• With your boss:
  “There’s a great story going around about Yamal, the Spanish soccer superstar. Messi held him as a baby in a charity photoshoot, and now he’s chasing Messi’s crown. It’s a perfect example of how a story we tell ourselves early can shape what we actually become. I think about that with how we set expectations for new hires.”

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After years of coaching, I’ve realized: most workplace problems are communication problems. Whether you’re struggling in a conflict or frustrated with growth, I can guide you to clarity.

Explore Career Coaching

“My manager should support me more”

“They should give me the offer.”

“I should get the promotion.”

Last night, my wife asked me about some of the most common complaints I hear from my clients. This is it.

Each carries a heavy feeling of being wronged.

And every time a client says it to me, something tightens in my chest. Because I once sat in that exact chair.

The Real Cost of “Should”

A few years into my time at the manager level, I sat across from my own manager and asked him one question.

“I’m ready for a promotion. When can we make it happen?”

I thought I already knew the answer. I had just saved the company from a $30 million loss. I had led a 20-person team. For months I had been showing him I was already operating at the next level. So he should promote me.

He looked at me and said, “Jon, you’re doing good work. But you’re not there yet. Give it another couple of years.”

Ah, young Jon. Too young, too naive. The workplace is never the way it should be.

Yes, you deserve more support from your manager, and a good one should give it.

Yes, you were the perfect fit for the role, and they should have handed you the offer.

Yes, you were ready for the next level, and your manager should promote you.

But… what happens when they don’t?

Every time you say how things “should” be, you’re robbing yourself of the power you needed to make a change. “Should” tricks your brain into believing you’ve already done everything you could. And it feels good, because putting the weight on someone else is so much easier than carrying it yourself.

So, How Can I?

So here’s what I tell my clients instead. Any time you reach for the word “should,” replace it with “how can I.”

“My manager should support me” becomes “How can I get more support?”

“They should give me the offer” becomes “How can I get an offer?”

“I should get me the promotion” becomes “How can I get a promotion?”

Just one small swap, and you remind your brain that you have agency. This is the magic of language. The way you think shapes the way you speak. But the way you speak also shapes the way you think.

Now, when I ask my clients this question, often their minds go blank. So I make the question smaller. I tell them to answer just 3 things:

1. What do you want to feel?

2. What can make you feel that way?

3. Where can you actually get it?

Because I found most of the time people don’t know what they want, but they certainly know how they want to feel.

One of my recent clients got really specific. In our first session she told me, “Jon, I feel so stuck. I like my job. My manager is a kind person. But he always gives me harsh feedback, and ignores my wins. I feel like I should be more appreciated.”

It took us one hour to find what she actually wanted.

Yes, she wanted her manager to appreciate her. Why?

Because she wanted to feel competent. How could she achieve that another way?

Maybe a higher title could be the proof she’d been chasing all along.

That was our unlock. She didn’t need her manager to hand her the feeling that she was competent. She could earn it somewhere else.

It took us another 2 hours to have a real game plan. One path for an internal transfer. One for external applications.

The workplace is never going to be the way it should be. I’ll go even further: the world is never going to be the way it should be.

So, what are you going to do about it?

Melon Break 🍉

All Eyes (And Hearts) On Japan

It’s time to 吃瓜.

You know one thing you can always expect at the World Cup?

Team Japan plays a match, the final whistle blows, and while everyone else streams toward the exits, the Japanese fans stay behind, pull out little blue bags, and clean their entire section of the stadium.

The internet sees it, gasps, and calls it a miracle of discipline and respect. This has happened, like clockwork, at every World Cup since 1998. Seeing posts across social media about this, I’m amazed that Western culture is still somehow still surprised by it every four years.

But here’s the part nobody talks about. The fans aren’t doing anything special, at least not according to themselves. They’re just doing what they always do.

When I first traveled to Tokyo years ago, I finished my Pocari Sweat on the street and walked to the nearest intersection to drop my bottle in a trash can…

And I just kept on walking, for two more intersections. Because in Japan, public trash cans are rare. The whole country runs on a quiet agreement that you carry your garbage home with you, and the streets stay spotless anyway.

For the Japanese, cleaning a stadium isn’t a performance. It’s a visible habit which endears them to the world (for good reason).

It starts young. Japanese kids clean their own classrooms and hallways at school. There are no janitors. So by the time you’re an adult with a blue bag in a Texas stadium, you’re not being virtuous. You’re just running a program installed into you since you were six.

So, I know we’re just here to eat melons…but it makes me wonder: what cultural programming is native within us Chinese? And how does it show up in “good” or “bad” ways on the other side of the world?

If at this point, you want to spit your seeds at me, I completely understand.

Use it at work

Here’s how you can bring this up naturally during small talk:

• With coworkers:
  “Did you see the Japanese fans cleaning the whole stadium at the World Cup? It’s been happening for so many World Cups and every time it makes headlines. Would you stick around after the game to clean up other peoples’ trash?”

• With your boss:
  “The Japanese stadium-cleaning that goes viral every World Cup is interesting to me. They’ve done it every tournament since 1998, and that consistency is exactly why it’s become part of how the world sees Japan. It’s a good reminder that reputation isn’t built on one big moment. It’s built on doing the small thing the same way every single time.”

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There are two sides to every story. The hero’s side, and the loser’s side.

Here is what the loser’s side looks like. I failed twenty interviews in a row. I got put on a PIP at Uber. I felt like an imposter at work all the time.

Every fact is true. But it’s also not the whole story.

Here’s what the hero’s side looks like. I landed offers at top companies like Google. I launched a whole city for Uber. I was the youngest director at Shopify.

Growing up in a Chinese family, we're taught to write the loser's side, believing it will push us to become the hero one day.

But what if we were the hero all along?

So today, I’m asking for your help, and giving you a challenge:

Share this newsletter with a friend. One weekly letter from me, to their inbox every Sunday, to help them tell their career story differently.

How to participate

1. Share Day Day Up. When you use the referral link below, or the “Share” button on any post, you'll get credit for any new subscribers. Simply send the link in a text, email, or share it on social media with friends.

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2. Earn benefits. The more friends who subscribe through your link, the more you unlock. These are real tools I use with my coaching clients.

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Thank you for helping get the word out about Day Day Up!

Jon

💬 Tired of Rejection? Let’s talk.

In the interview room, most people communicate facts, not stories.
If that’s you, let’s fix that.

Explore Interview Storytelling

I’ve been coaching Eve for a while. In interviews, she’s been praying that they won’t ask about her “no-no project”.

The way she describes it,

“My CEO wanted a real-time sales dashboard and nobody could build it, so he asked me. I spent a lot of time, but it didn’t go anywhere because I got the data wrong. I feel like it just proves I can’t deliver.”

So I sat with her in that story for a moment. And then I told her the other side of the same story, the one that I could see.

She went quiet. Then she said the thing I hear all the time, in some version or another.

“I never thought about it that way. I’m feeling…a lot right now.”

The Broken Code

Here’s what I’ve come to believe after years of this work. So many of us Chinese run the same broken code: we internalize our failures and externalize our successes.

When something goes wrong, we look inward. It’s because I’m too dumb, too lazy, too afraid.

When something goes right, we look everywhere else. It was the team. My manager. Luck.

But watch your Western coworkers and you’ll see the reverse. When it works, it was their vision, their call. When it breaks, it was the timing, the process, other people.

Every story is just a collection of facts. Select the failures and give away your wins, and you have a self-deprecating story. Do the opposite, and you have a self-appreciating one. Both are true. So tell yourself the better one.

Now you might worry this makes you arrogant. It doesn’t. When you count your wins, you’re collecting evidence. Evidence that proves you’re capable. So you can be confident. You can be brave. You can take the risks that used to scare you. The self-critical story doesn’t make you better. It makes you scared.

The Five-Minute Rewrite

So here’s what I want you to do tomorrow. It only takes five minutes.

1. Choose one work story you’re most ashamed of.

2. Write it down, but in the third person, like it happened to someone else.

3. Select the facts that help you appreciate this person’s contributions the most.

Why third person? The researcher and psychologist Ethan Kross found that the moment we stop saying “I” and use our own name, the emotional flooding stops and we judge ourselves the way we’d judge a friend: Fairly. This is exactly what I did for Eve. Now you can do it for yourself.

I’m not asking you to craft a pretty lie. I’m asking you to choose the facts of a different, kinder story.

Tell it enough times, and you’ll find you’ve become a different person.

Melon Break 🍉

In soccer consumerism we trust 🫡

It’s time to 吃瓜.

Walk into any grocery store in North America right now and you’ll find that the World Cup has gotten there before you.

The mac and cheese is shaped like little soccer balls and cleats. The Cheez-Its come as flags and stars. There’s a Christian Pulisic cracker, a Christian Pulisic cookie, and a Christian Pulisic chocolate bar, in case you wanted your snack to have a striker on it.

McDonald’s is handing out nine different collectible cups with soccer legends on them, plus 23 Squishmallows in tiny jerseys.

You know the part I find hilarious? America isn’t really a soccer country.

Soccer sits third in popularity behind American football and basketball, and the gap is not even close. The 2022 World Cup final drew about 26 million viewers in the US; the Super Bowl that same year drew 113 million.

Canada is no different. I’ve loved my Maple Leafs for as long as I can remember, and at the same time, I know nothing about Toronto FC (yes, we actually have a soccer club too).

And yet the entire snack aisle across the host nations has decided, almost overnight, to become passionately European about a sport most shoppers couldn’t name five players in.

My take? This is a country performing enthusiasm it hasn’t actually grown into yet, because the cameras are here and the world is watching. If you’ve ever fake-laughed and nodded through a conversation on some pop culture topic you have no idea about, just to belong in the room, congratulations. North Americans will be joining you soon.

Use it at work

Here’s how you can bring this up naturally during small talk:

• With coworkers:
  “Have you seen the World Cup stuff showing up in grocery stores? There’s literally soccer-ball-shaped mac and cheese now. I didn’t even think Americans liked soccer that much! Are you excited for the upcoming games?”

• With your boss:
  “It’s fascinating watching every brand pivot to soccer for the World Cup, when it’s only the third most popular sport here. It’s a great example of a host country manufacturing cultural buy-in for a moment, almost a masterclass in riding a wave you didn’t create.”

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After years of coaching, I’ve realized: most workplace problems are communication problems. Whether you're struggling in a conflict or frustrated with growth, I can guide you to clarity.

Explore Career Coaching

“You aren’t even aware of how poor your communication is. It’s hopeless to explain.”

Angela’s manager’s fist clenched as he said this to her, his lip curled with disgust.

That’s the picture she left me with in our last coaching session, as she described the hardest feedback of her career.

So, Angela did what most of us do when we’re hurt and unsure. She asked around.

“Should I quit?”

Of ten friends, eight told her to stay.

Bad market, they said. A gap on your résumé looks bad, they said. People would kill for your job, they said.

“You're so lucky. Tough it out. Take this as an opportunity to grow.”

And here's the thing about those eight friends: every one of them was right. The market is brutal right now. Angela did have room to improve in communication.

They’re right, but their advice is wrong.

When you ask someone for advice, they don’t see your situation. They can’t. They see their own job, their own mortgage, their own manager.

When others give you advice, they aren’t talking to you. They’re talking to themselves.

I know this because I lived it.

Years ago I took a role I knew was wrong by the first week. Some part of me knew on day one. But I told myself the same things her friends told her.

Don’t be dramatic. It’s good experience. Stick it out.

So I waited. A whole year, because a year is the minimum time you need to take to not raise eyebrows, right?

It ended after a heated meeting where I felt completely invisible. Afterward, I asked my manager a simple question: “If I leave this role, will you backfill it?”

He couldn’t give me a straight answer.

That was the moment I understood. I had spent over a year in a role the company didn’t even need. A year where my skills devolved, my confidence drained, and I worked for the worst manager I’ve ever had.

It cost me two more years after that, to really put it behind me. After quitting the job, I often found myself spending 30 minutes preparing for a 30 minute 1 to 1 with my manager, armpits of my shirt soaked. She was kind and supportive, but the shadow of my previous manager lingered.

As I write this, Angela still hasn’t decided. The future is scary, and the job market is rough, and I won’t pretend I know her answer.

But she’s finally asking the right question.

Not “what would you do?”,

But “What is staying doing to me?”

Melon Break 🍉

Let’s go (back) to the movies 😎

It’s time to 吃瓜.

When’s the last time you went out to the movies?

For a few years now, the story about Hollywood has been the same sad song. Streaming crippled theaters. COVID put them on life support. The big screen is dying.

Well, if there’s one thing Hollywood likes, it’s a comeback.

This is looking like the comeback summer the movies needed. Through late May, 2026 ticket sales hit $3.02 billion, a 16% jump from the same period last year. The Mandalorian and Grogu opened to around $100 million over Memorial Day weekend. A small horror movie called Obsession, made by a former YouTuber, has quietly become one of the box office success stories of the year. And the summer is now on pace to match the roughly $4.3 billion total of summer 2019, basically, pre-pandemic levels.

And the heavy hitters* haven’t even arrived yet. Toy Story 5, Supergirl, and The Odyssey are all still loading. Personally as a Christopher Nolan fan, I’m excited for The Odyssey, casting controversy or not.

Turns out people never stopped wanting to sit in a dark room with strangers and a giant bucket of popcorn. They were just waiting for something worth showing up for.

Use it at work

Here’s how you can bring this up naturally during small talk:

• With coworkers:
  “Did you see the box office numbers this year? Everyone kept saying movie theaters were dying, and now it’s somehow having one of its best summers in years. Have you seen anything this year? Do you plan to see anything?”

• With your boss:
  “It’s a fascinating reversal. For years the narrative was that streaming had permanently killed theaters, but 2026 is up double digits and tracking toward pre-pandemic numbers. It’s a good reminder that a ‘dying’ narrative often just has a quality problem, not a demand problem.”

*Heavy hitters: an influential, powerful, or highly successful person, company, or product. The term originated in baseball to describe a powerful batter who consistently hits well, and is now used colloquially to describe anything of significance.

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Explore Coaching

A few years ago, I sat across from my CTO in my very first quarterly business review. Weeks of my team’s work, all leading to this one room.

I gave him the headline I was proud of, a gold nugget insight that I was sure would earn me nods of approval.

The CTO nodded thoughtfully. Then he followed up.

“So, Jon, what do you recommend?”

“Well,” I said, “I think it would make sense to gather the data leadership team and brainstorm ways to improve our foundations.”

“Sure,” he said. “As a follow-up, can you send me a recommendation afterward?”

He was too kind to say it out loud. But I saw it on his face. He was disappointed.

He didn’t want noisy opinions from a committee that he managed. He wanted my opinion.

Maybe you know that feeling. You produce the insights. The ideas are yours. And somehow the smooth talker who does half as much work as you do walks away with the credit.

I felt that way too, most of my career. And it took me years of frustration before I realized: it wasn’t every other person in the company that was misguided. It was me.

No, your smooth-talking coworkers aren’t smarter than you are. They don’t need to be. They’re just doing the one thing you won’t: putting their name behind strong opinions.

They’re committing.

They know that there are three levels to communicating at work.

Level 1: Reporting

You bring the facts, and work tirelessly to produce valuable insights. This is where most of us Chinese professionals live, and it’s no accident. We were raised in a culture that prizes precision over persuasion, one that never taught storytelling as a skill.

Heck, I remember when I graduated into my first real job, my mother sat me down and told me earnestly:

Jon, in your career you must always do two things: work hard, and keep your head down. Don’t be too strong about anything. Just show people how hard you can work, and you will be rewarded.

She meant well, and I believed her for the better part of a decade. Before I realized that the Western workplace is nothing like the one she experienced in her career.

Because when you report, you reduce your value to information gathering and sharing. No matter how valuable the idea is, at the end of the day, it’s just that: an idea.

Someone needs to make the decision about what to do with it. Then, someone needs to go do it. That’s where the risk is. And honestly, that’s one of the only differences between your manager and you.

Level 2: Advising

Now, you aren’t just handing over facts, you’re laying out the options. This is a real step up, because it shows you can think, not just gather. And with a certain kind of boss, the one who insists on making every call himself, advising is exactly the right level to be at.

But it has a ceiling.

You’re still placing the decision in someone else’s hands, with all of the upside and downside that goes with it.

Level 3: Committing.

Here, you make the assertion. You say what you would do, and you put your name on it. Regardless of whether you have the authority, regardless of whether you’re 100% confident or not.

That’s leadership.

Think back to that QBR I led with the CTO. I reported what was happening to him. Even produced a very valuable insight. But when the CTO asked for my call, I avoided taking a stand, and handed the decision right back to him.

I was afraid. That fear was selfish, and the cost of that fear was a worse outcome for our team.

Because deep down, I had an opinion, one that could have helped us.

As I write this in the year 2026, committing is more valuable than ever. Because AI has commoditized knowledge as we know it.

Want to build a report? Claude Code can write damn good queries, synthesize insights, produce visualizations faster than it takes you to finish your coffee.

But there is one thing it cannot do: make good decisions.

We all know this, and it’s why when things really matter, we trust experts over AI.

Because AI has all the knowledge, and none of the judgment. And judgment is exactly what you’re paid for. So lean into it harder.

And this only gets truer the higher you climb. The promotions you want aren’t rewards for being right more often. They go to the people who can make the hard call when there is no clear answer, and stand behind it while everyone else is too afraid to.

So how do you commit, when your heart is pounding and every instinct tells you to stay safe?

How to Commit at work: Template

“If it were my call” lets you speak with full conviction without claiming you’re the one who decides. It’s permission to commit before you’re in the chair.

The next quarter, I walked into that same room with the CTO, and I didn’t bring options.

I said, “I keep hearing the same thing from our data leaders. They don’t trust our foundations, and I can see around the corner to where this blows up. If it were my call, I’d invest in building our first data engineering team now.”

I will always remember the smile on the CTO’s face when he said “I’d like to hear more about that. Let’s book a 30 minute call offline to hash it out.”

A year later, I co-led efforts to build a new Data Engineering team of almost 100 people.

You already have the insights. You always have. That was never the thing holding you back.

What stands between you and the career you want isn’t a smarter idea. It’s the courage to look someone in the eye and say:

I’d stake my name to this decision. I commit.

Melon Break 🍉

Luce or Leaf?

It’s time to 吃瓜.

This week, Ferrari pulled the sheet off its first-ever fully electric car, the Luce, at an exclusive reveal in Rome. They had F1 stars Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc do the unveiling, brought in former Apple designer Jony Ive to design it, and slapped on a price tag of roughly $640,000. The plan was clearly to make jaws drop.

Mission accomplished. Just not the way they hoped.

Within hours, the internet decided the world’s most famous supercar brand had built a four-door that looks suspiciously like a Nissan Leaf, an economy EV that costs a fraction of the price.

Even the legends piled on. Ferrari’s former chairman said this about the Luce:

“You risk destroying a legend…This, for sure, is the one car the Chinese at least won’t copy off us”.

I mean…they’ve seen the new luxury BYDs, right? I’m no gearhead*, but I’d say the Chinese models are already looking a lot better, no copying necessary.

Investors weren’t gentle either. The stock dropped around 8%, wiping out billions in market value within hours.

For now, Ferrari’s CEO is standing his ground, insisting customers are already placing orders. He might even be right. But for now, the Prancing Horse is getting absolutely roasted, no engine required.

Use it at work

Here’s how you can bring this up naturally during small talk:

• With coworkers:
  “Did you see Ferrari’s new electric car? People are roasting it for looking like a Nissan Leaf, except it costs over half a million dollars. Have you seen the photos yet?”

• With your boss:
  “The Ferrari Luce launch is a fascinating brand case study. Ferrari’s whole identity is built on engine sound and racing heritage, so the moment they revealed a quiet four-door EV, the loyalists felt betrayed. It’s a sharp reminder of how much of a brand’s value is emotional rather than practical.”

*Gearhead: Colloquial term for an automobile enthusiast, usually with mechanical abilities

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Explore Coaching

There’s this one thing I say to my job seeking clients, which often gets vigorous nods in response:

“It’s obvious that you can do the job, but you’re struggling to communicate it in a 30 minute interview”

This is a real, painful concern for Chinese candidates.

But when we dig deeper in our one to one sessions, we often discover a different problem.

One that is silently hurting you, without you ever knowing it:

Your speaking is just fine. But you aren’t listening.

There are levels to this skill of listening in an interview. And whenever I see someone reach Level 3, I know their offer is close.

Level 1: Not Listening

At Level 1, you believe the interview is an exam.

You’ve studied for it. You prepared the right answers. You walk in ready to deliver them.

The interviewer says “Tell me about yourself.” You recite.

“Walk me through your career.” You recite.

“What’s your biggest strength?” You recite again.

I see this most often in candidates without much Western work experience, such as recent grads. And it makes complete sense. The education system that shaped most of us ran on a single principle: the right answer wins. The 高考. The GPA. In every high-stakes situation before this one, the formula was simple:

Find the correct answer and memorize it flawlessly. The interview feels like a natural extension of that conditioning.

Nobody told you the rules had changed when you walked into that room.

Nobody told you that interviews immediately lose trust when they hear someone speak robotically, especially in an age where they’re overwhelmed with “AI Slop” interview answers.

Nobody told you that when you memorize, you’re training one muscle and ignoring another important one: the ability to speak on the spot, unscripted.

Nobody told you that when you force-fit a prepared answer to a question that is fundamentally irrelevant, you look like a poor communicator.

Now, working with Chinese professionals is my specialty. Has been for 9 years. I know, as an ESL speaker, you feel the immense pressure to speak fluently, and to be perfect. But when you recite, perfect becomes the enemy of the offer.

How to Level Up

Before your next interview, spend 20 minutes on the specific person who will be sitting across from you. Look up their LinkedIn. See where they came from, what they have built, what they care about. Prepare one or two genuine conversation openers based on what you find.

“Thanks for meeting me early this morning! Did you actually get to finish a hot cup of coffee before jumping on this call, or are we fueling this interview on sheer willpower?”

“Appreciate you taking the time this afternoon. I hope I’m not standing in the way between you and your lunch.”

Walk in already seeing them as a human being, not an evaluator. This shifts the dynamic entirely, and they start seeing you as a human as well, not just candidate #156.

And for you, that shift, from “what do I need to perform?” to “who is this person?”, is the door out of Level 1.

Level 2: Listening to Respond

At Level 2, you know the interview is a conversation. You’ve done your research and you are genuinely trying to connect.

But while the interviewer is speaking, your brain is already building the response.

Here is why (and why it is not your fault). The human brain processes 600 to 1,000 words per minute. People speak at about 175 words per minute. That spare capacity doesn’t wait patiently.

In a high-stakes interview, it fills with noise. Your focus shifts from the interviewer, where it should be, to yourself (where the chaos happens): Did I sound stupid just now? What should I say next? Oh god, why are they suddenly frowning?

How to Level Up

While the interviewer is asking you a question, instead of building your response, focus on seeking to understand what they actually want.

Western interviewers can be direct with praise, but indirect with their concerns. So you might need to peel back the “sugarcoat” in their questions to access the real question behind the question.

Ask yourself: what follow-up question will get me closer to what they actually need?

In practice, this looks like three things.

1. Before answering, ask a clarifying question.

   1. “Just to make sure I’m addressing what you’re looking for: is the focus here more on X, or on Y?”

2. In the middle of your answer, pause and check in.

   1. “Does this resonate so far with what you had in mind?”

3. At the end of the interview, instead of asking questions to perform interest, show real interest by uncovering their needs further.

   1. “What does success look like in the first 90 days?” “What’s the biggest challenge the team is navigating right now?”

Level 3: Listening to Understand

Many years ago, when I graduated from university, I had already won two national case competitions. I believed I was a strong communicator.

And I still failed twenty interviews in a row.

At the depth of my despair, I met up with a friend who was already a few years into his career. He offered to do a mock interview with me. I thought I performed well. I was waiting for him to say so.

Instead, he rubbed his chin, uncertain how to say it. And then he just said it. “John, I’m very confused. Are you angry at me?”

And that one insight, from a professional, hit me like a slap in the face.

Everything I had been performing, the deliberate pauses, the crisp answers, the serious and severe expression on my face, was a performance to assert dominance. I was performing a completely different, scary version I had cooked up in my mind about what a “confident” candidate should be.

But the problem was, I was never trying to understand the interviewer. And they could feel it.

The shift, when it finally happened, was this: I stopped trying to impress and started trying to understand. Before every interview, instead of rehearsing answers, I asked myself what this specific person actually needed from me. Then I listened for that answer the whole time I was in the room.

After that, I held a near 100% success rate in final round interviews. Offers from DoorDash, Uber, Shopify, Google.

How to Stay Here

Here is an honest insight I’ve learned in my coaching: even when you understand Level 3, you will lose it in the room.

The interview gets intense. The question is harder than you expected. The interviewer suddenly frowns. Every instinct pulls you back to Level 2. What did I just say? What should I say next?

That is exactly the moment when you need to fight, with every ounce of resolve, to climb back up to Level 3.

Because shifting your focus to the interviewer doesn’t add pressure. It removes it. You can’t be fully curious about someone else and fully anxious about yourself at the same time. The moment you stop monitoring your own performance and start genuinely trying to understand them, the self-consciousness loosens its grip. It’s a virtuous cycle.

So before your next interview, ask yourself one question.

What do I actually know about what this person needs?

If the honest answer is “not much”, you now know exactly where to start.

See you at Level 3.

Melon Break 🍉

The People vs. AI

It’s time to 吃瓜.

Have we reached peak AI hate?

Brands are slapping “100% human” and “guaranteed human” labels on their work like it’s an organic produce sticker. The audio giant iHeartMedia promised “guaranteed human” content. The hit Apple show Pluribus literally ends with the credit “This show was made by humans.” A recent survey even found 85% of people in the US, UK, and Canada would rather wait for a real person on the phone than deal with a bot.

And nowhere is the mood rawer than at this year's graduations, where the brightest of our next generation are booing AI.

When a speaker at the University of Central Florida called AI "the next industrial revolution," the arts and humanities grads drowned her out so fast she just laughed and said, "Okay, I struck a chord."

Even former Google CEO Eric Schmidt got booed for mentioning it at the University of Arizona.

But it seems to me that the mood is flipped completely in Chinese culture. If anything, many of my candidates are telling me they feel “AI Anxiety”. There’s always a new tool, new AI agent to build, and they’re always falling behind. It seems in some ways, they can’t stop embracing AI.

Stanford’s latest research found that 83% of people in China think AI does more good than harm. But in America? Just 39%.

In China, more than 80% of workers are already using AI on the job. AI isn’t the thing you sheepishly admit to using. It’s the thing you show off.

So why the split? Part of it might be that the two countries are feeling AI differently right now. In America, the disruption is already showing up. Layoffs are hitting tech, and a lot of white-collar workers who used to feel untouchable are suddenly the ones looking over their shoulder. In China, the hit to everyday jobs has felt more contained so far, so for now AI reads less like a threat and more like a tool that makes the workday lighter. Same technology, two very different views from where you’re standing.

End of the day, it’s a lot easier to cheer the thing that’s helping you than the thing that’s grabbing your seat.

Use it at work

Here’s how you can bring this up naturally during small talk:

• With coworkers:
  “Have you noticed how everything’s suddenly bragging that it was ‘made by humans’? There’s a whole new ‘human-made’ label thing happening. Feels like the ‘organic’ sticker, but for not using AI. Have you seen it pop up anywhere?”

• With your boss:
  “It’s striking how differently AI lands in different markets. Stanford found something like 83% of people in China see AI as beneficial versus under 40% in the US, and you can see it in how brands respond. Some are leaning all the way in, others are running ‘made by humans’ campaigns. It’s a good reminder that adoption isn’t just about how good the product is, it’s about how much a market trusts it.”

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Yesterday at 2PM, I stood alone in an art gallery a few minutes from my house.

No one else was there, aside from the staff and my wife (who took these photos).

It wasn’t a 打卡 spot. Just a quiet Tuesday afternoon on a quiet week, my birthday week.

And it was enough.

I’m on break this week, so unlike my usual letters, this one will be short. But this moment was worth writing about, because I see so many of the Chinese professionals I coach still carrying the weight I used to carry.

The relentless drive. The arbitrary goalposts. The list that always grows.

Mine sounded like everyone else’s: Director level by 30. Big tech. Multi six-figure salary.

I worked and sacrificed. I missed family dinners, skipped vacations, grinded into early mornings every day. I lost years of my youth chasing those numbers.

And when I finally caught them, I threw them away.

Not because they were worthless…Because once I had them, I was disappointed in how they made me feel.

I thought I would finally be satisfied. But I just wanted more.

A new list worth sacrificing for: Some C-suite title by 40. Own a company. Seven figures.

The list never ends. At least, it doesn’t for me.

My 20s self would have been embarrassed to see me spending my birthday week alone in an empty gallery close to home. No flights. No itinerary. No camera roll to flex.

But this week, for a moment on a Tuesday in a quiet gallery, I was happy with what I had.

And for you this week, I have no frameworks, no step-by-steps. Just one question to reflect on:

What’s on my list? And when will it be enough?

Let me know below, and I’ll use your feedback to make future letters even more tailored to your goals. And feel free to reply directly to this email, too. I read every single email I receive, even if I can’t get back to every one.

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You know that story about the hare and the tortoise, 龟兔赛跑? When I was a kid, my dad loved telling me that one.

And there was one lesson of the story which he never failed to remind me about: the moment when the hare stopped to take a nap.

I remember him looking up from the book, adjusting his spectacles, and saying gravely:

“Jon, never celebrate too soon, or you’ll fall behind”.

I grew up terrified of celebrating.

So imagine my surprise when I started working and one day, celebration became a success metric.

My manager sat me down, and said:

“Jon, I’d like to increase our team’s visibility across the org. It would really help if you spoke up more, shared your wins with other teams. It’ll earn us more credibility.”

Our company had just launched across the West, where we had been locked out for nearly a decade. It seemed like a simple enough story to share.

I told myself: I don’t see the big deal here. I get told to solve a problem and I solve it. But he wants me to speak up, so I guess I should.

After what I thought was a thoroughly average presentation, the General Manager found me, and for the first time I felt like he actually saw me.

“Jon, that was the best presentation I’ve ever seen about your team’s work. Thanks to you and the team.”

And suddenly, the insight hit me like a lightning bolt to my chest.

The Western workplace isn’t a race, where stopping to celebrate means the tortoise catches up.

It’s a marketplace.

It’s loud, crowded, full of people competing for the attention of leaders who have more priorities than hours. In that environment, silence is invisibility.

If you’re skeptical, know that I was too. The first time you try this, something will feel wrong. Wrong, like a violation of some unwritten code, like you’re doing exactly what you were raised to avoid.

It feels like bragging. But it’s not. Bragging is about “look what I did”. People hate that.

Celebrating is shining the spotlight on someone else, while owning your own role in the achievement.

Here are three easy ways that you can start to celebrate next week. Chances are, once you’re aware, you’ll start noticing that many of your coworkers have been doing this all along:

The Team

When to use it: When your team achieved a win.

The Insight

When to use it: When the win is an idea or insight that others can benefit from.

The Collaborator

When to use it: When you want to share credit with a core contributor.

If sharing this feels awkward at first, good. You’re rewiring a mentality that rarely helps you in the Western workplace.

And if you need a more “logical” reason to start celebrating, think of it as helping your company.

Because celebrating is not all about you. It’s much bigger than you.

Celebrating is not a personal success metric. It’s a transparency metric.

When you celebrate a win, it’s a signal amongst all the noise. It shows your boss, and your company leaders: this effort is working. Do more of it.

And no, celebrating won’t kill your inner fire. I’ve found that it can feed it.

The moment after the GM shook my hand, I knew I wanted to chase that feeling. I was already thinking about the next win worth standing up to talk about.

Neuroscientists call dopamine the “wanting” chemical. It peaks during the chase, not at arrival. The celebration feels good. But the hunger that comes right after? That’s the real prize.

I want to tell my dad: I learned that the hare didn’t lose because he stopped to celebrate.

He lost because he forgot there was still somewhere to go.

Melon Break 🍉

Hanta-26?

It’s time to 吃瓜.

I’m so tired, boss.

A luxury cruise ship called the MV Hondius left Argentina in early April on a birdwatching expedition across the Atlantic. Somewhere along the way, passengers started getting very sick. Three have died, at the time of writing. At least five more are confirmed infected with hantavirus, a rare and serious virus typically carried by rodents.

Health officials in at least a dozen countries, including the US, Canada, Singapore, and several European nations, are now scrambling to track the passengers down. They have been located in five US states so far. Two people in Ontario are self-isolating.

Naturally, people are already whispering the C-word. But the WHO was quick to shut that down. “This is not the start of another COVID pandemic,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s epidemic director.

Unlike COVID, hantavirus doesn’t spread through the air the way respiratory viruses do. The strain involved, called Andes virus, can spread between people, but only through prolonged close contact. There have been fewer than 900 confirmed cases in the US in the last 30 years.

But here’s where it gets interesting. While scrolling Reddit, a meme that was going viral kept catching my eye:

It collected nearly 20,000 upvotes. The comments underneath were overwhelmingly negative. People were calling it insensitive, tone-deaf, and dark. I agree.

But you have to wonder: who clicked upvote?

I think, there’s a silent undercurrent here that nobody wants to say out loud. Some people genuinely thrived during lockdown. Working from home. No office small talk. No forced happy hours. More time with family. Less performing, more living. For a lot of us, especially those who never felt fully comfortable in the open-plan, always-on Western workplace, those years felt…right, in a way that’s hard to admit.

There is, of course, no joke about the lives taken by a disease like COVID. And yet, there is for some, nostalgia.

Use it at work

Here’s how you can bring this up naturally during small talk:

• With coworkers:
  “Have you seen the hantavirus cruise ship story? Three people died, passengers scattered across a dozen countries before anyone figured out what was going on. WHO says it’s not another COVID. What do you think?”

• With your boss:
  “The hantavirus cruise story is fascinating from an organizational standpoint. By the time the outbreak was identified, passengers had already scattered across a dozen countries. It really shows how critical early detection and fast communication are in any crisis, whether it’s public health or in a business context.”

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Deep within you, there is an articulate, powerful speaker waiting to be unleashed.

But it’s hiding. In meetings and presentations, and work events.

It hides, because it’s afraid of being judged.

Think about it: If you knew with 100% certainty, that when you open your mouth the room is going to love whatever you have to say? You can’t wait to speak up.

So no, you aren’t afraid of speaking. You’re afraid of how they’re going to react.

You think to yourself:

If that sounds familiar to you, I want you to hear something.

When others don’t react the way you hoped, that’s not rejection. It simply means you lost them.

There’s a gap between you.

And every gap has a bridge.

1. The Commitment Gap

The first gap opens the moment you sound like you are doubting yourself. When a point sounds like a guess, people treat it like one.

“I might be wrong here, but maybe we could...”

The moment they hear the first part, they agree. You could be wrong. You just sucked away all the power out of whatever follows.

I’ve experienced this firsthand. When I first became a director in Business Operations, I was the only non-technical person on a data engineering leadership team. I remember hanging around on mute in meetings, wondering if I should raise something, but also convinced they’d dismiss me.

So I hedged, every time I spoke up. “Maybe we could...” “I know you might have concerns...”

More often than not, I was met with silence.

So commit to your ideas. Before you speak, finish this sentence in your head: My understanding is ___.

Then lead with it. You don’t need to be 100% sure to be 100% confident.

In fact, an executive I once worked with and admired once told me she only needs to be 30% sure, in order to speak with 100% confidence. And I believe she rose to her level because of this, not in spite of it.

The room can only cross a bridge if they feel it’s safe to stand on.

2. The Destination Gap

The second gap opens when you give them the journey but not the destination.

You walked them through every detail. But while you were building the path, they were falling behind, trying to follow you and figure out where you’re heading at the same time.

Sure, you might know in your head where all of this is leading, but they can’t read your mind. And they’re lost.

Here’s why this happens.

Think about the last movie you watched. You remember the opening. You remember the ending. Everything in the middle? Not so much. That’s how all of us are wired. Our brains hold on to what comes first and what comes last. The middle disappears.

Previously, this may have worked against you. But now, it can work for you.

You just need to use the SO WHAT sandwich:

SO WHAT → Support → SO WHAT.

Instead of:

“So it wasn’t easy because we had lots of dirty data, but I looked at the numbers, and referral clients tend to retain longer, which was surprising to me and I’ll tell you why later, and ad clients churn faster, so I was thinking maybe we should...”

Try:

“We should stop prioritizing ads and focus on referrals. My analysis shows that referral clients retain longer and onboard faster. That’s the customer segment we should focus on.”

Build the bridge from the destination. Then lead them there.

3. The Ask Gap

The third gap is when you simply never ask them to cross the bridge.

Because without a specific question or request, the audience just had nothing to engage with.

During my 1:1 with my direct reports, after the status update, I would always ask them: “Great, how can I help?”

Directs who knew me as a manager would come prepared with the ask, so I wouldn’t even need to pop the question. But new members always had a learning curve.

So before you speak, have a clear call to action in your mind. What do you need from this room? Then end with that ask, clearly.

“So that’s it” is a wall you’re putting up in front of the bridge.

“I’d love to hear thoughts from the room. Does this make sense to move forward?” opens a gate, inviting your audience onto that bridge.

There’s one more thing I’ve come to notice after nine years of coaching. And I think it matters more than closing any gap.

Any reaction is valuable. Silence. Pushback. A subject change. All of it is information about where the other person is standing.

Yes, you will feel disappointed when it feels like your ideas were rejected. I still feel that too.

But if you just ask yourself “why didn’t anyone respond?”, you aren’t building anything.

Better to ask: “what did they hear? What do they need?” and see where the bridge takes you.

When you learn to get curious about every reaction, not just the ones that feel good, you stop needing the room to validate you.

You start reading it instead.

Melon Break 🍉

Tipping has officially tipped over💸

It’s time to 吃瓜.

If like me, you’re planning to eat out anywhere near a World Cup host city this summer, heads up. Restaurants across the US are already planning to slap automatic 20% tips on every bill during the tournament.

Recently, the Missouri Restaurant Association told all Kansas City restaurants to add mandatory gratuities for the full 40 days. Boston is doing the same. Scottish fans were reportedly warned to expect a forced 20% charge before they even board their flights.

Why? Because 7 million international visitors are coming, and American restaurants are terrified that foreigners won’t tip.

Let that irony sink in for a moment.

Tipping culture is so strange to most of the world, that instead of fixing it, restaurants would rather just force it on you.

And I say this as someone who has actually worked in a restaurant before. When I was in high school, my parents thought it would be a good idea for me to learn “real world skills” through hard work, so I waited tables over the summer. I can appreciate the hard work that comes with serving in a restaurant.

But honestly? I’m still with the majority here. A recent survey found that 81% of Americans now say tipping culture is “out of control.”

When every coffee shop, bakery, and self-checkout now spins an iPad toward you with options starting at 18%, it’s enough to make anyone who hasn’t grown up in North America truly wonder if they’re the crazy one.

Once long ago, tips used to be a thank-you for great service. Now they’re a hostage negotiation between you and a screen. If you’ve ever stood there frozen, doing mental math while the line grows behind you, just know: so is everyone else.

At least 7 million visitors won’t have that problem soon, right?

Use it at work

Here’s how you can bring this up naturally during small talk:

• With coworkers:
  “Did you see that restaurants are adding automatic tips for World Cup visitors this summer? Every time you think tipping culture has gone too far…you find out it has another level!”

• With your boss:
  “It’s interesting that US restaurants are preemptively adding mandatory gratuities for World Cup visitors because they assume foreigners won’t tip. It’ll be interesting to see whether this hard policy proves to be a net benefit, or maybe even a problem with pushback and bad press.”

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My therapist asked me something last week that I haven’t stopped thinking about.

“Imagine someone was holding a gun to your head throughout your 10K. How would that make you feel?”

For two years at Uber, I worked like I was running with a gun to my head.

My team would be on Slack at 2AM. I’d lie in bed watching channel messages ping back and forth, telling myself:

If they’re awake, I have to be awake too.

Over my two years there, I gained 30 pounds. My relationship almost fell apart. I was a zombie, blacking out on the subway.

One time, I launched the city of Vancouver for Uber, something that should have been a crowning achievement for my career.

On a red-eye flight back to Toronto, a voice came into my head, asking a question I’d been avoiding for years.

Why am I not happy?

I pushed the thought away. There was a report to finish before landing.

Looking back, the best way I could describe my work at Uber was...performance.

I performed face-time in-office and on Slack.

Performed interest by asking the right questions at meetings.

Performed passion for my work by listening in to quarterly earnings calls with my coworkers.

Like most of us, I once carried a belief with every fiber of my being. Maybe I’m still carrying it:

That’s why people have to pay you for it. The things you do for free? Now those are the things truly worth doing in life.

And when I scrolled social media, I’d find proof of my beliefs everywhere. I saw it in the 躺平 trend. The “anti-work” energy. The FIRE movement.

A generation of wage slaves, staring down the barrel of a gun.

But in one moment, my therapist helped me realize: the belief itself was the gun.

And I was the one holding it.

It doesn’t matter what your manager is like, what your hours are, what your company expects. If you’re convinced work is something being done to you, instead of chosen by you, you’re going to be running with a gun to your head.

For us, the harder question is: where did the belief come from?

If you’re like me, your parents handed it to you even when you were a child: You must study. You must get into a good school.

Your teachers took it next. You must answer. You must complete. You must take the exam.

Then 卷 culture inherited it. Keep up, or fall behind. Fall behind, and you have shamed everyone who ever believed in you.

The part that hurts the most is that every person who wielded that gun did it out of care and love. There’s no villain in your story of hardship, except maybe yourself.

Because nobody tells you when the gun moves from the hands of others, into yours.

That handoff is part of the complex thing called adulthood. In adulthood, nobody is forcing you to stay in a job you dislike. And yet, the feeling of running at gunpoint remains.

Psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan spent decades studying this. They found that when people feel they are the origin of their own actions, the same activity feels completely different.

Now. The point of all this is not to tell you to think differently and feel better.

I know there are real bad managers. Real toxic cultures. Real structural problems that will stoke your anger and drain your energy.

I’m not asking you to perform positivity or white-knuckle through something that is genuinely harming you.

What I am asking is one pause, which rests in that messy middle between eternal gaslighting and eternal suffering. One honest question.

Is this gun in their hand, or in mine?

If it’s in yours, here are three moves that give some of it back.

“I have to stay late or they’ll think I’m not committed.”

This is the 吃苦 contract. Suffering as proof of dedication. You stay not because the work needs it, but because leaving on time feels like a confession. Like you’re admitting you don’t care enough.

Ask yourself: If nobody could see what time I logged off, would I still be here?

If the answer is no, you aren’t spending time on work. You’re spending time in the service of others.

This week, choose one evening where you leave at a time you decide is right. Choose one time to challenge a belief you have about whatever 吃苦 contract you believe that you signed.

If it turns out that contract is real, good. You can decide if it’s one you want to continue fulfilling, with eyes wide open knowing you made that choice. With all the tradeoffs it includes.

If it turns out you were the one holding the gun, it’s time to practice kindness to the one person you’ve been forgetting: yourself.

“My manager doesn’t see my value, and I can’t make them.”

Many of us were raised to believe that good work speaks for itself. Visibility feels like showing off. Self-advocacy feels like 拍马屁. So we execute well and wait to be noticed.

But ask yourself: am I waiting to be chosen? Have I decided that my value only counts when someone else confirms it?

The gun isn’t your manager. It’s the belief that recognition can only be given, never claimed.

This week, find one person in the organization: a skip-level, a peer on another team, someone working on something you find genuinely interesting, and let them know what you’re building. You’re building a source of signal that you control.

“I don’t have valuable things to say in meetings.”

Most Chinese professionals I coach were trained to listen first, speak only when certain, and never risk being wrong in public. In Western meetings, silence reads as disengagement. You know this. And knowing it doesn’t dissolve the instinct.

Ask yourself: am I staying quiet because I have nothing to say, or because I’m holding myself to a standard my Western peers never adopted?

In your next meeting, say one thing in the first ten minutes. A question, an observation, agreement with someone else’s point. You’re breaking the pattern of waiting for permission to speak.

Last week, I was on a 7AM call with a client going for a GM position at a major multinational in the Middle East. She is the only Chinese candidate, up against two white males for a critical executive position.

At one point, she paused mid-sentence and said, almost to herself: “I don’t know if I can hold all of this together.”

I was leaning forward, genuinely fascinated by the challenge of her new role.

My last call that day finished at 11PM. The same brutal hours as Uber. Even higher intensity.

That 10K never gets easier.

The rain doesn’t stop. The legs still burn. The lungs still cry.

But the moment you realize no one’s holding a gun to your head, that you’re just a person who chose to run?

The finish line stops looking like survival.

It starts looking like freedom.

Melon Break 🍉

The Devil is back 😈

It’s time to 吃瓜.

If you’ve ever had a terrifying boss, congratulations! You’ve already seen The Devil Wears Prada. Twenty years after the original became a cultural phenomenon, the sequel just premiered in New York and hits theaters May 1.

This time, Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) isn’t just terrorizing assistants. She’s fighting to keep Runway magazine alive as print media collapses around her. Anne Hathaway returns, not as a wide-eyed assistant, but as a features editor with real power.

But among all the hype, something different caught my eye.

20th Century Studios posted a clip introducing Anne Hathaway's new assistant. In it, a character named Jin nervously rattles off her Yale degree, her 3.86 GPA, her perfect ACT score. She's dressed plainly in a fashion world dripping with style. And the internet, particularly in China, Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong, erupted.

The clip has been viewed over 26 million times as I write this.

Of course, I don’t think the filmmakers set out to be racist. But intent doesn’t erase impact. As a Chinese-Canadian, I’ve seen this before: The quiet, awkward, over-achieving Asian character who exists in a Western story to make the main character look cooler by comparison. It’s not new.

It’s just disappointing that in 2026, with a pool of incredible Chinese acting talent and a massive franchise, the best Hollywood could imagine for her was…the nerdy assistant. Again.

Use it at work

Here’s how you can bring this up naturally during small talk:

• With coworkers:
  “Are you going to see Devil Wears Prada 2? Same big names, new problems. I can’t believe it’s been 20 years since the first one!”

• With your boss:
  “The Devil Wears Prada sequel is interesting ! The whole premise is about a legacy brand fighting to stay relevant in a digital world. It’s a fun lens on what happens when the thing that made you powerful is no longer the thing the market values.”

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