In this episode we speak with Selman Kahya, a computer engineering graduate of Fatih University who completed a master's at San Francisco State University and works as a front-end / full-stack developer at Yahoo and then Uber. The conversation spans early coding experience, Silicon Valley hiring processes, multi-offer strategy, definitions of success, and advice for young developers.
Selman completed his bachelor's in Turkish in Turkey; thanks to English prep in high school he started with intermediate English. He built his first website at ten in middle school; arriving at university already familiar with programming let him move through courses quickly. His key message: not knowing anything in the past is not the problem—giving up from lack of motivation is. He went repeatedly to a contact from his father's workplace to learn Java beyond the course; he chose demanding assignments like drawing Monopoly on the command line. Erasmus took him to England for a semester; he did his third-year summer internship in Germany—hundreds of applications and exam prep opened those doors.
For his master's he applied to eight schools, was accepted at five, and scored 96 out of 120 on the TOEFL—a threshold sufficient for many programs. During the master's he searched for internships the same way; near graduation he interviewed with dozens of companies and collected three offers. Before joining Yahoo he accepted an unpaid internship offer and negotiated minimum pay in the interview; at the end of the internship he received a hundred-thousand-dollar annual offer. Startup UrbanSitter offered $125,000 and Yahoo $105,000. He chose not the highest pay but, from a thirty-year career perspective, the best brand: Yahoo's weight in the open-source front-end ecosystem and recognition in Silicon Valley kept LinkedIn messages coming from Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, and similar firms.
His move to Uber followed a similar strategy: while at Yahoo he kept recruiter messages open rather than closing them; when he decided to change companies he reviewed the last ten messages and entered interview processes with Microsoft, Apple, Netflix, Airbnb, Uber, and others. He received an offer from Uber. Accepting an unpaid internship in his final master's semester and later getting a paid offer is a concrete example of "creating options." After two years and two months at Yahoo he moved to Uber; he compensated for an earlier Uber rejection with two more years of experience. A weak systems architecture session at Facebook and his strongest session at Uber on architecture show that the same person can get different outcomes on different days.
He is experimenting with a venture called Topluluk on YouTube, building a website and social platform; he says he works on the project until three or four in the morning even on holiday. He notes that positioning the engineering team in Turkey and marketing in the US is possible. He says that if his father were a millionaire he might burn through a few startups trying, but under current conditions corporate experience should come first—he stresses that the interview system is flawed and rejection or acceptance is not an absolute measure of competence. Hiring flow: HR screening, technical phone interview, then five or six on-site sessions (cultural fit, systems architecture, algorithms/coding).
His definition of success has shifted over the years: no longer just working at a good company or earning money, but being happy and satisfied with life. He is motivated by adding value to society and wanting young people in Turkey to reach similar standards. He produces educational content on YouTube with around fifty to sixty thousand subscribers. He does not find founding a startup realistic for now—building a unicorn from zero without fully grasping Uber's complex systems architecture feels exaggerated—but he gains experience through the smaller Topluluk venture. Long term he thinks Turkey allows more risk at lower cost and that family support provides a safety net.
He admits that over six years of education he may have sacrificed hobbies; but when he entered full-time work in his sixth year, salary could reach twenty to thirty times minimum wage, and he says it is possible to grow in a high-standard environment with less discrimination. He acts on the logic that sacrifice pays off later.
California has at-will employment culture: either side can end the agreement quickly; that dynamic increases performance pressure but also gives talented employees mobility. He has been at Uber for one year and four months and still enjoys software engineering.
He tells young people to use every opportunity where they are, that a university student's real job is to learn, and that they must seek extra skills useful in the industry themselves. He recommends learning from career conversations what successful people needed. Even while working, he wants them to question their potential and stay open to larger companies, different technologies, and additional responsibility. Citing Steve Jobs's "Stay hungry" metaphor, he says you cannot know how what you learn today will connect in ten years, but if you have vision the dots will connect later. His series recommendation is Bilgem Çakır on YouTube.
Highlights: early web and coding · Erasmus and Germany internship · 8 master’s applications, 5 acceptances · Yahoo vs startup salary decision · LinkedIn recruiter strategy · Uber interview process · success = happiness · YouTube educational content · startup cost in Turkey · use every opportunity
