Skip to content
Seunghyun Yu
KO

Curious about me?

Hello. I’m Seunghyun Yu.

I worked as a frontend engineer for four years, and these days I teach and consult on AI. I’m interested in Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) work.

Rather than building things on my own, I find it rewarding to be alongside people and solve the problem in front of them.

  1. ~ now

    On the way back up

    I still like good companies, money, titles. I still compare myself to other people. What has changed is that I can step back and look at myself a little.

    I have been thinking about what I have that could actually help someone. Right now that is my development skills, and knowing a bit more than most people about how to put AI to use. I want to talk directly with the people trying to solve something, help them make the problem concrete, and improve the parts where I can be useful.

  2. ~2026

    Trying things instead of finding the right answer

    I left the company where I had spent four years. Given my fixed costs I should have found the next job right away, but I wanted to go off and do something else.

    I did all sorts of things. Studied for a language test, built an app, took a desk at an office, asked people for coffee chats over social media, made videos, and built websites for people using what I knew from work.

    That is how the AI tutoring and consulting started too. There was more demand than I expected, so the work kept coming. And it was fun. Hearing about each person’s life was fun, and so was finding the part of it I could help with.

  3. ~2025

    Learning to sit with failure

    For about two years I was preparing to move to another company. I studied at cafés when they opened in the morning and worked late in the evening, applying and interviewing over and over, and I kept getting turned down.

    The failures piled up. I felt I had failed with people and failed at my career. I tried everything I could think of to find out why my life had come to this. I read books and kept a journal, and I cried and prayed every day.

  4. ~2025

    After the goal was gone

    Living on my own in Seoul was something I had wanted for a long time, and it made me happy — but with that goal gone, I had no idea where to head next. Without ever stopping to look at myself, I took up the goals everyone around me had, a better company and a higher salary, and started preparing to move.

    Once I became a full-time employee, the lightness I had as an intern gave way to pressure. I thought I had to fix everything I lacked and prove my worth. Not knowing any other way to be good at it, I volunteered for long hours, staying late and coming in on weekends.

    A new teammate joined and I became the mentor in charge of their onboarding. For the first time in a while, I felt capable. It felt good that what I explained actually helped them, and that I could have some part in how they grew.

  5. ~2022

    University and a first job

    I entered university in chemistry and graduated in computer science. I retook the entrance exam and studied for the pharmacy school exam as well, but I quit partway because I did not want to keep living as an exam candidate. While I was drifting, wondering which way to go, I transferred into computer science with the easy thought that it would at least be a useful tool to have.

    Alongside that I worked a string of part-time jobs — wedding halls, cafés, a call center, reception desks. Back then money meant the freedom to choose what I wanted. Taking time to work out what I liked felt like a luxury.

    In my last semester I joined a startup as a frontend intern. My reviews were good, so they offered me a full-time position and a salary without another interview. After I started working I saved hard and moved out on my own.

  6. ~2016

    Afraid of being found out

    As a child I was the opposite of the talkative, cheerful person I am now. A quiet kid who just went along with things. I grew up in a household that cared a great deal about school, and I was in gifted classes through elementary and middle school. I do not know how it looked from the outside, but inside I was always thinking that one day they would find out I was not that good.

    I liked making things. In elementary school, the first thing I ever begged my parents for was an after-school clay class, and on Pepero Day and Valentine’s Day I melted chocolate and made it myself.

    My friends tell me I was cheerful in high school. In my memory it was my dark age. I went to a girls’ high school far from home, and I spent a lot of time reading the room. The grades I had been propping up with cram schools slipped further and further once high school started. This time, I thought, they had really found me out.