diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 76fa6d34c..90fbde740 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -33,9 +33,9 @@ To compile DDNet yourself, execute the following commands in the source root:
     mkdir build
     cd build
     cmake ..
-    make -j8
+    make -j$(nproc)
 
-Pass the number of threads for compilation to `make -j`. DDNet requires additional libraries, that are bundled for the most common platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, all x86 and x86\_64). The bundled libraries are now in the ddnet-libs submodule.
+Pass the number of threads for compilation to `make -j`. `$(nproc)` in this case returns the number of processing units. DDNet requires additional libraries, that are bundled for the most common platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, all x86 and x86\_64). The bundled libraries are now in the ddnet-libs submodule.
 
 You can install the required libraries on your system, `touch CMakeLists.txt` and CMake will use the system-wide libraries by default. You can install all required dependencies and CMake on Debian or Ubuntu like this: