>> Kristen MacCartney: I like to talk and I like to tell stories and I’m going to tell a short one—I promise
it’ll be short. But, just again, most of you I hope by now know who I am; you know that I like to take
photos, I like to travel the world, engaging with I triple E—volunteers, members, nonvolunteers,
nonmembers. This was in the Great Wall of China with my much beloved colleague Ching Lee who
handles client services and the University partnership program in China and I was visiting her this
summer for the China student congress. So a little bit about me: I have an ENG degree just like you but
mine’s in English, [Laughter] I have an MBA, I have an MBA in Finance which was pretty useless except it
opened doors that an English degree wouldn’t open in the recession—I did some really fun financial
writing. I went back to school and got my Library Science degree because I wanted to be an elementary
school librarian—and here I am, okay. [Laughter] And pretty compelling, I am a mom and that really is
infused throughout how I treat you, how I look at the world, and it’s just part of who I am and part of
why I so much love engaging with you. I have two very, very different daughters.
Okay, this story today begins with Frank. Frank—you know—gave you a little bit, a frosh intern and so
forth, master networker, branch chair extraordinaire, wonderful guy; he also understands the value of
just getting people together to talk, to chat informally. So he had a dinner in April 2011 and I met some
people that I’d seen before but there was a new person and it was Aakanksha. And she had some
questions about women in engineering, would it be good for Stanford, she’d like to get more involved.
Conversation went along, she got more involved, had an internship in Toronto over the summer,
emailed me and said, “Hey, if I come visit New York, can you introduce me to anybody at Columbia?”
Well, I happen to know somebody at Columbia—I know many people at Columbia—and I set her up with
Natalya… “And by the way, where are you staying?” “Well, I’m not sure.” “Come stay with me.” You
know—why not? So I live very close to the train and the bus station, she went in and met Natalya, and
then because—you know—you meet people at I triple E, you get to like them, so the next day we all
meet in the city along with Boris, Natalya’s little brother, Yelena, Natalya’s mother. This creates a
network where, when my daughter wanted to learn about electrical engineering, Natalya put her up.
When Boris wanted to learn about science and technology at my daughter’s school—you know—we
flipped a switch on that, developed a relationship. The next month, sections congress which happens
every three years, leaders from sections around the world come together. I happen to be able to host
this meeting in conjunction with that. I thought it was very exciting to introduce young students to the
leadership, the volunteer network going forward. You see Frank, you see Aakanksha, you see Sean, Ajay
might come here—he’s at Amazon in the area, but I saw on Facebook he got promoted today so maybe
he’s celebrating, I’m not sure—but anyways… oh, you’re here—congratulations! Yay, okay. [Applause]
Your nametag is back there. So anyways, so we’re all—you know—the network just keeps growing.
Aakanksha’s another one of those master networkers and while she was there, she made a point to
network with her peers but also with higher-ups and one of the gentlemen, Peter Staecker, was running
for I triple E president-elect. Indeed he was elected president, so—you know—it’s just a relationship
that who knows what might happen with that? She did a phenomenal job for us that year with women
in engineering, collaborating with other groups, the heck was sweet were gonna work together, we’re
gonna collaborate. This was a program she put on that I went out to see; it was really a kind of a
culminating program for the year.
Now, across the coast at Columbia, they’re kicking butt. Their branch is really doing phenomenal work.
They get this award: the Zig Galeel award—how do you pronounce that? Zvigalear? Zvi Galil, okay. You
know, awards are always named after—you know—dead luminaries, right? So, just remember Zvi Galil.
I go on vacation. What do I do on vacation? I meet with I triple E student branch officers. So, this was
Aakanksha and Sean were interningship at Microsoft and Jean and Stuart were employees. I had my
niece and her husband and my children and the rest of my family here. Remember this picture, we’re
gonna come back to it. Aakanksha goes off to win… the first woman to win a Paul Baran Young Marconi
scholar award. Now I have to tell you, that award is based primarily in the fact that she is technically
brilliant. Some of her publications, I’m happy to say, almost all of them are with I triple E—remember
that. But the other thing that they noted was her leadership ability and how her involvement with I
triple E really did make a difference in how they viewed her application.
So, I’m at this, she invited me out, very kindly the I triple E let me go and I’m working the room
because—you know—I’m not always comfortable networking, but I like to do it—and I see this man, and
I see his nametag and what do you think it says?
>>: Zvi Galil.
>> Kristen MacCartney: There you go. [Laughter] I can’t believe it. I’m staring at this man, I thought he
was dead. [Laughter] So I go over and I introduce myself and I say, “I can’t believe you’re here,” you
know, this… “Columbia got this great award named after you.” He had no idea. He was a past Dean of
Columbia. So he has a son in New York, goes and visits the branch—you know—tells stories, so the
network just keeps building.
Okay, I’m bored. I’ve had the same thirteen schools in the U. S. for nine years—or eight years at that
point— and I’m… I just, I want some fresh blood. I want a new fusion. I want a branch that I think is
probably doing some exciting stuff, so Professor Galil introduces me to this man, Mr. McLaughlin—Steve
McLaughlin at Georgia Tech—who introduces me to this group, who are now sitting with you. So, again,
the network continues.
All throughout the year my life is just connection after connection after connection. Sometimes they’re
fruitful, sometimes they’re just fun, sometimes they’re… take a lot of work. I mean, none of this
happens seamlessly or effortlessly, but it’s always personally and often professionally rewarding. So,
some of the things that have happened just in this past year.
And then we go back to this picture. And I love this story because Jean and Aakanksha… this is the only
time they had met, at this dinner with—you know—my family around and so forth, and I hear this story
when Aakanksha got the post doc offer and accepted it and needed to find an apartment. She
contacted Jean and said—you know—perhaps you could help me—you know—decide where I want to
stay. And Jean invited her to stay and Aakanksha flies up, it’s Friday night, she stays over, she wakes up
the next morning and Jean goes, “How do I know you?” [Laughter] It didn’t matter. The I triple E
connection was strong enough that, “Okay, you’re I triple E, sure, come stay at my house, eat my food,”
you know, “sleep in my bed,” whatever. That’s why we’re at Microsoft Research, because the network
works. That’s why Georgia Tech is in the house. This is my I triple E, and it’s yours today and what you
do with it is entirely up to you, but you’re never not gonna have what’s in this room right now. So, with
that, I want to introduce Ajay and we also have another I triple E past officer, Yi Li, in the back, you met
him last night… some of you may have met him last night. So, we’ve got a pretty nice panel going here
and if you gentlemen want to come up and take a seat. And I think we’ve got Sean is gonna come up,
and Stuart, and Aakanksha. I’ll put another chair there and the questions that you had already—what
wasn’t answered or what burning question… what was the most important question that you would like
to ask? You’ve got five other perspectives and make the most of it and we’ll go from here.
>> Yi Li: My name is Yi. I work in Microsoft Azure. I am a CS major, but I am also part of I triple E.
>> Ajay Suresh: I’m Ajay. We both graduated from Michigan, so Go Blue! Go Blue!
>>: Go Blue!
>> Ajay Suresh: Except not for football. So I don’t work at Microsoft, I work at Amazon on the Amazon
fulfillment team. And so I graduated with a computer engineering degree. Yeah, I guess that…
>>: Does that mean that I can ask you about all my missing packages? [Laughter]
>>: Yeah, and broken packages.
>>: Awesome. [Laughter]
>> Sean Zimmerman: Hi everyone. I’m Sean. I was the Columbia University chapter president. I now
work for Microsoft as a design verification engineer on Surface working on the audio team. So if there’s
anything wrong… if you get a Surface—and you all should get Surfaces ‘cause they’re amazing things…
[Laughter] Awesome, someone else is saying it too. Great. If there’s anything wrong with the speakers
or mics, do let me know.
>> Aakanksha Chowdhery: Hi everyone. I’m Aakanksha. I graduated out of Stanford a year ago with
PhD and I pick my Masters also there and I was the leader for I triple E Women in Engineering branch for
Stanford and I organize a lot of events there. And right now I’m a post doc at Microsoft Research.
>> Stuart Bottom: See if my lapel mic works. Hi everyone, I’m Stuart Bottom. I’m a program manager
here at Microsoft on the Cortana team. I graduated from U C Berkeley where I was also the student
branch chair and I currently volunteer for the I triple E young professional’s newsletter, Gold Rush.
>> Vijay Narasimhan: Hi… third time. I’m Vijay Narasimhan. Yeah, past I triple E volun… I’ve been an I
triple E volunteer since 2003 and different student branch roles and different roles in different regions
and happy to talk to you some more.
>> Frank Nothaft: Hi. I am Frank Nothaft. I was a student branch chair at Stanford for two years,
graduated in 2011, spent a few years in industry working at Broadcom and serving as chair of the I triple
E computer society, Orange County. Now I’m at U C Berkeley, and I think the question was originally,
“What was the I triple E moment that you can’t forget?”
>>: Well, that was the original one proposed, but I’m saying, like, next year, when I go into my senior
year, if you could only do one event that you planned or took part of, what would be the one thing that
you would be like, “Don’t miss out on this.”
>> Frank Nothaft: All that I remember, like—well not all that I remember—[Laughter] but the most
rememberable one that I had was a barbeque that we had where, I don’t know, there was, like, some
raffle and there was like, the raffle was kind of crazy and I was decked out in, like, raffle tickets. And
then, like, some chemistry student showed up and it was like this huge, huge sprawling crowd of people.
That’s all that I remember as, like, awesome. [Laughter]
>>: If I can take that question as well. There were a couple years… actually it’s an annual event now at
the U C Berkeley I triple E student branch—a ski trip, multi day ski trip. They… it’s a three day, two night
ski trip and that’s like hands down the most memorable I triple E events for me were those ski trips.
There’s a lot of bonding that goes on when you are skiing and falling and sleeping in a cabin together
where you’re probably not supposed to have too many people in that cabin. We did put the entire
student branch in the cabin, so… very fun.
>>: Alright. For us I’m actually gonna say not our probably most successful event, but I’ve always liked
to tell our students is, “We have three goals as I triple E chairs. It’s to feed you, to remind you that
engineering is fun, and to get you a job.” And though this one isn’t really so much as getting you a job,
one of the most successful events I think we did was right before finals. What we did is we did a very
low budget, basic event which our department helped us on, where we got the department to give us
just a small amount of money for food, we asked everyone at triple E, “Do you have any, like, really old
game consoles that we could hook up to some of the meeting room TVs?” And we did, and we got a ton
of old game consoles, a ton of food and everyone came and relaxed before their finals. And everyone
was able to ask for questions about upcoming finals and get support. And it was, I think, something that
brought the entire department together; it gave I triple E exposure, and was a very easy, very low
budget event that we were able to pull off.
>>: Yeah, so this is definitely not one of our most successful events, but something that I look back on
was… so every year we get a couple people who are always a little interested in I triple E but they’re,
like, freshman’s and they’re sophomore—you know—they don’t really know what’s going on. And one
of the events that we had was this speaker building project. So over, like, a single weekend we would
get a bunch of these chips and we’d invite pretty much the entire double E student body and we’d—you
know—tell them, “Hey, do you guys want to build a speaker?” And over the course of, like, I think, two
or three weeks they went from—you know—just learning how to, like, solder things, ‘cause—you
know—they haven’t take the—you know—beginning courses yet, to having, like, fully functional
speakers and…
>>: That they can brag about.
>>: Yes, that they can brag about and, more importantly, get more exposure to, like, meeting people in I
triple E and getting—you know—that networking opportunity and really kind of like get them into see
what I triple E does. And we didn’t get the greatest amount of attendance, but we—you know—met
some really—you know—really cool people and, more importantly, we were able to show them how—
you know—I triple E was able to both educate people as well as bring them together and meet more
people in the branch.
>>: In their, like, major and everything.
>>: Yes. Go ahead.
>>: How would you do…
>>: Who do you want to answer?
>>: It’s good.
>>: Let’s not all answer at once. [Laughter]
>>: How would you define a successful student branch? What determines success? Is it, like, the
number of students who are involved, is it getting student’s jobs? Like, what do you think made you feel
that your branch was successful?
>>: I’ll take this one unless somebody else wants to… sure. So I know that for a couple years, our
branch had difficulty with members. I think that there are definitely times where it’s difficult and
somewhat disappointing when you don’t see as much engagement by—you know—the members in
your group, but what I’ve always found to be a good metric is to see the amount of engagement not
within the group but, like, the outward engagement, so like, the events that are held. I know that we
used to host a ton of corporate events where companies would through us be able to communicate to
students. We would have a lot of volunteering activities, we would have just a lot of different
outreaches in which it wouldn’t necessarily increase our membership base, but it would increase both
our exposure as well as—you know—an appreciation of the things that we do.
>>: I also just want to tack on that it is normal for branches to have year to year variation, so it’s very
easy to think, “Oh no, we didn’t do as many events as last year; oh no we didn’t do this much, this must
be a sign of a problem.” When I first joined Columbia’s I triple E, I believe Kris has the exact headcount,
but I think there were only five people, and now we’re doing slightly better; I think we have, like, twelve
people. But the thing is that that first year we didn’t have that many events. We did have a couple of
nice ones like a tour of Brookhaven National Labs, but by and large we probably could say we count
events by semester, by year, not by month. But the thing is, that year we started building up contacts to
various companies. We started laying the ground work for the next year and each year progressively
there’s been [Indiscernible] year improvement. So some years you’re gonna have lulls, some years you
won’t be able to get speakers but that doesn’t mean you weren’t successful. As long as you feel like
something’s been accomplished, and even if that means just making your students happy by giving them
food, you’ve done something right.
>>: And I’ll add to that. You know, one thing to keep in mind is it’s really about fostering a sense of
community and—you know— it’s… community is not something that’s easy to measure—you know—it’s
somewhat subjective, but—you know—anytime that you have someone who you’ve never seen before
show up to your meeting, that’s good. You know, anytime you have a group of people who show up to
your meeting all the time, that’s awesome. Anytime that you have people who are coming to your
meetings who are coming from outside of your field, or—you know—even outside of your University,
which occasionally happens—you know—that’s really good. You know, I don’t think you need to… like
it’s good to focus on things year to year—you know—month to month, and so on, but—you know—
especially as volunteers—you know—you have to revel in all of the small victories. And anytime that
you’re able to expand your community or really deepen the strength of it—you know—that’s something
to reflect on as a—you know—as a big victory and as a success.
>> Aakanksha Chowdhery: Adding to that I would also add the fact that Frank… whenever you’re
bringing a new… a volunteer in who starts coming up with new events, you don’t want to compare it to
last year’s events, so when he brought me in women engineering was not something we were focusing
on and I explained to him that, “This is a really important cause, I want to do events around this,” and he
gave me the flexibility to do things and budget and figure out what I want to do. I think there’s a lot to
be said not just around that topic but in general. I brought in people who were excited about puzzle
hunting, or now Mercy now was describing to me they’re doing megathons, so every time someone
comes in they bring new ideas related to what is exciting to them and I think there’s value in every
volunteer bringing in new ideas and that’s a metric of success I believe.
>>: In general one thing about events is that there’s gonna be some that are smaller than others and
that’s okay. I know that in, like, all sorts of programming type events that we do, and I call
programming, like, whether it’s talks or meet-ups or career things or whatever, is that—you know—you
might have a room of four people and then the next time you’ll have a room that’s, like, overflowing
capacity, like more than a hundred. And that’s okay ‘cause maybe those four people are the four people
that didn’t… that don’t usually come to all your events but they came to that one ‘cause you hosted it
sort of like for them. And so identifying the unmet needs in your institutions, departments,
communities is really important and reaching out to those… reaching out to those people is really
meaningful to them because it gives… everybody has—you know—whether it’s I triple E or any other
organization, everyone wants, like, a hook to hang their hat on and if you throw the same types of
events all the time that gather a hundred people, not everyone will have a hook. So just keep that in
mind.
>>: So, go ahead.
>>: So you all have a pretty unique perspective because you’ve both led and then stayed engaged and
seen how things change over time. What makes strength in a student branch endure from year to year?
>> Stuart Bottom: I’ll take that. I think it’s the friendships between the members and the officers as the
participants in the student branch, especially as people graduate and move on. You know, friends look
out for each other. So—you know—ignoring all the metrics of how many events and how many—you
know—what was our satisfaction on the surveys and whatever, I think, you know, ultimately—and you’ll
hear this theme through the answers to the last question, I think, as well—it’s all about the people,
right? And the friendships that—you know—I personally developed through my time in the I triple E
student branch, I’m still good friends with a large number of those people and—you know—we look out
for each other. So if somebody needs a job—you know—I’ll hook ‘em up with a reference, right, and
vice versa. And—you know—it’s not just about the—you know—if somebody’s looking for a job, it goes
beyond that… that sphere. So I think in terms of the strength of that community—you know—it’s not
just about are you… are you taking care of them on a professional level? It’s are you taking care of them
on a personal level? And so it’s the friendship that takes you beyond that versus just, “Oh yeah, we’re in
this professional organization. I sort of have this obligation and there’s this—you know—give and take,”
right? So I think that’s really important to consider.
>>: I guess from like a procedural standpoint something that I’ve always found to be successful was
being able to be consistent every year. One of the things that we usually do is we have an officer handoff—you know—every year… or after every semester the old officers, they have a write-up and, well,
they usually have a write-up and they… sometimes it’s the write-up from their previous engagement too
and they appended—you know—their own experiences, but I found that if… being consistent is really
important. Having—you know—sometimes you try events and it doesn’t work out. You take those
learnings and you carry it to the next semester to the new officer who’s taken over your role. And that’s
always been really helpful in learning what hasn’t worked before and trying out new things that could
work.
>> Yi Li: And just going off that is, I don’t think you need to shoot for the moon every year. Like, for
Michigan, I think it was better when we had consistent incremental updates, at least from when I was
there and just, like, making sure the solid, like, our fundamentals were solid before we, like, spread
ourselves way too thin or stuff like that. So, yeah, add fundamentals and…Ajay?
>> Ajay Suresh: Yeah, small and consistent… yeah, okay. Sorry.
>> Sean Zimmerman: And just building on Stuart’s comments about the people, it is totally okay for you
to have a couple of events that are more for you guys as your board, than it is for your members. And I
say that because at Columbia we have a recurring event which is a liquid nitrogen ice cream event. The
thing is that the liquid nitrogen ice cream event requires you to actually make batter the night before.
So our great team building effort is, “Let’s stick the entire I triple E board in a single dorm kitchen and try
to get them to cook—and watch what happens.” We have some of our probably best memories of I
triple E—and you can see Shani kind of just putting her face in her hands over some of those
memories—but some of our best memories as an org and some of the best friendships we developed
were those kind of informal gatherings. So it’s not that… you don’t have to be, “It’s all about the
members; if we put one dollar that’s not toward our members, it’s a problem.” No it’s not. If you’re
taking care of your board members, you’re ensuring the overall health of your chapter.
>>: More questions? Otherwise, I’ll act as moderator and add questions from the board.
>>: Yes?
>>: So someone asked this earlier and it kind of brings a question ‘cause the ratio up there isn’t good.
[Laughter] But they asked earlier why you think so many women, like, step up to leadership in the I
triple E. Like if you… like the… they were saying that the I triple E general membership is only about ten
percent female, but if you look at, like, the ratio in this room it’s definitely not ten percent. Why do you
think that is? [Laughter]
>> Aakanksha Chowdhery: Only female on the panel, I guess. I believe it really boils down to, in general,
it’s about building the pipeline in any school. I think with Kris as mentors and I think even at Stanford
and some of the other schools, if you have had great role models it really helps. And I think the other
thing is that as females, I get excited about being able to do things for people and make impact and
make contributions to people’s lives and that’s probably the reason what attracted me to doing things in
I triple E because I saw the impact happen for a lot of lives. And I would ask… flip the question back;
why are you stepping up for this?
>>: I guess I feel like I’ve… just to get where I am today, I’ve always had to work really hard to prove
myself. So this is me, just stepping up even more and just prove myself and try to make a difference so
that other people have it easier to improve themselves to the point where, I guess, that girls don’t feel
like they have to prove themselves anymore and just accept it.
>> Aakanksha Chowdhery: That’s another way… good reason as to we are trying to make lives for the
next generation easier by taking on the challenge ourselves. Anyone else wants to contribute?
>>: I just… I wanted to mention something I saw it in interesting… was another interesting talk I saw
where they asked young people to draw what they thought of when they heard the word scientist.
And—you know—over time—you know—everyone used to draw Einstein, for some reason Einstein
holding a test tube and I don’t think Einstein generally held test tubes, [Laughter] but that’s generally
what people drew. And I think that—you know—there are signs these days that that opinion is
changing, is that they see—you know—a lot of women coming up in science and engineering and people
from different backgrounds depending on—you know—the field coming up in science and engineering,
cultural backgrounds and ethnic backgrounds and all sorts of things. It’s a good incentive for us to be
very visible in our communities to make it easier for the next generation to go, “Oh there’s a person like
me doing this.” I think that’s very powerful. And so I don’t know if a lot of you have outreach
incorporated into your branches activities—I know that we do through some of our work at Stanford
and we used to at University of Ottawa as well—through either you own organization or partnering.
You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, so if there’s some other thing, but getting your officers involved in
that kind of process to show that—you know—what are the career paths out there and the fact that
there’s all kinds of people on those paths is something that we sort of… yeah, I mean, like, it’s
interesting but it’s just like that is a very powerful message when all a child thinks of when they see a
particular person is this or that and then you have the power to change that even today. So I think it’s
good to get that out there. Just being who you are and doing what you do is really powerful.
>>: More questions?
>>: So what do you guys think about taking a gap year and do you think it’s detrimental when you’re
applying to a job or grad school later on?
>>: Can anyone take the question?
>>: Uhhhh… [Laugh]
>> Aakanksha Chowdhery: When you say gap year you’re saying, go climb mountains or…
>>: Yeah, yeah, like do something completely random, like go travel, like learn something like weaving
or something in Mexico. [Laughter]
>> Aakanksha Chowdhery: I’ll take that question. I didn’t take a year off but I took almost a month off
before I joined Microsoft Research. [Laughter]
>>: Wait, are you say… just to clarify, are you saying within your school year? Like, are you saying
between, like, junior and senior year type of thing or after graduation?
>>: Right. Right after you graduate.
>>: Okay.
>> Aakanksha Chowdhery: Yeah, after I graduated I took a month off. I decided that I had done my PhD,
this was one of the biggest achievements of my life so I wanted to go travel Europe.
>> Vijay Narasimhan: I think the problem that you might have with this sort of thing is, like, that you
think you might have with this sort of thing is there’s a gap on your resume, right? That’s what you’re
really concerned about? That’s why it’s called a gap year I suppose is that there’s a gap where you
weren’t at work, and I had this… I mean, for personal reasons I took a few, I took actually several months
off between… so I was gonna go actually to Cambridge one year and I deferred that position for a year
for personal reasons. But actually, like, it’s interesting, I think that during your gap year there’s a lot of
other stuff that will show up, maybe not on your resume but in your conversations that will make you an
interesting and more well-rounded and—you know—like, cool person, so. For applying for grad school
and stuff like that, like, I think that short periods… long periods of time sometimes will, it really depends
on the person. I think people who do that are very narrow minded, but it does happen and—you
know—we don’t live in a perfect world, but I always tell people that, like—you know—your credentials
from when you’re undergrad and you showed yourself as a student and as a leader and all these things,
they don’t go away, like you didn’t fundamentally change as a person because you went to whatever it
was a year later. And a lot of people say the same thing about—you know—after grad school and this is
funnier ‘cause you’re not taking time off, but like, after grad school if you go into industry some people
thing that that’s the death knell for academia, right? Like you’re never going to be a professor. But I’m
sure all of you have professors at your institutions who spent time in industry. And so don’t let people
who tell you never, like, get into your head. ‘Cause some people, yeah, will because—you know—that’s
just what their opinion of people is and that’s who they are, but I don’t know, I mean, if you want to and
you need a break, do it, like, take it, if you have the luxury to do it and you have time to see things.
There’s no time like when you’re young to see things, right?
>>: Yeah and I actually have two good friends who have—you know—who have done that. Yeah, one
went to live in—you know—in actually Braz… so he took the summer off to bike across the U. S. and
then spent about half a year to a year living in Brazil before going back to grad school. And another
friend who actually took the trans-Siberian railroad, yeah, from one side of Russia to the other side of
Russia and then spent another few months just living around in Europe, crashing in friend’s houses. And
I know both of them… both of them reflect back very fondly on the experiences. You know—l mean, I
think the thing is, yeah, as Vijay said, the people who are going to look down—you know—the people
who are going to be dismayed that you’ve done that, like, probably aren’t the type of people that you
would want to work with from a work/life balance perspective. You know, it reflects a bit of a closed
world view and—you know—it’s like, to quote Mark Twain—you know—Mark Twain has a beautiful
phrase about this that I can’t remember exactly, but—you know—he essentially really advocates very
strongly for this and he was a fairly smart person so—you know—I’m gonna go with Mark Twain on this
and say that it’s a good idea.
>>: And just building on that slightly, although this will only probably catch a couple of you in a corner
case, a lot of times when you’ll get jobs coming out of college they’ll ask, “When do you want to start?”
And they’ll give you a flexible start date. It’s really easy to be told by people, “Oh you should start the
day after you finish college ‘cause you want to show that you’re interested in the position.” Don’t do
that. Honestly, once the company has offered you a job, if you say, you know, “I want to take the
summer off; I want to take six months off because I want to go learn something, I want to…” In my case
it was as simple as, I’m from New York City and this was going to be my last time in New York before I
moved out to Washington. I wanted to go to all the museums one more time. I wanted to see all my
friends one more time. That is a perfectly valid reason to say, “You know what? I’m gonna start in
September.” So, don’t feel pressured to say, “I want to start the first day after college.” Though, if you
want to, feel free.
>>: My advice would be just be able to talk about that in terms of any job interview. So—you know—
have a good understanding and a mental framework for describing that to an interviewer because—you
know—I guarantee you’ll be asked about it by some recruiters and so—you know—if you spent the
summer playing video games—you know—you can spin it and say you were—you know—researching
new methodologies for human/computer interaction or something like that. [Laughter] At least be able
to talk about it, so.
>>: I think we had a question over there.
>>: Well, I was gonna say, like, talking about the gap year, is that more difficult with engineering
because in a year if you, like, move somewhere completely different or took up weaving, would it be
bad because engineering’s constantly changing? So do you think that’s a factor at all?
>>: I don’t think engineer changes… engineering changes that quickly. But, it does, but the
fundamentals the way you can catch up. It’s… like I know, like, one of my coworkers at Amazon, he
took, like, one year off switching to Amazon. He’s not a worse programmer, he’s up to date now. I feel
like, as long as you know the fundamentals, if you survived four years of undergrad, catching up is not a
big deal.
>>: That said, there will be some kind of like, you probably don’t remember things that happened one
year ago in college exactly. I mean, as I mentioned, I cannot remember solid states. It is some blur that
happened to me at some point. So stuff will atrophy, like, it’s not a big deal. You can easily relearn it.
>> Aakanksha Chowdhery: I just wanted to add this perspective. I don’t think it’s on your mind right
now, but as females often there will be personal things like having a kid or getting engaged or something
like that, where you will want to take some time off and it’s perfectly okay to do that, so don’t be
obligated to be on the job. Now having said that, if you want to be on the job, then that’s completely up
to you and you will catch up on your skills and other things as you need to. Have confidence in yourself.
Go to your employers and be ready to explain that this is why I’m doing, what I’m doing.
>>: Guys can take time off for that too.
>>: Yeah, I took a month off for my wedding and my manager didn’t care.
>>: Other questions? Yes, go ahead.
>>: [Indiscernible] talk about this before and certainly [Indiscernible] some kind of like what makes you
stand out in terms of getting a job. Some of you have really impressive jobs. So kind of like to the other
people on the board, what you think really made you get the job over your peers?
>>: I think for me it was because… it was like my vibes for action and ownership using Amazon tenets
that’s what the… because I’m not a CS major. I didn’t have, like, a 4.0. Just like the ability for me to get
stuff done on my resume, like mentoring a first team and stuff like that. I think that’s what put me at…
because I think, like, everyone, if you graduate, you have a basic skill set and just having that, like, drive
and determination to get further.
>>: Yeah, so, yeah, one thing that… so I actually did hiring for my group and so I’ll echo what he was
saying—you know—like a big thing that we would look for is, yeah, what people tend to refer to it as
tenacity or grit. You know, we… like there was a person who we hired who on paper was not the
strongest candidate out there, but you could tell that—you know—like from… just from this person’s
background that—you know—they had—you know—they were the type of person who even if they
didn’t understand something, would work to understand it, would—you know—would try to master it.
You know, it’s… like they had you… they could kind of demonstrate from their resume work ethic. And
that’s—you know—it’s hard to get across. I don’t know the exact correct way, but the other —you
know—the other thing is—you know—I think if you can show a bit of—you know— a bit of extra depth
in some segments of your life and—you know—like a lot of us who are here—you know—we’re here
because we have shown depth in our interests, in our professional career by being heavily involved in
the I triple E. So—you know—by being here, that’s a strong—you know— a strong step in the correct
direction and that always reflects strongly.
>> Aakanksha Chowdhery: I’ll add to that. I’d like to attest to that. So when I interviewed at Microsoft
Research, one of the things that they found really interesting was that I had taken on leadership roles
at… for women engineering and had fund-raised almost ten thousand dollars for events over two years
and I had taken initiative on making that happen so, taking initiative, showing passion, showing interest
in things that impact people’s lives shows to a manager that this person will actually take time and want
to make things happen.
>> Sean Zimmerman: And just to add on to that, you’re already in a really, really good position. You’re
all members of I triple E, you’re all student leaders, you have the ability to go and con—and I mentioned
this last night—you have the ability to con… you’re rare because you have the ability to cold call into
companies and say, “Hi, we’d like to have an event with you,” and you can build on that relationship,
both for your chapter and for yourself. I got my first interview at Microsoft because I managed the
Microsoft events for Columbia’s I triple E. That’s totally okay. You can get professional gains from being
in I triple E. So that’s a very good way to make yourself stand out and definitely building on adaptability.
When I was an intern here one of the things that they did to me is they said, “So, we want you to work
with this,” and it was a block of C# code—and I have never touched C# in my life. And after the
internship was done and they offered me the job I asked, “Why?” And they said, “Because we gave you
something you didn’t know, you took the time to learn it, and you did it.” That kind of ability is
something that all companies really want. So if you don’t… if you’re on an interview and they say, “Can
you do this?” You shouldn’t lie and say you can if you can’t, but you can say, “No, but I promise you I
can find out.”
>>: [Indiscernible] in different scenarios on jobs and actually my IBM recruiters described this
experience of recruiting me… [Mic difficulties]
>>: Yeah, I did the mic.
>>: Oh, okay. Sorry. So I had the honor of hearing my IBM recruiters talk to me about how… what… talk
to others about what it was like to hire me. And what they described is basically like a bundle of energy
jumping in their sight at the career fair and basically telling them why I need to get that job and why it’s
my dream job and why they need to hire me. And of course after that, technical competency really
helps. But basically high energy is what we look for. I recruited for IBM after that and every time, like I
was telling one of the groups here, we want to look for a person who will enthusiastically tell you about
their projects, will tell you, like Sean said, that they will take on whatever challenge you throw at them
no matter what it is, even if it’s something they don’t know. And you will get that a lot. Like for me at
IBM they give me PEARL. I never worked with PEARL before [Indiscernible] is nicer—yes, it is. So,
energy, ability to learn, know what you’re… on your resume and describe it with enthusiasm and how it
applies to the work. And then for Qualcomm it was a little bit different, so this is where the networking
really comes in. I had a contact at Qualcomm and I told them I was looking for a job, so he literally
handed my resume over to the manager and from there I was talking to the manager. Once again, you
have to be enthusiastic. Half the things on the job description I did not actually know at the time. For
example they use system Verilog. I did VHDL, and things like that. And I basically was like, “I’m really
willing to learn,” this is why I can learn this because this is relative—you know— you explain, you make
them understand and from there I got a full interview and things went pretty well. So really, be
energetic, don’t be down on yourself, don’t point out your flaws, tell ‘em why you’re awesome.
>>: And after you put your resume in that box, if you don’t hear back in a couple of weeks, give your
recruiter a call. Say, “I really want this job and I haven’t heard back yet,” and that’s one way you can
show energy.
>>: Do you want to go?
>>: Sure. Well, so I know it’s a really cliché thing to say—you know—be unique on your resume
‘cause—you know—everyone says that. They’re like, find that one thing that differentiates you from
somebody else, whether it be like a project or—you know—something you did in your personal time
and—you know—sometimes it’s hard to find that thing because you feel like—you know—everybody’s
taken the same classes that I have, everybody’s in the same club and stuff like that. I found that it’s
always important to—you know—figure out… look at the things that you have done and find… and really
understand and be able to explain clearly that project and what… and how that was different. One of
the things that I did when I was a freshman was write this karaoke machine in assembly. Not exactly—
you know—special or anything, but like, I went to, like, great detail about, like, how I did stuff that I
don’t remember now and, like, I remember talking for hours about, like, how… well not hours but, like,
maybe, like, twenty minutes in, like, an hour interview. Not… no, like, technical questions in that
interview—you know—before that, but like, it was… they could just see your passion, they could see
how—you know—interested you are and how you approach problems and those are the things that—
you know—the people who recruit managers look for. Somebody who’s able to tackle something
that’s—you know—that is different and being able to, like, find good solutions and solve ‘em.
>>: Yeah, I’ve done a bit of interviewing for various things like scholarships and I hire for also, like,
people who do the social events in the dorm and I’ve been on the other side of the table interviewing
and then also interviewed, most recently I guess I was on the interviewing side for the United Nations
foundation. So basically I was interviewing my successor, whoever that was gonna be. And it was an
interesting… it’s a really interesting experience because I think that, like, it’s daunting… I’m an
extrovert—right—obviously, and so it’s really daunting because I think to be a leader as you are, as you
guys are in other organizations that have worked in, you don’t have to be an extrovert—that’s really
important for anyone who’s introverted or has that tendency in the room to know. And that’s okay.
And the idea of energy and enthusiasm doesn’t mean that you have to be like “aaahhh,” like, all the
time. So I think the thing that really comes across though in, like, an interview process is even if
someone’s introverted, they walk out of the room and, like, you want to create that impression, like,
that person was a rock star. The person that just walked in here just, like, rocked it and then walked
out. And I don’t know, I think that’s like a really cool thing, but don’t equate the two. Don’t be
someone you’re not during the interview ‘cause you think that you need to be like turned on crazy like—
you know—someone who you’re not. It’s difficult and it probably comes across as not who you are, but
like, being really, really comfortable in your own skin is just such an ad… I mean it’s for any sort of like
when you’re trying to foster a relationship with someone and so the idea of going up to the person… I’ve
seen so many times that there’s these career fairs and it’s just like, someone walks up and it’s like, “Hi,
I’m a C S student. Here’s my resume.” I like, usually don’t even give my resume to people and I’m, like,
just talking to them and then they’re like… two minutes later they’re like, “Give me your resume, like, I
need to see the details about all the awesome things that you’re talking about.” And so, like, I don’t
know. And then when you go up and, like, you just show genuine interest and enthusiasm… often times
when we’re choosing between two candidates who are really, like, good and both really good we say,
“Who’s more interested in this position?” I recently got turned down for a position because someone
else was really much more interested than I was and when I heard who it was I’m like, “Yep, that person
was way more interested than I was.” Like, all the power to them, like, they’re gonna do an awesome
job in that role, more so… or—you know—equally so than I would certainly. So all of those things:
expressing interest and, like, why it’s a good fit for you, why you’re a good fit for them, and it doesn’t
have to come across in any kind of like extraverted, very talkative way. It can be very subtle and
understated and it’s still beautiful when it’s who you are.
>>: So one thing that I’ll just kind of add on to that—you know—people often say that introvert… like—
you know—interviewing is as much for you as it is for the company and that is entirely true. Yeah, it’s
like you should act as yourself—you know—like—you know—ideally you’re very good fit with the group
that you’re working with. If you aren’t a good personality fit with your boss and your teammates—you
know—it’ll be difficult for you to work as well as you possibly could. And—you know—kind of a way
that this segues back to the interview process is—you know—one of the things that really would
frustrate me when I was interviewing with candidates is—you know—it’s fine to admit that you don’t
know something. It’s actually… it’s preferable to admit that you don’t know something. You know, it’s
like I would… we worked in a somewhat esoteric area and I would—you know—quite frequently asked
people—you know—questions that I knew would be out of their reach because—you know—a big
problem for us was figuring out, “Okay—you know—we have, like, problem that we’ve never seen
before; how do we solve it?” So—you know—it’s some of these… some of the time it’s about seeing
how do you think when—you know—when you’ve been presented with a problem that you haven’t
seen before? And it’s also—you know—when you do hit something that’s at the end of your
capabilities, it’s good if you know what your limits are. You know, someone who understands what their
limits are and says, “You know, I’m at a point where I don’t know what I’m doing so I’m gonna find
someone who can help me,” is a lot better than someone who doesn’t know that they’re doing
something that they don’t actually know how to do and really messes things up. It’s like, we would
quite often have people come to us and be like, “I’m an expert at C++,” and it’s like, if you’re finishing
your undergrad degree you are not an expert in C++, like, flat out rule. So, it’s like, it’s good to be
humble—you know—it is reasonable to be humble and when people see that you’re struggling but
you’re trying to work—you know—you’re trying to work towards things they’ll tend to want to help you
out and—you know—they probably expect this to be—you know—slightly beyond your capabilities and
they’re probably looking to see how you think.
>> Aakanksha Chowdhery: I’ll add just one more dimension to the whole thing which is not discussion at
final yet. As a female when you go into the team you do want a manager who will look out for you and
who will champion your cause and you have to build that relationship over time. So in the interview,
when you’re looking out for yourself, do try to figure out whatever questions are on your mind. Don’t
outright ask there want a six month vacation, but do figure out what the work culture is like and what
the work culture’s manager promotes because this is the person you will negotiate with when you want
something over the next three or four years, whether they’ll help you develop your career or resolve
issues that you have with your peers who are not treating you well, maybe.
>>: Next question?
>>: More questions? A lot of questions on the board.
>>: So you guys a couple years were basically sitting in our seats with the… did you guys get hit any
piece advice that was really, really good or do you have any piece advice that you wish you would’ve
gotten that you’d like to share with us? You could answer both or one.
>> Yi Li: So, I’ll take this one. So, completely unrelated story but it’ll lead to something. So recently I
just got this awesome credit card. It’s like, made out of metal and I was, like, super excited. I was like,
holding it ‘cause it just felt different. Huh? Yeah, the Chase Sapphire. Oh my gosh, okay. [Laughter]
Anyways…
>>: And if you’re watching right now you can dial this number, right? [Laughter]
>> Yi Li: So, this is, like, the first card that I’ve actually, like, signed on the back ‘cause—you know—
you’re… I mean, I know you’re supposed to but I never did ‘cause my parents never did so I never did.
Anyways, so I was playing around with it and—you know—I was showing off to my friends and they’re
like…so, okay, a back story to that: I write my I’s, like, really loopily, so they look like O’s instead of I’s,
and my name is spelled Y-I-L-I. So, [Laughter] when I was like, showing off they’re like, “Why’d you sign
your card as Yo Lo?” [Laughter] You know? That being said, I’m not saying—you know—hashtag yolo,
do whatever you want, but one of the things that I’ve come across a lot is—you know—there’s always
these exciting opportunities and the thing is, a lot of these opportunities have risk. You know, like
working for a smaller company that has a potential… much higher growth and—you know—much higher
risk, like, you might not get paid as much, you might… the company might fail, you might have to go find
another job, you might have to learn something that your completely unfamiliar with. And I think that’s
something that I… like a couple years ago I had a couple choices and I always chose the conservative one
just because I thought—you know—like, this is—you know—a good opportunity—you know—I should
do this. And now looking back and after making different choices after that, I realize that that was not
always the best choice. So it’s important to understand that like, yeah, maybe taking a risk is scary—you
know—like, if I’m work… what if I choose to work for a company that I have almost no experience in,
don’t know what to do—you know—while there’s this other company that’s, like, totally fine, really
safe, it’s been around here forever, but—you know—it’s… we’re all young at this point, we can basically
almost do whatever we want and still keep on going forward and I—you know—that’s something I
would recommend.
>>: To add on that, the advice I got recently was always be uncomfortable, but not, like, extremely
uncomfortable [Laughter] but like, don’t need to go in a cardboard box and something. But just like,
constantly challenge yourself because, like, I know, like, for a short time I was, like, doing the
comfortable path at work, but then when I got, like, thrown on new project, that’s when I really got to,
like, figure out what I need to develop, what I’m… what strengths I have that I can foster more instead of
just being constantly comfortable.
>>: And, on the topic of constant comfort…
>>: Uncomfort.
>>: Uncomfort in general. Your first six months at any company might be rough. There’ll be a lot of
kind of stress; there’ll be a lot of, “I can’t access this; people are using acronyms that I don’t
understand.” There’ll be a lot of acronyms—just be prepared for that in your first couple of meetings.
And it’s gonna feel awkward ‘cause you’re gonna have to go to your boss, you’re gonna have to go to
other members of your team and ask for help a lot. That’s totally normal. And you might be feeling
again, in the first six months, “I don’t know what I’m doing here; what’s going on?” Don’t judge it during
the first six months. When you get to the six month mark start then going, “Okay, am I happy here?”
And when it gets to the one year mark, that’s when you can start doing the more, “Am I happy here? Do
I think this is the right path for me?” And if you’re hitting the one year mark and you’re still not happy,
that’s when you might want to think, “You know what? This is my first job. I can go somewhere else
and it’s okay.” Or if you’re working in a large company like a Microsoft, like an Amazon, most of those
companies have internal transfers that are much easier than applying for another company completely.
So if you’re not happy in your current role, there are usually lots of other options that you have.
>> Aakanksha Chowdhery: I think the most important advice that I got was: develop your
communication and networking skills, as an engineer the technical skills will constantly evolve. The two
classes that I look back and really remember from Stanford’s program was technical writing and public
speaking that I’ve constantly worked on developing. Even now I’m taking improv classes just…
communication skills are really key for you to build your career forward, and being able to articulate
what you’re doing in interesting and compelling ways will be really important. So the projects that I
have done so far, if you can spin them off saying that I played video games, but they are methodologies
to investigate human/computer attraction. That counts for a lot, that counts for a lot. Why
networking? Networking because the people you connect to will have resources and opportunities that
you can connect to next. So the way I landed Microsoft Research—I’m electrical engineer by
background—but I landed at Microsoft Research because I knew someone who knew someone who was
willing to have faith in what I had… what I could do. I’m… I don’t have the right training to do this sort of
stuff.
>>: I’ll just add to that, always be questioning things. So I don’t… I mean that in terms of a couple
dimensions. So, first off, to Sean’s point, if you’re going to be new to a company and not understanding
things, you might as well try and understand things as fast as possible. And it’s amazing what your
fellow employees can help you with in terms of saving you time and energy and effort. You know, do
the leg work beforehand so you can say, “Well, I—you know—I checked this and I checked this and I
checked this,” and if they don’t know the answer, then go figure it out yourself and then go tell them the
answer. So always be asking, “How can I make things better? How can I change the way things happen
around here? How can I improve life, not just for myself, but for my coworkers?” And that goes a long
way in terms of your career and your visibility, as we say here at Microsoft, or the—you know—people’s
impression of you and how much of an asset you are to the company. Taking that philosophy into your
life always helps you be evaluating things and asking, “How can I make things better for myself?” and
ultimately increasing your quality of life.
>>: This is a note… a very specific thing you can do that will do that, is if you get on boarded to a
company and you notice there are deficiencies in the training, like, you realize, “Hey, there is no
documentation for where this was.” And you start building up your own documentation, start sharing it,
that’s a really easy way to be a very positive force for your team and it will help you and it’ll help
everyone after you.
>> Vijay Narasimhan: I’m gonna inject, like, this is, like completely different ‘cause we skewed down a
very, like, work-oriented path and this is not a piece of advice I got in this forum, but—you know—we
talked earlier about, like, there’s a lot of opportunities that come up and they involve some risk and
that’s true. I think, I don’t know there’s, like, a few different ways of putting this advice, but like, the
one that my sister phrased it is like, she said to me, “Vijay, people are human beings.” And I said, “That
is, like, really, like, powerful advice,” and I’ll give the context as to why it happened is that, as I
mentioned to some of you, I was supposed to start Cambridge in 2007 and I couldn’t. There was—you
know—my father was really ill, and every single piece of paper that I got from Cambridge, from the
Commonwealth Scholarship, etc… said, “You cannot defer,” like, “you can only decline. There’s no way
that you’re gonna get this...” like the chances of you getting it again are, like, slim, none, there won’t be
there. And then they do that sort of thing because they don’t want people, like, for whatever reason to
just, like, flippantly sort of cast something—you know—cast the opportunity aside and say, “Oh really,
actually no, I want to do it a year later,” or whatever. And I just called them and they’re like, “What are
you kidding me? Of course, yeah, just defer it for a year. That’s fine.” And then it was funny ‘cause,
like, I had psyched myself out and it was, like, three day before I was supposed to climb on a plane to
England and I didn’t—you know—I didn’t… I wasn’t confident enough in myself because I was, like, such
a rule follower—you know—my whole life and things… it said something on a piece of paper. And it
really was like a one… it seemed like a one-time opportunity to me and I had to sacrifice it against
something else, but there was no… it was false, it was a false dichotomy. There was no sacrifice to make
‘cause I took the year. I got involved in the solar industry—you know—later that year through an
internship that I was able to do. I made a new opportunity for myself. I walked into a building at my
University and saw a poster for the Fulbright scholarship; I would’ve never wound up in the U. S. had
that not happened. So some opportunities will close and some will open, but, yeah, people are human
beings and so opportunity will strike in your life and tragedy will strike in your life and there’s never a… I
don’t think that there’s, like, a reason that you have to trade one against the other and you don’t have
to psych yourself out so much that, like, bad stuff is gonna happen to you ‘cause you don’t seize every
opportunity that comes. For some reason you’re not ready, if for some reason, like, there’s something
else… and it could be a positive thing. You get two really awesome offers and you’re like, “Google will
never offer me a job again. Their acceptance rate is so low, but I also got admitted to this really cool
grad school and I don’t know which one to pick.” Pick one, and then—you know—I don’t know, like,
good things will happen later. Maybe it won’t be that opportunity, maybe it will be something else, but
things work out and don’t psych yourself out that never is never and people understand when you
decline or change your mind. So, powerful advice but I’m not always for academics or career-wise, but
keep it in mind.
>>: So, yeah. It’s difficult to follow that. [Laughter] He did a really good job. The one thing that I guess I
will say and this kind of piggy-backs on what Aakanksha was saying—you know—one thing that I’ve
learned kind of through osmosis from the I triple E, is that beyond—you know—beyond really just
working on your communication skills, a really valuable skill to build is the ability to communicate
effectively with people who don’t share your background. And—you know—especially in technology—
you know—it’s always very, like, it’s obvious that it is important to be able to communicate technol…
like—you know—clearly with other people who are working on the same problem as you. Because this
is a problem that we always face when we’re working on a group project or when we’re working on a
team in industry. But ultimately—you know—the people who advance into leadership roles—you
know—whether technical or business leadership or—you know—research leadership are the people
who are able to communicate their—you know—their message, their work clearly to audiences who
share a similar technical background or who don’t share a technical background at all, but understand
the market—you know—the market dynamic or the greater problem that they’re trying to solve. Yes,
that’s a really important skill—you know—I’ve had the pleasure of seeing some really incredible
speakers who—you know—kind of demonstrated this in action and it’s always just something to think
about—you know—if you’re writing a paper or if you’re putting a presentation together, you know,
“How would I explain this for a different audience?”
>>: I can tack something on to that which is that every op… there’s more… it’s not always a formal
opportunity; science communication, engineering communication, isn’t always a formal opportunity.
Like, I mean, to give you an example: Like I… yeah, okay I talk a lot, right? But like I… every opportunity I
have when someone asks me, “What do you do? I tend to just not stop at, “Oh I’m a material science
student.” I explain, like, not in gory detail, but I have my little elevator pitch about what it is that I’m
looking at and I have little analogies I can draw on and stuff. So when I was… you know, every plane ride
and you have that person next to you that asks you what you do, that’s an opportunity to practice
science communication. Every bus trip is an opportunity to practice science communication. Every time
you’re asked to speak to a class. When I was in under… just left my undergrad, I had—you know—was
putting together this sort of, like… I was working on this idea for a frequency agile antenna for mobile
systems as a result of some of the work I did in my undergrad. And I was working out at the gym and I
was in the locker room and someone asked me, “What do you do?” And I told them, and I told them
about this idea and, etc… And he said, “Well isn’t that funny, like, I run this grant program in the
government and—you know—we fund exactly this kind of thing. Why don’t you come into my office?”
And so, like, telling people about your ideas and about what you do is not, I mean sometimes it’s gonna
go over people’s head and sometimes not, but, like, seeing the way that you think is really valuable from
a public perspective, like, I think that just, like, the fact that we know about the scientific method, that
we know about how, like, how things work and being able to communicate that to people is really
important and, I don’t know if it’s a duty. I sort of can say… I mean, I’m Canadian so engineering and
duty are very, like, intertwined together in our ethos, but I think it’s really something that, like, we
should all try and do because we can learn things from other people and we have a responsibility I think
to educate them about the things that we do. And I think that every opportunity that you have to talk
to someone who doesn’t know what you’re doing, whether it’s a… well, I mean, here’s another funny
example—you know—on my first date with my wife, she asked, “What do you do? And she was a
cancer biology PhD student so she didn’t know about optical properties or nanostructures, but I went
into it for a good fifteen minutes. And she said, “Oh, well I think I saw this paper in Nature
Communications that looks like what you do,” and she sent it to me. And I thought, “Oh that’s a cool
idea.” And then based on that paper and other work that I had done, I have a patent pending, one
conference paper and then maybe another paper coming out, strictly based on that one conversation—
and I’m married, so. [Laughter] So there you go.
>>: It worked out pretty well for him.
>>: Yeah, so anyway.
>>: I think we had a question.
>>: [Indiscernible] and this one is more life related. And this was from our professor—you know him.
[Indiscernible] This is more life related because we talked a lot about career… this is…
>>: There’s an on switch.
>>: Oh there we go. Hello… hello. Okay, so you’re going to be making a lot of life decisions as you’re
graduating, as you’re trying to decide to go into industry, to go into academia. When you’re trying to
make these tough decisions—this is what I’ve been asking my professor as I sat in his office and tried to
figure out my life—he said, “Do what makes you the person you want to be in five years. Just ask
yourself, ‘Will this opportunity help me become the person I want to be in five years from now?’” You
can take this in any direction you want but it really helps figure things out.
>> Aakanksha Chowdhery: I can add on to that, just…don’t forget to live life in the whole area of trying
to figure out what’s an opportunity and what’s not. And Vijay already said that, but, live life today, live
in the present moment is the wise thing to say but it really helps to… if tomorrow were your last day,
have you lived today? Have you done things that you would have wanted to do? So take time out to
talk to your parents if you delay those calls forever.
>>: I think we had a question over there. Go ahead.
>>: So going back to what, like, Vijay said—you know—he thought that he knew that, like, what it said
on that paper was like—you know—you have to follow the rules. But you learned out, like, in life that if
you just make a call—you know—things might work out. Like—you know—I know like as young people,
a lot of people are like, “Oh yeah, those kids think they know everything.” What was something, like,
you thought you knew back in college that you have then found out that, like, “Wow, if I’d only really
known the truth about, like, how this situation worked, my life might have been better quicker or
different?”
>>: Hmm [Laugh]
>>: Aakanksha Chowdhery: I’ll rephrase that question to say yes to… if I’d really known in school that it
was okay to just live and not worry about every single exam and stress out like crazy about… I’m a
straight A grader all, like, grades A all through, so I would worry about every single exam and would
question, “Oh, oh my god, how will this exam go?” I’m being very honest here, so. “How will this
interview go?” Sometimes it’s okay to just believe in yourself and then go out there and see what
happens. And I think the only time I’ve become comfortable with that is… and being okay to accept
failure is after doing improv actually, because before that I was like, “Oh if I fail this, then this will
happen and then this will happen,” and in my thinking I would have created an entire castle of disasters
that may or may not happen. So, no one taught me in school, in fact I was taught by a school system
that I have to… if I have to succeed, I have to get everything right. And I don’t think I could have learned
in school but I wish I had.
>>: One thing that I’ll—you know—kind of go ahead and say and—you know—I’ll couch this with I have
a background in athletics and, yeah, it’s like… this is kind of like a core tenet of sports psychology is that
you always have to put the past out of mind—you know. And one of the things that—you know—I think
we all find ourselves struggling with at times and, yeah, it kind of gets into—you know—anxiety and
stress is—you know—we find ourselves a lot of the time stressing out about the past. And—you know—
this may be—you know—a missed opportunity or something that we didn’t do as well as we want. You
know, the thing is, as engineers, there is one thing that we know from control systems and it’s that,
reality is causal. Yeah, there’s nothing that we can do that will impact the past. And—you know—like,
this is kind of something that I’ve had as—you know—kind of the ray of light, the beam of guiding
knowledge over the past few years is that—you know—I can’t change the past, so the way that I’m
going to account—you know—the way that I’m going to deal with this is just whenever I realize that
there’s something I wish I hadn’t done in the past—you know—I just take that as knowledge and use it
to boost my knowledge moving forward and use it to add to my world view—you know—because we
can’t change the past, but we can impact the future.
>>: Yeah, go ahead.
>>: Yeah, I kind of want to expand on this question or your guys answers is, have you guys ever faced
major road blocks in your life and want to give up in your career and how did you guys get past that?
>>: So going back to actually my first internship at Microsoft when they handed me the stack of C# code
that I had never seen before, that was really frustrating because, for me, I went through an entire cycle
of, “Why am I here? You hired me as a hardware engineer and you’ve just thrown code at me. There
are people here, there are I know, hundreds of applicants—probably thousands of applicants that could
do this better than me, faster than me with a shorter on-ramp.” So, there are moments when you’re
gonna have moments of, “Couldn’t someone else do this job better?” But at the same time, as I said
before, that was kind of what they were looking for and I figured that out afterwards. So you’re gonna
have stressful times in your career. If you can find a way to learn from them or to figure out a ways to
work through them, people will recognize that and, as I would tell my intro students back when I was a
TA in college, “It’s okay to ask for help.” Most people want around you, especially if you’re on a team,
want you to succeed, they want the team to succeed. So if you are struggling, you don’t have to kind of
just suffer in silence because usually, as Stuart said, there’s someone on the team who could very easily
help you and that way you don’t have to spin your wheels.
>> Kristen MacCartney: I was thinking since it’s almost five thirty, they’re setting up dinner, you have to
indulge me just a little bit. I would really like to take the young alumni out, get a picture, have all of you
then come behind them or around them so for… because I would just really like to have everyone in this
group have that as a memento of what this is all about and that way you can track each other down.
Facebook is a little bit easier.
>>: And then we’ll be in your presentation [Indiscernible]
>>: [Laughs]
>> Kristen MacCartney: Are you okay with that? I mean most [Indiscernible] at least for a while, so you
continue the conversations but let’s just take a break, let’s move outside ‘cause it’s much better
[Indiscernible] in the fresh air
>>: Also, just a quick announcement to all of you, if any of you have resumes physically on you that you
want, like, Microsoft to take either for your own career or because you want to do an event, please give
them to me. If you don’t physically have your resume I can give you a card and you can email it to me
and I will pass it along and that way you have a contact to recruiting that can help you with on-campus
events.
>> Aakanksha Chowdhery: I’d also add that [Indiscernible] happy to put you in touch or volunteer as
speakers in your respective schools, so find the contacts through Kris and all of us young alumni are
happy to be useful resources. [Applause]