'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says
This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
Advice to young programmers
(This is the summary of speech Given by Alex Stepenov (Principal Scientist,
Adobe Systems) at Adobe India on 30 Nov 2004. )
1. Study , Study and Study
* Never ever think that you have acquired all or most of the knowledge
which exists in the world. Almost everybody in US at age of 14 and
everybody in India at age of 24 starts thinking that he has acquired all the
wisdom and knowledge that he needs. This should be strictly avoided.
*You should be habituated to studies...exactly in the same way as you are
habituated to brushing teeth and taking bath every morning. The habit of
study must become a ‘part of your blood’. And the study should be from
both the areas: CS, since it is your profession, and something from non-
CS...Something which doesnot relate to your work. This would expand
your knowledge in other field too. A regular study, everyday, is extremely
essential. It doesnot matter whether you study of 20 minutes of 2 hours,
but consistency is a must.
* You should always study basics and fundamentals. There is no point in
going for advanced topics. When I was at the age of 24, I wanted to do
PhD in program verification, though I was not able to understand anything
from that. The basic reason was that my fundamental concepts were not
clear. Studying ‘Algebraic Geometry’ is useless if you donot understand
basics in Algebra and Geometry. Also, you should always go back and reread
and re-iterate over the fundamental concepts.
What is the exact definition of ‘fundamental’? The stuff which is around
for a while and which forms basic part of the concepts can be regarded as
more fundamental. Of course, everybody understands what a fundamental
means.
*Here are few books which I would strongly recommend that every CS
professional should read and understand.
i. “Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs” by Albenson
and Sussman
I personally donot like the material present in this book and I do
have some objections about it but this is the best book I have ever
seen which explains all the concepts in programming in a clear and
excellent way.
This book is available online at http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/
ii. Introduction to Computer Architecture: by Hennessy and Patterson.
How many of you have shipped the programs by writing them in
assembly? A very good understanding of basics of how a
computer operates is what every CS professional must have.
H&P Wrote two books on CA. I am talking about their first book,
the introductory text for understanding basic aspects of how a
computer works.
Even if you feel that you know whatever is written in that book,
donot stop reading. It’s good to revise basics again and again.
iii. “Fundamentals of Programming” by Donald Knuth.
The core of CS is algorithms and Data structures. Every CS
professional must have the 3 volumes of Knuth’s Book on
programming. It really doesnot matter if you take 30 years of your
life to understand what Knuth has written, what is more important
is that you read atleast some part of that book everyday without fail.
iv. Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen, Leiserson and Rivest
This book should be read daily to keep your concepts fresh. This is
the best book for fundamental concepts in algorithms.
2. Learn Professional Ethics
* As a CS Professional, you are morally obliged to do a good job. What this
means is that you are supposed to do your job not for your manager but for
yourself. This is already told in Bhagwatgeeta : Doing duties of your life.
* The direct implication of this is: never ever write a bad code. You don’t
need to be fastest and run after shipping dates; rather you need to write
quality code. Never write junk code. Rewrite it till it is good. Thoroughly
test every piece of code that you write. Donot write codes which are “sort
of allright”. You might not achieve perfection, but atleast your code
should be of good quality.
* Let me quote my own example in this context. You might have heard
about STL, The Standard Template Library that ships in with C++
compilers. I wrote it 10 years ago, in 1994. While implementing one of the
routines in the STL, namely the “search routine”, I was a bit lazy and
instead of writing a good linear order implementation of KMP which was
difficult to code, I wrote a best quadratic implementation. I knew that I
could make the search faster by writing a linear-order implementation, but
I was lazy and I did not do that. And, after 10 years of my writing STL,
exactly the same implementation is still used inside STL and STL ships
with an inefficient quadratic implementation of search routine even
today!! You might ask me: why can’t you rewrite that? Well...I cannot,
because that code is no more my property!! Further, nobody today will be
interested in a standalone efficient STL ...people would prefer one which
automatically ships out with the compiler itself.
* Moral is, you should have aesthetic beauty built inside you. You should
“feel” uneasy on writing bad code and should be eager to rewrite the code
till it becomes upto the quality. And to the judge the quality, you need to
develop sense regarding which algorithms to use under what
circumstances.
3. Figure out your Goals
* Always aspire doing bigger things in life
* “Viewing promotion path as your career” is a completely wrong goal. If
you are really interested in studying and learning new things, never ever
aspire for being a manager. Managers cannot learn and study...they have
no time. “Company ladder aspiration” is not what should be important for
you.
* You might feel that you want to do certain things which you cannot do till
you become a manager. When you become a manager, you will soon
realize that now you just cannot do anything!
* You will have a great experience as programmers. But if you care for
people and love people, you will never enjoy being a manager...most good
managers are reluctant managers. If you see people as people, you cannot
survive at management level.
* Always aspire for professional greatness. Our profession is very beautiful
because we create abstract models and implement them in reality. There is
a big fun in doing that. We have a profession which allows us to do
creative things and even gives nice salary for that.
* The three biggest mistakes that people usually make are aiming for money,
aiming for promotion and aiming for fame. The moment you get some of
these, you aspire for some more...and then there is no end. I donot mean
that you shouldnot earn money, but you should understand how much
money would satisfy your needs. Bill Gates might be the richest person
in the world; he is certainly not the happiest. Our lives are far better than
his.
* Find your goal, and do best in the job that you have. Understand that what
is in your pocket doesnot matter...what is in your brain finally matters.
Money and fame donot matter. Knowledge matters.
4. Follow your culture
I have seen the tradition that whatever junk is created in US, it rapidly
spreads up in the rest of the world, and India is not an exception for this. This
cultural change creates a very strong impact on everybody’s life. Habits of
watching spicy Bollywood or Hollywood movies and listening to pop songs and
all such stupid stuff gets very easily cultivated in people of your age...but believe
me, there is nothing great in that. This all just makes you run away from your
culture. And there is no wisdom in running away from your culture. Indian culture,
which has great Vedas and stories like Mahabharata and Bhagwatgeeta is really
great and even Donald Knuth enjoys reading that. You should understand that
fundamental things in Indian culture teach you a lot and you should never forget
them.
Finally, I would like to conclude by saying that it’s your life...donot waste it on
stupid things...develop your tests, and start the fight.
Adobe Systems) at Adobe India on 30 Nov 2004. )
1. Study , Study and Study
* Never ever think that you have acquired all or most of the knowledge
which exists in the world. Almost everybody in US at age of 14 and
everybody in India at age of 24 starts thinking that he has acquired all the
wisdom and knowledge that he needs. This should be strictly avoided.
*You should be habituated to studies...exactly in the same way as you are
habituated to brushing teeth and taking bath every morning. The habit of
study must become a ‘part of your blood’. And the study should be from
both the areas: CS, since it is your profession, and something from non-
CS...Something which doesnot relate to your work. This would expand
your knowledge in other field too. A regular study, everyday, is extremely
essential. It doesnot matter whether you study of 20 minutes of 2 hours,
but consistency is a must.
* You should always study basics and fundamentals. There is no point in
going for advanced topics. When I was at the age of 24, I wanted to do
PhD in program verification, though I was not able to understand anything
from that. The basic reason was that my fundamental concepts were not
clear. Studying ‘Algebraic Geometry’ is useless if you donot understand
basics in Algebra and Geometry. Also, you should always go back and reread
and re-iterate over the fundamental concepts.
What is the exact definition of ‘fundamental’? The stuff which is around
for a while and which forms basic part of the concepts can be regarded as
more fundamental. Of course, everybody understands what a fundamental
means.
*Here are few books which I would strongly recommend that every CS
professional should read and understand.
i. “Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs” by Albenson
and Sussman
I personally donot like the material present in this book and I do
have some objections about it but this is the best book I have ever
seen which explains all the concepts in programming in a clear and
excellent way.
This book is available online at http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/
ii. Introduction to Computer Architecture: by Hennessy and Patterson.
How many of you have shipped the programs by writing them in
assembly? A very good understanding of basics of how a
computer operates is what every CS professional must have.
H&P Wrote two books on CA. I am talking about their first book,
the introductory text for understanding basic aspects of how a
computer works.
Even if you feel that you know whatever is written in that book,
donot stop reading. It’s good to revise basics again and again.
iii. “Fundamentals of Programming” by Donald Knuth.
The core of CS is algorithms and Data structures. Every CS
professional must have the 3 volumes of Knuth’s Book on
programming. It really doesnot matter if you take 30 years of your
life to understand what Knuth has written, what is more important
is that you read atleast some part of that book everyday without fail.
iv. Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen, Leiserson and Rivest
This book should be read daily to keep your concepts fresh. This is
the best book for fundamental concepts in algorithms.
2. Learn Professional Ethics
* As a CS Professional, you are morally obliged to do a good job. What this
means is that you are supposed to do your job not for your manager but for
yourself. This is already told in Bhagwatgeeta : Doing duties of your life.
* The direct implication of this is: never ever write a bad code. You don’t
need to be fastest and run after shipping dates; rather you need to write
quality code. Never write junk code. Rewrite it till it is good. Thoroughly
test every piece of code that you write. Donot write codes which are “sort
of allright”. You might not achieve perfection, but atleast your code
should be of good quality.
* Let me quote my own example in this context. You might have heard
about STL, The Standard Template Library that ships in with C++
compilers. I wrote it 10 years ago, in 1994. While implementing one of the
routines in the STL, namely the “search routine”, I was a bit lazy and
instead of writing a good linear order implementation of KMP which was
difficult to code, I wrote a best quadratic implementation. I knew that I
could make the search faster by writing a linear-order implementation, but
I was lazy and I did not do that. And, after 10 years of my writing STL,
exactly the same implementation is still used inside STL and STL ships
with an inefficient quadratic implementation of search routine even
today!! You might ask me: why can’t you rewrite that? Well...I cannot,
because that code is no more my property!! Further, nobody today will be
interested in a standalone efficient STL ...people would prefer one which
automatically ships out with the compiler itself.
* Moral is, you should have aesthetic beauty built inside you. You should
“feel” uneasy on writing bad code and should be eager to rewrite the code
till it becomes upto the quality. And to the judge the quality, you need to
develop sense regarding which algorithms to use under what
circumstances.
3. Figure out your Goals
* Always aspire doing bigger things in life
* “Viewing promotion path as your career” is a completely wrong goal. If
you are really interested in studying and learning new things, never ever
aspire for being a manager. Managers cannot learn and study...they have
no time. “Company ladder aspiration” is not what should be important for
you.
* You might feel that you want to do certain things which you cannot do till
you become a manager. When you become a manager, you will soon
realize that now you just cannot do anything!
* You will have a great experience as programmers. But if you care for
people and love people, you will never enjoy being a manager...most good
managers are reluctant managers. If you see people as people, you cannot
survive at management level.
* Always aspire for professional greatness. Our profession is very beautiful
because we create abstract models and implement them in reality. There is
a big fun in doing that. We have a profession which allows us to do
creative things and even gives nice salary for that.
* The three biggest mistakes that people usually make are aiming for money,
aiming for promotion and aiming for fame. The moment you get some of
these, you aspire for some more...and then there is no end. I donot mean
that you shouldnot earn money, but you should understand how much
money would satisfy your needs. Bill Gates might be the richest person
in the world; he is certainly not the happiest. Our lives are far better than
his.
* Find your goal, and do best in the job that you have. Understand that what
is in your pocket doesnot matter...what is in your brain finally matters.
Money and fame donot matter. Knowledge matters.
4. Follow your culture
I have seen the tradition that whatever junk is created in US, it rapidly
spreads up in the rest of the world, and India is not an exception for this. This
cultural change creates a very strong impact on everybody’s life. Habits of
watching spicy Bollywood or Hollywood movies and listening to pop songs and
all such stupid stuff gets very easily cultivated in people of your age...but believe
me, there is nothing great in that. This all just makes you run away from your
culture. And there is no wisdom in running away from your culture. Indian culture,
which has great Vedas and stories like Mahabharata and Bhagwatgeeta is really
great and even Donald Knuth enjoys reading that. You should understand that
fundamental things in Indian culture teach you a lot and you should never forget
them.
Finally, I would like to conclude by saying that it’s your life...donot waste it on
stupid things...develop your tests, and start the fight.
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