Konsistensi yang bodoh adalah kumpulan dari pikiran-pikiran pendek, yang dikagumi oleh orang-orang yang berkuasa, filsuf, dan orang-orang suci. –Ralph Waldo Emerson
REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA – Mona Simpson, saudara perempuan Steve Jobs, membacakan kidung pepujian untuk pendiri Apple dalam upacara penghormatan jenazah sang investor besar itu pada 16 Oktober lalu di Universitas Stanford. Mona Simpson adalah juga novelis dan profesor pada Universitas California di Los Angeles (UCLA).
“Sebelum ini aku menunggu seorang pria untuk dicintai, orang yang mencintaiku. Selama berdekade-dekade, aku kira orang itu adalah ayahku. Saat aku berusia 25 tahun, aku bertemu dengan pria itu dan dia ternyata abangku,” kata Simpson seperti dikutip Hollywood Reporter.
Saat itu (tepatnya tahun 1985), Simpson tinggal di New York, tengah menulis novel pertamanya dan bekerja untuk sebuah majalah beroplah kecil. Manakala seorang pengacara memberitahu dia bahwa mereka telah menemukan abangnya, Simpson dan koleganya menduga setengah bercanda bahwa pastilah pria itu John Travolta.
“Diam-diam aku berharap orang itu adalah penyair keturunan sastrawan Henry James, orang yang lebih berbakat dariku, orang brilian bahkan tanpa berbuat apa-apa,” katanya.
Lalu mereka berdua bertemu. Berjalan bersama dan ternyata keduanya suka bekerja. “Saya tak ingat semua yang kami bincangkan di hari pertama (bertemu), yang kuingat dia itu bagai seorang teman. Dia menerangkan bahwa dia bekerja dengan komputer,” kenang Simpson.
Simpson mengatakan ada beberapa hal yang dia pelajari dari Jobs. “Steve mengerjakan apa yang dicintainya. Dia bekerja keras sekali. Setiap hari. … Dia kebalikan dari seorang perenung,” katanya. “Dia tak pernah malu bekerja keras, sekalipun hasilnya kegagalan,” ungkapnya.
Simpson juga mengenang masa di mana pertama kali Jobs ditendang dari Apple. “Dia bilang padaku soal satu acara makan malam di mana 500 pemimpin Lembah Silicon bertemu dengan presiden (AS). Steve tidak diundang,” kata Simpson. “Dia sakit hati tapi dia kemudian tetap bekerja. Setiap hari,” tuturnya.
Simpson juga menyebut Jobs “sangat loyal” dan bahwa dia akan membeli 10 sampai 100 pakaian yang ia suka. Dia mengungkapkan filosofi Jobs tentang estetika: “Fesyen adalah apa yang kini kelihatan indah tapi tampak buruk kemudian, sebalikanya seni bisa buruk di kali pertama tapi menjadi indah di kemudian waktu.”
Simpson juga mengenang ketakjuban Jobs pada cinta. “Kapan pun dia melihat pria yang dipikirnya pasti wanita menganggapnya tampan, maka dia menyapanya, ‘Hey Anda lajang ya? Maukah Anda makan malam dengan adikku?”
Simpson juga mengenang betapa Jobs adalah ayah ideal untuk anak-anaknya. Dan kendati dia sukses di umur yang amat muda, Simpson berkata “dia merasa prestasi itu mengurungnya.”
Simpson mencatat sikap normal Jobs yang bertahan meski dia menghasilkan jutaan dolar AS, seperti menjemputnya dari bandara dengan memakai celana jeans.
Saudara perempuan Jobs ini juga mengenang masa-masa saat keluarga Jobs menata ulang dapurnya yang disebutnya menyita setengah waktu yang diperlukan untuk menuntaskan pembangunan gedung Pixar.
Simpson mengungkapkan bahwa Jobs pernah berkata bahwa jika dia tumbuh lain, maka dia mungkin akan menjadi ahli matematika dan mempelajari lukisan-lukisan Mark Rothko . Lalu kanker yang diderita Jobs dengan cepat merenggut hidup sang inventor.
“Pada akhirnya, bahkan kesenangan biasa pun, seperi buah persik nan ranum, tak lagi menariknya,” kata Simpson. Perempuan ini bercerita tentang saat Jobs belajar mengenai bagaimana menyusuri lagi hidup setelah transplantasi hatinya, dengan kursi roda. Jobs menggaji 67 suster berbeda sebelum menemukan tiga diantaranya yang bersamanya sampai dia meninggal.
Tetap saja Jobs terus menelurkan ide untuk produk-produk potensialnya. “Yang aku pelajari dari kematian abangku adalah bahwa karakter itu sangat penting: Manusia mati meninggalkan nama. Selasa pagi, dia menyuruhku untuk bergegas ke Palo Alto.
Nada suaranya penuh kasih sayang, sayang, cinta, tapi seperti seseorang yang kopornya telah dikemas ke dalam mobil, yang telah siap di awal perjalanan, meskipun dia menyampaikan beribu-ribu maaf, akan meninggalkan kita semua,” kata Simpson mengenai hari terakhir Steve Jobs.
“Ini yang aku pelajari: dia sukses untuk hal itu juga. Kematian tidak menimpa Steve, dia hanya mencapainya,” kata Simpson mengenang pembicaraan telepon dirinya dengan Jobs Selasa beberapa waktu lalu. Di situ, Jobs mengiba pada Simpson untuk pergi ke rumah sakit Palo Alto di mana dia dirawat.
“Dia bilang padaku, saat dia mengungkapkan kata perpisahan dan memuntahkan kata maaf begitu rupa, bahwa kami tidak bisa hidup sampai tua bersama-sama sebagaimana dia selalu rancangkan, bahwa dia akan pergi ke sebuah tempat yang lebih baik,” tuturnya.
Seluruh anggota keluarganya berada di sisi tempat tidurnya pada jam-jam terakhir kehidupannya. Dokter memberi Jobs kesempatan hidup 50-50 malam itu. Sebelum Jobs menyampaikan kata-kata terakhirnya, dia pandangi adik perempuan yang lain, Patty, lalu lama menatap anak-anaknya sendiri, kemudian partner hidupnya, Laurene, sampai semua yang hadir di situ.
Lalu, apa kata-kata terakhir Jobs? “Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow,” kenang Simpson.
Siapa sih yang gak kenal Bill gates, yang jelas Bill Gates nya aja gak kenal sama Anda…he..
Tapi bill gates punya wasiat untuk Anda atau siapa aja. Kalo diterapkan pasti bagus, siapa tahu anda jadi the Next Bill gates atau lebih sukses darinya. Inilah wasiatnya, baca, simak, dan terapkan…
1. Hidup itu tak adil, biasakan dirimu.
2. Dunia tak perduli dengan bagaimana engkau menganggap dirimu. Dunia mengharapkan engkau menyelesaikan sesuatu SEBELUM engkau merasa hebat.
3. Engkau tak akan mendapatkan gaji $ 60.000 setahun begitu lulus SMA. Engkau tak akan menjadi wakil Dirut dengan Handphone terbaru hingga engkau meraih keduanya.
4. Kalau kau pikir gurumu keras, tunggulah saat kau dapat majikan.
5. Menyalib di tikungan bukan tindakan tak sopan. Kakekmu mengatakan itu sebagai kesempatan
6. Kalau kamu gagal, itu bukan karena kesalahan orang tuamu, jadi jangan alihkan kesalahan, belajarlah dari kesalahan.
7. Sebelum engkau dilahirkan, orang tuamu tak se-bete sekarang. Mereka menjadi begitu karena memikirkan biayamu, cuci pakaianmu, dan mendengarkan ocehanmu tentang betapa cakepnya kamu, menurut dirimu. Jadi sebelum engkau ingin menyelamatkan dunia, cobalah mulai membersihkan toiletmu sendiri.
8. Sekolahmu mungkin sudah menghapuskan ranking juara atau pecundang, tapi hidup tidak begitu.
9. Hidup ini tak dibagi dalam semester. Engkau tak akan mendapatkan libur musim panas dan hanya segelintir orang yang akan mau membantumu meningkatkan diri. Atur waktumu untuk itu.
10. Televisi bukanlah hidup yang sesungguhnya. Dalam kehidupan sesungguhnya orang harus meninggalkan cafe dan pergi kerja.
11. Baik-baik dengan kutu buku. Siapa tahu engkau harus bekerja untuk mereka.
Microsoft chairman Bill Gates delivers the Commencement address
at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
President Bok, former President Rudenstine, incoming President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, parents, and especially, the graduates:
I’ve been waiting more than 30 years to say this: “Dad, I always told you I’d come back and get my degree.”
I want to thank Harvard for this timely honor. I’ll be changing my job next year … and it will be nice to finally have a college degree on my résumé.
I applaud the graduates today for taking a much more direct route to your degrees. For my part, I’m just happy that the Crimson has called me “Harvard’s most successful dropout.” I guess that makes me valedictorian of my own special class … I did the best of everyone who failed.
But I also want to be recognized as the guy who got Steve Ballmer to drop out of business school. I’m a bad influence. That’s why I was invited to speak at your graduation. If I had spoken at your orientation, fewer of you might be here today.
Harvard was just a phenomenal experience for me. Academic life was fascinating. I used to sit in on lots of classes I hadn’t even signed up for. And dorm life was terrific. I lived up at Radcliffe, in Currier House. There were always lots of people in my dorm room late at night discussing things, because everyone knew I didn’t worry about getting up in the morning. That’s how I came to be the leader of the antisocial group. We clung to each other as a way of validating our rejection of all those social people.
Radcliffe was a great place to live. There were more women up there, and most of the guys were science-math types. That combination offered me the best odds, if you know what I mean. This is where I learned the sad lesson that improving your odds doesn’t guarantee success.
One of my biggest memories of Harvard came in January 1975, when I made a call from Currier House to a company in Albuquerque that had begun making the world’s first personal computers. I offered to sell them software.
I worried that they would realize I was just a student in a dorm and hang up on me. Instead they said: “We’re not quite ready, come see us in a month,” which was a good thing, because we hadn’t written the software yet. From that moment, I worked day and night on this little extra credit project that marked the end of my college education and the beginning of a remarkable journey with Microsoft.
What I remember above all about Harvard was being in the midst of so much energy and intelligence. It could be exhilarating, intimidating, sometimes even discouraging, but always challenging. It was an amazing privilege – and though I left early, I was transformed by my years at Harvard, the friendships I made, and the ideas I worked on.
But taking a serious look back … I do have one big regret.
I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world – the appalling disparities of health, and wealth, and opportunity that condemn millions of people to lives of despair.
I learned a lot here at Harvard about new ideas in economics and politics. I got great exposure to the advances being made in the sciences.
But humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries – but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity – reducing inequity is the highest human achievement.
I left campus knowing little about the millions of young people cheated out of educational opportunities here in this country. And I knew nothing about the millions of people living in unspeakable poverty and disease in developing countries.
It took me decades to find out.
You graduates came to Harvard at a different time. You know more about the world’s inequities than the classes that came before. In your years here, I hope you’ve had a chance to think about how – in this age of accelerating technology – we can finally take on these inequities, and we can solve them.
Imagine, just for the sake of discussion, that you had a few hours a week and a few dollars a month to donate to a cause – and you wanted to spend that time and money where it would have the greatest impact in saving and improving lives. Where would you spend it?
For Melinda and for me, the challenge is the same: how can we do the most good for the greatest number with the resources we have.
During our discussions on this question, Melinda and I read an article about the millions of children who were dying every year in poor countries from diseases that we had long ago made harmless in this country. Measles, malaria, pneumonia, hepatitis B, yellow fever. One disease I had never even heard of, rotavirus, was killing half a million kids each year – none of them in the United States.
We were shocked. We had just assumed that if millions of children were dying and they could be saved, the world would make it a priority to discover and deliver the medicines to save them. But it did not. For under a dollar, there were interventions that could save lives that just weren’t being delivered.
If you believe that every life has equal value, it’s revolting to learn that some lives are seen as worth saving and others are not. We said to ourselves: “This can’t be true. But if it is true, it deserves to be the priority of our giving.”
So we began our work in the same way anyone here would begin it. We asked: “How could the world let these children die?”
The answer is simple, and harsh. The market did not reward saving the lives of these children, and governments did not subsidize it. So the children died because their mothers and their fathers had no power in the market and no voice in the system.
But you and I have both.
We can make market forces work better for the poor if we can develop a more creative capitalism – if we can stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or at least make a living, serving people who are suffering from the worst inequities. We also can press governments around the world to spend taxpayer money in ways that better reflect the values of the people who pay the taxes.
If we can find approaches that meet the needs of the poor in ways that generate profits for business and votes for politicians, we will have found a sustainable way to reduce inequity in the world. This task is open-ended. It can never be finished. But a conscious effort to answer this challenge will change the world.
I am optimistic that we can do this, but I talk to skeptics who claim there is no hope. They say: “Inequity has been with us since the beginning, and will be with us till the end – because people just … don’t … care.” I completely disagree.
I believe we have more caring than we know what to do with.
All of us here in this Yard, at one time or another, have seen human tragedies that broke our hearts, and yet we did nothing – not because we didn’t care, but because we didn’t know what to do. If we had known how to help, we would have acted.
The barrier to change is not too little caring; it is too much complexity.
To turn caring into action, we need to see a problem, see a solution, and see the impact. But complexity blocks all three steps.
Even with the advent of the Internet and 24-hour news, it is still a complex enterprise to get people to truly see the problems. When an airplane crashes, officials immediately call a press conference. They promise to investigate, determine the cause, and prevent similar crashes in the future.
But if the officials were brutally honest, they would say: “Of all the people in the world who died today from preventable causes, one half of one percent of them were on this plane. We’re determined to do everything possible to solve the problem that took the lives of the one half of one percent.”
The bigger problem is not the plane crash, but the millions of preventable deaths.
We don’t read much about these deaths. The media covers what’s new – and millions of people dying is nothing new. So it stays in the background, where it’s easier to ignore. But even when we do see it or read about it, it’s difficult to keep our eyes on the problem. It’s hard to look at suffering if the situation is so complex that we don’t know how to help. And so we look away.
If we can really see a problem, which is the first step, we come to the second step: cutting through the complexity to find a solution.
Finding solutions is essential if we want to make the most of our caring. If we have clear and proven answers anytime an organization or individual asks “How can I help?,” then we can get action – and we can make sure that none of the caring in the world is wasted. But complexity makes it hard to mark a path of action for everyone who cares — and that makes it hard for their caring to matter.
Cutting through complexity to find a solution runs through four predictable stages: determine a goal, find the highest-leverage approach, discover the ideal technology for that approach, and in the meantime, make the smartest application of the technology that you already have — whether it’s something sophisticated, like a drug, or something simpler, like a bednet.
The AIDS epidemic offers an example. The broad goal, of course, is to end the disease. The highest-leverage approach is prevention. The ideal technology would be a vaccine that gives lifetime immunity with a single dose. So governments, drug companies, and foundations fund vaccine research. But their work is likely to take more than a decade, so in the meantime, we have to work with what we have in hand – and the best prevention approach we have now is getting people to avoid risky behavior.
Pursuing that goal starts the four-step cycle again. This is the pattern. The crucial thing is to never stop thinking and working – and never do what we did with malaria and tuberculosis in the 20th century – which is to surrender to complexity and quit.
The final step – after seeing the problem and finding an approach – is to measure the impact of your work and share your successes and failures so that others learn from your efforts.
You have to have the statistics, of course. You have to be able to show that a program is vaccinating millions more children. You have to be able to show a decline in the number of children dying from these diseases. This is essential not just to improve the program, but also to help draw more investment from business and government.
But if you want to inspire people to participate, you have to show more than numbers; you have to convey the human impact of the work – so people can feel what saving a life means to the families affected.
I remember going to Davos some years back and sitting on a global health panel that was discussing ways to save millions of lives. Millions! Think of the thrill of saving just one person’s life – then multiply that by millions. … Yet this was the most boring panel I’ve ever been on – ever. So boring even I couldn’t bear it.
What made that experience especially striking was that I had just come from an event where we were introducing version 13 of some piece of software, and we had people jumping and shouting with excitement. I love getting people excited about software – but why can’t we generate even more excitement for saving lives?
You can’t get people excited unless you can help them see and feel the impact. And how you do that – is a complex question.
Still, I’m optimistic. Yes, inequity has been with us forever, but the new tools we have to cut through complexity have not been with us forever. They are new – they can help us make the most of our caring – and that’s why the future can be different from the past.
The defining and ongoing innovations of this age – biotechnology, the computer, the Internet – give us a chance we’ve never had before to end extreme poverty and end death from preventable disease.
Sixty years ago, George Marshall came to this commencement and announced a plan to assist the nations of post-war Europe. He said: “I think one difficulty is that the problem is one of such enormous complexity that the very mass of facts presented to the public by press and radio make it exceedingly difficult for the man in the street to reach a clear appraisement of the situation. It is virtually impossible at this distance to grasp at all the real significance of the situation.”
Thirty years after Marshall made his address, as my class graduated without me, technology was emerging that would make the world smaller, more open, more visible, less distant.
The emergence of low-cost personal computers gave rise to a powerful network that has transformed opportunities for learning and communicating.
The magical thing about this network is not just that it collapses distance and makes everyone your neighbor. It also dramatically increases the number of brilliant minds we can have working together on the same problem – and that scales up the rate of innovation to a staggering degree.
At the same time, for every person in the world who has access to this technology, five people don’t. That means many creative minds are left out of this discussion — smart people with practical intelligence and relevant experience who don’t have the technology to hone their talents or contribute their ideas to the world.
We need as many people as possible to have access to this technology, because these advances are triggering a revolution in what human beings can do for one another. They are making it possible not just for national governments, but for universities, corporations, smaller organizations, and even individuals to see problems, see approaches, and measure the impact of their efforts to address the hunger, poverty, and desperation George Marshall spoke of 60 years ago.
Members of the Harvard Family: Here in the Yard is one of the great collections of intellectual talent in the world.
What for?
There is no question that the faculty, the alumni, the students, and the benefactors of Harvard have used their power to improve the lives of people here and around the world. But can we do more? Can Harvard dedicate its intellect to improving the lives of people who will never even hear its name?
Let me make a request of the deans and the professors – the intellectual leaders here at Harvard: As you hire new faculty, award tenure, review curriculum, and determine degree requirements, please ask yourselves:
Should our best minds be dedicated to solving our biggest problems?
Should Harvard encourage its faculty to take on the world’s worst inequities? Should Harvard students learn about the depth of global poverty … the prevalence of world hunger … the scarcity of clean water …the girls kept out of school … the children who die from diseases we can cure?
Should the world’s most privileged people learn about the lives of the world’s least privileged?
These are not rhetorical questions – you will answer with your policies.
My mother, who was filled with pride the day I was admitted here – never stopped pressing me to do more for others. A few days before my wedding, she hosted a bridal event, at which she read aloud a letter about marriage that she had written to Melinda. My mother was very ill with cancer at the time, but she saw one more opportunity to deliver her message, and at the close of the letter she said: “From those to whom much is given, much is expected.”
When you consider what those of us here in this Yard have been given – in talent, privilege, and opportunity – there is almost no limit to what the world has a right to expect from us.
In line with the promise of this age, I want to exhort each of the graduates here to take on an issue – a complex problem, a deep inequity, and become a specialist on it. If you make it the focus of your career, that would be phenomenal. But you don’t have to do that to make an impact. For a few hours every week, you can use the growing power of the Internet to get informed, find others with the same interests, see the barriers, and find ways to cut through them.
Don’t let complexity stop you. Be activists. Take on the big inequities. It will be one of the great experiences of your lives.
You graduates are coming of age in an amazing time. As you leave Harvard, you have technology that members of my class never had. You have awareness of global inequity, which we did not have. And with that awareness, you likely also have an informed conscience that will torment you if you abandon these people whose lives you could change with very little effort. You have more than we had; you must start sooner, and carry on longer.
Knowing what you know, how could you not?
And I hope you will come back here to Harvard 30 years from now and reflect on what you have done with your talent and your energy. I hope you will judge yourselves not on your professional accomplishments alone, but also on how well you have addressed the world’s deepest inequities … on how well you treated people a world away who have nothing in common with you but their humanity.
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, it’s 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 returned 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 it’s 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 others’ 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.
Saya merasa bangga di tengah-tengah Anda sekarang, yang akan segera lulus dari salah satu universitas terbaik di dunia. Saya tidak pernah selesai kuliah. Sejujurnya, baru saat inilah saya merasakan suasana wisuda. Hari ini saya akan menyampaikan tiga cerita pengalaman hidup saya. Ya, tidak perlu banyak. Cukup tiga.
Cerita Pertama: Menghubungkan Titik-Titik
Saya drop out (DO) dari Reed College setelah semester pertama, namun saya tetap berkutat di situ sampai 18 bulan kemudian, sebelum betul-betul putus kuliah. Mengapa saya DO? Kisahnya dimulai sebelum saya lahir. Ibu kandung saya adalah mahasiswi belia yang hamil karena “kecelakaan” dan memberikan saya kepada seseorang untuk diadopsi.
Dia bertekad bahwa saya harus diadopsi oleh keluarga sarjana, maka saya pun diperjanjikan untuk dipungut anak semenjak lahir oleh seorang pengacara dan istrinya. Sialnya, begitu saya lahir, tiba-tiba mereka berubah pikiran bayi perempuan karena ingin. Maka orang tua saya sekarang, yang ada di daftar urut berikutnya, mendapatkan telepon larut malam dari seseorang: “kami punya bayi laki-laki yang batal dipungut; apakah Anda berminat? Mereka menjawab:“Tentu saja.” Ibu kandung saya lalu mengetahui bahwa ibu angkat saya tidak pernah lulus kuliah dan ayah angkat saya bahkan tidak tamat SMA. Dia menolak menandatangani perjanjian adopsi. Sikapnya baru melunak beberapa bulan kemudian, setelah orang tua saya berjanji akan menyekolahkan saya sampai perguruan tinggi.
Dan, 17 tahun kemudian saya betul-betul kuliah. Namun, dengan naifnya saya memilih universitas yang hampir sama mahalnya dengan Stanford, sehingga seluruh tabungan orang tua saya yang hanya pegawai rendah habis untuk biaya kuliah. Setelah enam bulan, saya tidak melihat manfaatnya. Saya tidak tahu apa yang harus saya lakukan dalam hidup saya dan bagaimana kuliah akan membantu saya menemukannya. Saya sudah menghabiskan seluruh tabungan yang dikumpulkan orang tua saya seumur hidup mereka. Maka, saya pun memutuskan berhenti kuliah, yakin bahwa itu yang terbaik. Saat itu rasanya menakutkan, namun sekarang saya menganggapnya sebagai keputusan terbaik yang pernah saya ambil.
Begitu DO, saya langsung berhenti mengambil kelas wajib yang tidak saya minati dan mulai mengikuti perkuliahan yang saya sukai. Masa-masa itu tidak selalu menyenangkan. Saya tidak punya kamar kos sehingga nebeng tidur di lantai kamar teman-teman saya. Saya mengembalikan botol Coca-Cola agar dapat pengembalian 5 sen untuk membeli makanan. Saya berjalan 7 mil melintasi kota setiap Minggu malam untuk mendapat makanan enak di biara Hare Krishna. Saya menikmatinya. Dan banyak yang saya temui saat itu karena mengikuti rasa ingin tahu dan intuisi, ternyata kemudian sangat berharga. Saya beri Anda satu contoh:
Reed College mungkin waktu itu adalah yang terbaik di AS dalam hal kaligrafi. Di seluruh penjuru kampus, setiap poster, label, dan petunjuk ditulis tangan dengan sangat indahnya. Karena sudah DO, saya tidak harus mengikuti perkuliahan normal. Saya memutuskan mengikuti kelas kaligrafi guna mempelajarinya. Saya belajar jenis-jenis huruf serif dan san serif, membuat variasi spasi antar kombinasi kata dan kiat membuat tipografi yang hebat. Semua itu merupakan kombinasi cita rasa keindahan, sejarah dan seni yang tidak dapat ditangkap melalui sains. Sangat menakjubkan.
Saat itu sama sekali tidak terlihat manfaat kaligrafi bagi kehidupan saya. Namun sepuluh tahun kemudian, ketika kami mendisain komputer Macintosh yang pertama, ilmu itu sangat bermanfaat. Mac adalah komputer pertama yang bertipografi cantik. Seandainya saya tidak DO dan mengambil kelas kaligrafi, Mac tidak akan memiliki sedemikian banyak huruf yang beragam bentuk dan proporsinya. Dan karena Windows menjiplak Mac, maka tidak ada PC yang seperti itu. Sekali lagi, Andaikata saya tidak DO, saya tidak berkesempatan mengambil kelas kaligrafi, dan PC tidak memiliki tipografi yang indah. Tentu saja, tidak mungkin merangkai cerita seperti itu sewaktu saya masih kuliah. Namun, sepuluh tahun kemudian segala sesuatunya menjadi gamblang. Sekali lagi, Anda tidak akan dapat merangkai titik dengan melihat ke depan; Anda hanya bisa melakukannya dengan merenung ke belakang. Jadi, Anda harus percaya bahwa titik-titik Anda bagaimana pun akan terangkai di masa mendatang. Anda harus percaya dengan intuisi,takdir, jalan hidup, karma Anda, atau istilah apa pun lainnya. Pendekatan ini efektif dan membuat banyak perbedaan dalam kehidupan saya.
Cerita Kedua Saya: Cinta dan Kehilangan.
Saya beruntung karena tahu apa yang saya sukai sejak masih muda. Woz (Steve Wozniak) dan saya mengawali Apple di garasi orang tua saya ketika saya berumur 20 tahun. Kami bekerja keras dan dalam 10 tahun Apple berkembang dari hanya kami berdua menjadi perusahaan 2 milyar dolar dengan 4000 karyawan. Kami baru meluncurkan produk terbaik kami-Macintosh- satu tahun sebelumnya, dan saya baru menginjak usia 30. Dan saya dipecat. Loh,, bagaimana mungkin Anda dipecat oleh perusahaan yang Anda dirikan? tapi memang itulah yang terjadi. Seiring pertumbuhan Apple, kami merekrut orang yang saya pikir sangat berkompeten untuk menjalankan perusahaan bersama saya. Dalam satu tahun pertama,semua berjalan lancar. Namun, kemudian muncul perbedaan dalam visi kami mengenai masa depan dan kami sulit disatukan. Komisaris ternyata berpihak padanya. Demikianlah, di usia 30 saya tertendang. Bisa anda bayangkan kerja keras bertahun-tahun membangun kerajaan berakhir dengan anda berada di depan gerbangnya.
Beritanya ada di mana-mana. Apa yang menjadi fokus sepanjang masa dewasa saya, tiba-tiba sirna. Sungguh menyakitkan. Dalam beberapa bulan kemudian, saya tidak tahu apa yang harus saya lakukan. Saya merasa telah mengecewakan banyak wirausahawan generasi sebelumnya -saya gagal mengambil kesempatan. Saya bertemu dengan David Packard dan Bob Noyce dan meminta maaf atas keterpurukan saya. Saya menjadi tokoh publik yang gagal, dan bahkan berpikir untuk lari dari Silicon Valley. Namun, sedikit demi sedikit semangat timbul kembali- saya masih menyukai pekerjaan saya. Apa yang terjadi di Apple sedikit pun tidak mengubah saya. Saya telah ditolak, namun saya tetap cinta. Maka, saya putuskan untuk mulai lagi dari awal. Waktu itu saya tidak melihatnya, namun belakangan baru saya sadari bahwa dipecat dari Apple adalah kejadian terbaik yang menimpa saya. Beban berat sebagai orang sukses tergantikan oleh keleluasaan sebagai pemula, segala sesuatunya lebih tidak jelas. Hal itu mengantarkan saya pada periode paling kreatif dalam hidup saya.
Dalam lima tahun berikutnya, saya mendirikan perusahaan bernama NeXT, lalu Pixar, dan jatuh cinta dengan wanita istimewa yang kemudian menjadi istri saya. Pixar bertumbuh menjadi perusahaan yang menciptakan film animasi komputer pertama, Toy Story, dan sekarang merupakan studio animasi paling sukses di dunia. Melalui rangkaian peristiwa yang menakjubkan, Apple membeli NeXT, dan saya kembali lagi ke Apple, dan teknologi yang kami kembangkan di NeXT menjadi jantung bagi kebangkitan kembali Apple. Dan, Laurene dan saya memiliki keluarga yang luar biasa. Saya yakin takdir di atas tidak terjadi bila saya tidak dipecat dari Apple. Obatnya memang pahit, namun sebagai pasien saya memerlukannya. Kadangkala kehidupan menimpuk batu ke kepala Anda. Jangan kehilangan kepercayaan. Saya yakin bahwa satu-satunya yang membuat saya terus berusaha adalah karena saya menyukai apa yang saya lakukan. Anda harus menemukan apa yang Anda sukai. Itu berlaku baik untuk pekerjaan maupun asangan hidup Anda. Pekerjaan Anda akan menghabiskan sebagian besar hidup Anda, dan kepuasan sejati hanya dapat diraih dengan mengerjakan sesuatu yang hebat. Dan Anda hanya bisa hebat bila mengerjakan apa yang Anda sukai. Bila Anda belum menemukannya, teruslah mencari. Jangan menyerah. Hati Anda akan mengatakan bila Anda telah menemukannya. Sebagaimana halnya dengan hubungan hebat lainnya, semakin lama-semakin mesra Anda dengannya. Jadi, teruslah mencari sampai ketemu. Jangan berhenti.
Cerita Ketiga Saya: Kematian
Ketika saya berumur 17, saya membaca ungkapan yang kurang lebih berbunyi: “Bila kamu menjalani hidup seolah-olah hari itu adalah hari terakhirmu, maka suatu hari kamu akan benar.” Ungkapan itu membekas dalam diri saya, dan semenjak saat itu, selama 33 tahun terakhir, saya selalu melihat ke cermin setiap pagi dan bertanya kepada diri sendiri: “Bila ini adalah hari terakhir saya, apakah saya tetap melakukan apa yang akan saya lakukan hari ini?” Bila jawabannya selalu “tidak” dalam beberapa hari berturut-turut, saya tahu saya harus berubah. Mengingat bahwa saya akan segera mati adalah kiat penting yang saya temukan untuk membantu membuat keputusan besar. Karena hampir segala sesuatu-semua harapan eksternal, kebanggaan, takut malu atau gagal-tidak lagi bermanfaat saat menghadapi kematian. Hanya yang hakiki yang tetap ada. Mengingat kematian adalah cara terbaik yang saya tahu untuk menghindari jebakan berpikir bahwa Anda akan kehilangan sesuatu. Anda tidak memiliki apa-apa. Sama sekali tidak ada alasan untuk tidak mengikuti kata hati Anda.
Sekitar setahun yang lalu saya didiagnosis mengidap kanker. Saya menjalani scan pukul 7:30 pagi dan hasilnya jelas menunjukkan saya memiliki tumor pankreas. Saya bahkan tidak tahu apa itu pankreas. Para dokter mengatakan kepada saya bahwa hampir pasti jenisnya adalah yang tidak dapat diobati. Harapan hidup saya tidak lebih dari 3-6 bulan. Dokter menyarankan saya pulang ke rumah dan membereskan segala sesuatunya, yang merupakan sinyal dokter agar saya bersiap mati. Artinya, Anda harus menyampaikan kepada anak Anda dalam beberapa menit segala hal yang Anda rencanakan dalam sepuluh tahun mendatang. Artinya, memastikan bahwa segalanya diatur agar mudah bagi keluarga Anda. Artinya, Anda harus mengucapkan selamat tinggal. Sepanjang hari itu saya menjalani hidup berdasarkan diagnosis tersebut. Malam harinya, mereka memasukkan endoskopi ke tenggorokan, lalu ke perut dan lambung, memasukkan jarum ke pankreas saya dan mengambil beberapa sel tumor. Saya dibius, namun istri saya, yang ada di sana, mengatakan bahwa ketika melihat selnya di bawah mikroskop, para dokter menangis mengetahui bahwa jenisnya adalah kanker pankreas yang sangat jarang, namun bisa diatasi dengan operasi. Saya dioperasi dan sehat sampai sekarang. Itu adalah rekor terdekat saya dengan kematian dan berharap terus begitu hingga beberapa dekade lagi.
Setelah melalui pengalaman tersebut, sekarang saya bisa katakan dengan yakin kepada Anda bahwa menurut konsep pikiran, kematian adalah hal yang berguna: Tidak ada orang yang ingin mati. Bahkan orang yang ingin masuk surga pun tidak ingin mati dulu untuk mencapainya. Namun, kematian pasti menghampiri kita. Tidak ada yang bisa mengelak. Dan, memang harus demikian, karena kematian adalah buah terbaik dari kehidupan. Kematian membuat hidup berputar. Dengannya maka yang tua menyingkir untuk digantikan yang muda. Maaf bila terlalu dramatis menyampaikannya, namun memang begitu.
Waktu Anda terbatas, jadi jangan sia-siakan dengan menjalani hidup orang lain. Jangan terperangkap dengan dogma-yaitu hidup bersandar pada hasil pemikiran orang lain. Jangan biarkan omongan orang menulikan Anda sehingga tidak mendengar kata hati Anda. Dan yang terpenting, miliki keberanian untuk mengikuti kata hati dan intuisi Anda, maka Anda pun akan sampai pada apa yang Anda inginkan. Semua hal lainnya hanya nomor dua.
Ketika saya masih muda, ada satu penerbitan hebat yang bernama “The Whole Earth Catalog“, yang menjadi salah satu buku pintar generasi saya. Buku itu diciptakan oleh seorang bernama Stewart Brand yang tinggal tidak jauh dari sini di Menlo Park, dan dia membuatnya sedemikian menarik dengan sentuhan puitisnya. Waktu itu akhir 1960-an, sebelum era komputer dan desktop publishing, jadi semuanya dibuat dengan mesin tik, gunting, dan kamera polaroid. Mungkin seperti Google dalam bentuk kertas, 35 tahun sebelum kelahiran Google: isinya padat dengan tips-tips ideal dan ungkapan-ungkapan hebat. Stewart dan timnya sempat menerbitkan beberapa edisi “The Whole Earth Catalog”, dan ketika mencapai titik ajalnya, mereka membuat edisi terakhir. Saat itu pertengahan 1970-an dan saya masih seusia Anda. Di sampul belakang edisi terakhir itu ada satu foto jalan pedesaan di pagi hari, jenis yang mungkin Anda lalui jika suka bertualang.
Di bawahnya ada kata-kata: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” Itulah pesan perpisahan yang dibubuhi tanda tangan mereka. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. Saya selalu mengharapkan diri saya begitu. Dan sekarang, karena Anda akan lulus untuk memulai kehidupan baru, saya harapkan Anda juga begitu. Always Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Ingatan bahwa saya akan segera mati adalah perangkat paling penting yang pernah saya gunakan untuk membantu saya membuat pilihan-pilihan besar dalam hidup ini. Karena hampir semua hal-harapan, harga diri, rasa takut atau malu akan kegagalan-akan rontok jika berhadapan dengan kematian, dan hanya menyisakan apa yg benar-benar penting. Ingatan bahwa anda akan mati adalah cara terbaik yg saya ketahui untuk terhindar dari jerat pemikiran bahwa anda akan merugi. Anda sudah tak berdaya. Tak ada alasan untuk tidak mengikuti suara hati anda.
jika anda menjalani hari-hari anda bagaikan hari terakhir anda, suatu hari anda menyadari bahwa tindakan anda benar.
Waktu anda terbatas, jadi jangan membuang-buangnya dengan menjalani hidup sebagai orang lain. Jangan terjebak oleh dogma-menjalani hidup berdasarkan hasil pemikiran orang lain. Jangan biarkan pendapat orang lain menenggelamkan suara hati anda sendiri. Dan yang paling penting, jangan takut untuk mengikuti intuisi anda. Intuisi anda sudah tahu apa yang benar-benar anda inginkan. Yang lainnya tidak begitu penting.
Satu-satunya cara untuk bekerja dengan sangat baik adalah dengan mencintai apa yg anda kerjakan. Jika anda belum menemukannya, teruslah mencari. Jangan berhenti. Sebagaimana halnya masalah-masalah yg berhubungan dengan suara hati anda, anda akan tahu kapan anda menemukannya.
Dan pada akhir pidatonya, Steve Jobs memberi sebuah kutipan yg dia ambil dari majalah : “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish” Klo boleh gw mengartikan: dalam hidup ini kita jangan cepat merasa puas, dan terus belajar akan segala hal, kita dituntut untuk terus “lapar” dan “bodoh”.
Bulan Desember 2009 lalu, waktu saya diterima di Stanford, admission officer yang baca aplikasi saya kirim email yang bilang, “Stanford will provide you with even more wonderful opportunities to explore your passion in computer science – and what better place than in Silicon Valley?“ Setelah menyelesaikan 1 academic year di sini, Stanford dan Silicon Valleyturn out to be what I expected, and more. Kalau 6 bulan lalu saya menulis tentang Stanford, sekarang saya pengen share tentang Silicon Valley, lingkungan yang nggak terpisahkan dari the Stanford experience.
Saya sering denger effort untuk recreate Silicon Valley di negara lain. Waktu saya kembali ke Indonesia tahun lalu, saya datang ke sebuah pembukaan kompleks yang cita-citanya mau membangun Silicon Valley di Indonesia – tapi yang ada di sana cuma peresmian bangunan kosong. Silicon Valley lebih dari sekedar bangunan, perusahaan, universitas – ada antusiasme di sini, idealisme, kultur. Banyak hal-hal yang you have to be here to feel .
Yup, so ini beberapa share sedikit experience dan observasi saya tentang SV selama setahun ini….
You’re not here to seek answers – you’re here to learn to ask the right questions. Itu salah satu kata-kata pertama yang saya denger di Stanford. Ketika kita puas dengan pertanyaan yang sekarang ada, kita berhenti berinovasi atau mem–push boundaries. Ketika Peter Thiel, salah satu venture capitalist paling influential di Silicon Valley, bicara di Stanford tahun lalu, beliau bilang kalau web sudah nyaris terlalu pekat di US dan dia sekarang lebih excited untuk hal-hal baru yang bakal take over in the future: genetik/bioteknologi, solar cell, artificial intelligence. Saya honestly think that kemampuan komunitas di Silicon Valley untuk terus mendorong boundaries dan nggak settle dengan permasalahan yang masa kini lah yang bikin komunitas ini nggak cuma terus berkembang, tapi juga ada di depan dan nggak ngekor.
Entrepreneurs yang saya ketemu mostly sangat idealis – dalam arti: mereka mikir tentang masalah yang mau diselesaiin first, ciptain sesuatu yang solve itu, dan mikir tentang monetisasi belakangan. Ini mungkin karena saya masih di universitas, di mana orang-orangnya belum punya tanggungan keluarga – tapi mereka bikin bikin product, bikin startup karena itu sesuatu yang mereka senang lakukan dan karena startup itu solve a problem they want to be solved. Waktu ditanya gimana mereka menghasilkan pendapatan, cofounder Color (startup yang bikin heboh SV karena diinvest besar-besaran sama Sequoia) bilang, “Who cares?” dan lanjut bilang kalau prioritas mereka first and foremost adalah untuk build a good product. Waktu saya baru masuk Stanford dan ngobrol sama senior-senior, saya impressed banget denger mantan Facebook interns bilang kalau mereka suka magang di Facebook karena, “everyone genuinely wants to connect the world better. Everyone thinks that there are still a lot of work that can be done, and we are not nearly there yet.” Terdengar klise – tapi ketika jawaban kayak gitu disebut oleh beberapa orang yang berbeda, saya jadi percaya kalau itu genuinely true. Waktu ikut Intern Day di Facebook, saya juga dapet impresi yang sama: orang-orang di sini memang work untuk suatu tujuan dan idealisme yang baik.
startups are kings di sini. geeks are cool. orang-orang yang working on startups adalah the ‘cool people’ dibandingkan mereka yang work di perusahaan besar. those who fail are highly regarded, terutama kalo masih di universitas. waktu tau kalau bakal magang di Facebook, banyak juga yang komentar in the line of “great, but you should be interning at startup next year!” I think ini suatu mindset shift dibandingkan mindset general people (dan saya juga) di Indonesia. they also just shut up, sit and code. dan bikin product. ada hacker culture yang just do it (ato just start up, in this case) – lebih baik keluarin product yang nggak sempurna daripada nggak act sama sekali… motto Facebook yang saya sering banget denger adlaah “move fast and break things” – waktu Intern Day, ada yang bilang kalo selama internship ini, kami *mungkin* bakal bikin Facebook crash. nggak sedikit juga full-time developers yang pernah bikin down Facebook. that happens and that’s ok. move fast and break things. mereka juga gak peduli what you wear or what time you go to the office – they care whether you get the job done.
Yang mungkin paling signifikan, lingkungan SV super connected – nggak cuma antar perusahaan, tapi juga dalam relasi dengan universitas. Saya baru bener-bener ngeh tentang ini sejak saya mulai organize events untuk ACM, organisasi Computer Science chapter Stanford.. Quarter lalu saya bantu organize acara Tech Talk, acara 2 minggu sekali di mana orang-orang industri atau Stanford students bicara di depan komunitas Computer Science di Stanford tentang kerjaan / research / hack baru mereka. Kalau sebelumnya saya cuma dateng ke talk-talk orang Silicon Valley, sekarang saya berhubungan langsung untuk ngundang mereka. Dan ternyata – wow, mereka bener2 gampang untuk di-reach. Color, walau udah kaya (dengan investment 41 juta dollar), ngirim eksekutifnya, cofounder sama chief officer. Mereka juga masih on-hand ngurus langsung info session mereka di Stanford, yang kami juga organize. Begitu berhubungan dengan 1 company / orang, mereka refer kami ke temen mereka di startup atau research facilities lain. the network just keeps on going. Dan tentu aja, awesome people are all around di sini. Salah satu highlight quarter ini adalah ketemu Marissa Mayer, Google VP yang juga salah satu perempuan paling influential di Silicon Valley, orang yang saya highly respect. Di sisi lain, di dorm saya juga ada sesama freshman yang working on multiple startups. Di sekitar orang-orang ini, di atas langit selalu ada langit.
On a casual note, menarik banget kalo inget bahwa orang-orang yang casual dinner bareng kamu ternyata punya andil dalam produksi barang-barang yang kamu pake. Dari lingkungan orang Indonesia aja, ada temen yang ngerjain iPhone sama MacBook. ada dari LinkedIn. ada yang ikut bikin algoritma News Feed di Facebook. saya ketemu kakak saya hampir tiap bulan, tapi saya baru tau kalau dia selama ini ngerjain SandyBridge untuk Mac (dan jadi sering brag kalo dia bikin FaceTime di Mac possible). Di pembicaraan lunch (yang aneh), 3 orang temen berspekulasi kapan MacBook Pro terbaru bakal keluar – sementara di sebelah mereka ada 2 orang Apple yang under Non-Disclosure Agreement, yang cuma senyum-senyum rese. Very random, tapi saya selalu find very amusing – hal-hal kecil yang bikin saya inget (dan thankful!) kalau saya sekarang ada di Silicon Valley.
Last but not least, tentang recruiting – karena ini proses cari-kerja pertama saya, pengalaman ini sangat eye-opening- stressful, tapi akhirnya sangat rewarding.
Yang sangat eye-opening adalah bahwa di sini kebutuhan itu dua arah. Kata salah satu professor saya, referring ke career fair yang lagi berlangsung: “They’re here to woo you.“ Bukan cuma applicants yang butuh cari kerja, tapi companies juga butuh cari good employees / interns. Terutama di Stanford di mana kebanyakan students punya banyak pilihan, juga untuk bikin company sendiri. Ini perubahan mindset yang gila banget. Di awal proses recruiting ini saya cukup pesimis bisa dapet kerjaan baru – after all, saya anak bawang, anak tingkat satu, yang pengalaman web programmingnya relatif sedikit dibandingkan kebanyakan orang lain – saya merasa butuh kerjaan dan company nggak butuh saya. Tapi the way companies treat applicants bikin saya sadar kalau hubungan ini memang dua arah. Interview nggak cuma tempat company menguji applicant, tapi juga sebaliknya. Setelah proses interview selesai dan offer diextend, ada proses negosiasi salary. waktu applicants nolak offernya, company kadang-kadang masih berusaha persuade lebih lanjut. Kaget aja bisa merasain first-hand hubungan dua-arah kayak gini begitu cepet.
Kebutuhan dua arah ini mengarah ke banyaknya perks (nilai tambah) di setiap company IT di sini. Facebook punya cafetaria (dengan chef) di mana makan pagi, siang, malam gratis. (And the cafetaria’s good – really, really good. kayak restoran top) Ada laundry dan dry-cleaning gratis. Di Amazon, ada banyak giftcard Amazon. Microsoft terkenal loyal sama intern-internnya, dengan banyak freebie. Apartemen intern Microsoft lengkap sama Xbox, Kinect dan produk-produk baru Microsoft. Google, tentunya, punya gym, cafetaria gratis, laundry, dan banyak lagi. Hampir semua punya game room. Perusahaan di sini berlomba-lomba jadi tempat kerja paling hip. Ini juga berlaku selama proses recruiting. Microsoft nerbangin semua applicant tahap akhir dari seluruh US ke Seattle (headquarter Microsoft terletak di Redmond, sekitar 40 menit dari Seattle) di mana mereka ditaroh di hotel bintang 4/5 selama 2 malem (kamar 2 ranjang besar, padahal cuma buat 1 orang!). Facebook nerbangin semua siswa yang dapet offer internship ke Palo Alto untuk Intern Day, di mana mereka explain tentang life at Facebook, engineering at Facebook, dan tentu aja kenapa Facebook is a great place to work. Perusahaan IT kecil yang bergerak di paid search management, Marin Software di San Francisco, jemput applicants dari Stanford pake limousine untuk final interview. Talent waris really here. Saya pernah nyebut nama perusahaan saingan waktu nolak offer suatu perusahaan, dan nada suara si recruiter berubah drastis. Dan ini nggak cuma sekali atau cuma di satu perusahaan…
Tentang sumber informasi kerja: Career fair diadain at least sekali tiap quarter, bisa sampai > 100 employer. Ada career fair khusus Computer Science, dan ada juga career fair khusus startup. Information session di mana individual company dateng dan ngomong, ada hampir setiap hari di recruiting season – ini cuma di bidang Computer Science aja. Banyak companies yang ngadain interviews onsite, di Stanford. Selain onsite interview ini, kebanyakan interview sama startup lewat telepon – biasanya ada 3/4 phone interview sebelum diundang ke office mereka untuk final interview. Recruiting process ini mostly berlalu sangat, sangat cepat – hari ini interview, 2 hari lagi udah dapet result interviewnya. Pengecualian adalah Google, yang super lama (2 bulan sebelum dapet result).
Recruiting dan pendidikan IT di sini sangat language-agnostic, atau nggak menyamakan ‘skill as programmer’ dengan ‘penguasaan bahasa’. Kelas-kelas memang diajarkan di bahasa tertentu, tapi di kelas yang bukan pemula, kita diekspek untuk mempelajari bahasa itu sendiri. Fokus ditekankan di algoritma yang baru, cara penyelesaian yang baru. Sama halnya dengan recruiting. Rasanya dibandingkan applicant lain, pengalaman web programming saya termasuk minim. Tapi ternyata, selama interview2 dengan perusahaan2, interviewernya selalu membebaskan saya memilih bahasa apapun. Waktu saya tanya tentang masalah bahasa ini sama interviewer dari Facebook (karena denger2 Facebook banyak pake bahasa aneh2), dia bilang, “kalau kamu bisa pass interview kami, kita yakin kok kalau kamu bisa quickly catch up dengan whatever language we use.” Senior saya di ACM (yang cukup beken di lingkungan SV) waktu ditanya bahasa apa yang sebaiknya dipelajari duluan, bilang kalau buat dia, lebih penting untuk cari project yang pengen kita kerjain, terus pick and learn on demand bahasa yang perlu buat mewujudkan itu.
Material interviewnya itu sendiri bikin saya sangat, sangat bersyukur pernah lama di Tim Olimpiade Komputer Indonesia (TOKI). Kebiasaan coding kertas dan coding papan tulis sambil ngomong bener2 membantu. Apalagi, pertanyaan2 Amazon dan Facebook sangat TOKI-like (algoritma dan logika) yang nyaman buat saya. Microsoft sangat design-oriented (design class, atau design remote control atau semacamnya), Google agak random (kadang algoritma, kadang design, kadang general). Tingkat kesulitan soal-soal algoritma yang sampe sekarang pernah saya dapet di interviews kira-kira se-TopCoder Div 1 easy-medium. Interview algoritma tersulit datang dari imo.im, startup web instant messenger, yang anggotanya banyak dari kompetisi pemrograman. Tapi, secara general, interview dengan Google is a very humbling experience, ngingetin kalo there’s just a lot to learn. 2 konversasi yang particularly menarik selama interviews: sama product manager Bing tentang feud Bing-Google beberapa bulan lalu, dan sama engineer Facebook tentang the Social Network.
Terakhir, kemaren sempet ditanya company apa yang punya image bagus di SV – I’d say Facebook dan Google masih tempat idaman utama, tapi Palantir Technologies terkenal punya interview process paling ketat (dan banyak senior2 khatam yang masuk sana).
Yup, that’s it! Banyak yang mungkin remeh, tapi dalam beberapa tahun ke depan, ketika saya sudah take lingkungan ini for granted, saya pengen bisa look back, inget tentang antusiasme tahun pertama ini, dan inget untuk be thankful. Waktu interview udah jadi ‘rutin’, pengen look back dan inget ke-stres-an interview pertama dan hepinya waktu dapet offer pertama bulan Desember lalu. Mungkin observasi tahun pertama ini kelewat idealis, mari nanti tahun-tahun depan saya evaluasi lagi =p Well, on a side note, melihat pekatnya kompetisi web startup di sini, jadi sadar kalau ada bener2 banyak opportunities di Indo sih. Pengguna internet yang banyak dan early adopters in nature, tapi relatif sedikit web startup…
Anyway, saya akan kerja di Facebook selama 3 bulan summer ini. Mudah-mudahan bakal jadi good experience!
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