Questionable Advice from One Very Lucky Berkeley Engineer
Craig Federighi, ( B.S. ’91 EECS, M.S. ’93 CS) senior vice president, software engineering, Apple, Inc.
a ‘View from the Top’ conversation with Dean Tsu-Jae King Liu on Nov. 21, 2019, in Banatao Auditorium at UC Berkeley.
Tsu-Jae King Liu - Intro
Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to today's View from the Top event. My name is Tsu-Jae King Liu, I'm the Dean of the College of Engineering here, and it's my pleasure to host this seminar speaker series, which brings leaders from business, and technology, and the arts to Berkeley, so that our community can hear and learn from them.
Today, we have our special guest, Craig Federighi, from Apple. He's the Senior Vice President for Software Engineering. But before proceeding further, to talk about Craig, I wanted to acknowledge today's student organization, which is co-hosting the event, the Society for Women Engineers. So thank you, very much.
I'd also like to welcome members of the Dean Society, who have taken time out of their busy schedules, to join us here today, welcome.
All right, so let me turn back to Craig Federighi, our speaker.
We are proud to note, oh, it's not on the slide here, that he received his Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences here.
And, afterwards, pursued and received his Master of Science Degree in Computer Science.
So he's a proud, a Berkeley Engineer!
We're really proud to have him join us here, to share his personal journey with us.
After Craig graduated, he became a, you know, he was already an accomplished software engineer.
He took on a lot of positions at companies in the Silicon Valley, including Oracle, and NeXT computer, and Apple, he's been at Apple, he's taken multiple tours at Apple, and, you know, moving up the ranks. Today he's, he leads all of the software engineering for the operating systems for your iPhones, for your iPads, and for the Mac computers. So it's a really, the significant role, he reports directly to the CEO, Tim Cook.
I first met Craig this spring, and just to reconnect with him, to tell him about the great things we're doing here at Berkeley Engineering.
And we talked about his experience as a student here, and also, his experience as a leader in the industry. And he really had a lot of thoughtful comments and perspectives about engineering education.
And so, this is why I was really delighted that he agreed to come and share his wisdom with us today.
I think he calls it questionable advice, but I think you'll join me in, you know, welcoming him to wholeheartedly share his personal journey with us, so that we can learn from his experience, and his advice.
So, please, join me in welcoming Craig to the stage.
Craig Federighi
Hi. I'm Craig, I'll introduce myself, I guess, a little bit, then I'll... Oh, again? I'll start by saying hello.
So, who am I? My name is Craig Federighi, in fact. My name sort of looks like an encryption code you get handed out of your, when you're trying to decrypt your disk, or something. It's pronounced roughly like this, Feh Der REE GEE. If you forget it, you can say fettuccine. When I was kind of a persecuted freshman in high school, some people would call me fettuccine, I guess. I was okay with that.
So why am I here? This is a great mystery for me. I think if you, I mean, Berkeley... Well, in an existential sense it's a huge mystery. If you look around Berkeley, there are just incredible people. In fact, if you look to your left, and you look to your right, and probably look at your own hand, there are people more interesting and deserving to being on the stage than me. But, here I am.
Why am I here? Here we are, what are we gonna do about this? So I've gotten a question that it think has given me a reason to understand why at least I was asked to be here. Recently, in the cafeteria at work, a new college grad who just joined the company came up to me and he asked "How can I become you?" Now, needless to say, that's a pretty disturbing question. I thought my wife might have some issues with it. I wasn't exactly sure what it would mean to me personally when that occurred. But I think what he really meant was, how can I get your job? And I'd be happy working for this young fellow, he seemed pretty nice. So he's really looking for career advice, he's looking for insights. I guess he was looking for wisdom. In truth, despite my years of going through this journey, I have none of these things to offer you today. I can offer my story, and let you derive whatever wisdom from it you can, so we'll get started. Now, unfortunately, my recollection of my past is quite hazy. But I did do a little bit of research. You're not, like, live blogging, or something there, are you? I did do some research, and uncovered a little bit of historical evidence. And so, let's start at the start.
How did I get here? Well, as best I can tell, it started about 13.8 billion years ago. There was an event, it was called the Big Bang. Apparently, stars formed, decayed, exploded, and eventually, on this planet, about 50,000 years ago, our species ventured forth out of Africa and into Western Europe. From there, about 121 years ago, my genetic material migrated and coalesced on this point. I began then a 40-year lifetime migration. This is actually my life's migratory path. I know what you're saying, wild, wild stuff! This guy's been an adventurer. That's right. And, in fact, how did I get here? In truth, it wasn't a 90 minute drive this morning. Like an aged salmon heading upstream, I rode up through the river of my life up to here. Presumably, this afternoon I will come here, I'm here to pass on to the next generation, and then, I guess, that presumably I'll find my way back further east and it'll all end for me there. A few more details that might add a little color to my story. Let's start at the start, this is allegedly me. I was born in San Leandro many, you know, it's pretty close, just across, just down 580. When I was 10 years old, I got a cool shirt, for one. My interest back then, I was really into skiing. I also was into basketball. In fact, I was pretty sure I was gonna be Dr. J. He was my idol, and I was gonna join the NBA. Now, it did not work out. What did happen, is there was an afterschool program, and my mom said, "Hey, son, maybe the NBA is not gonna be "your thing, you should do this computer class. "There are these things called computers, "and they're bringing some Apple IIs around after school, "you should do that." And I said, "Mom, only posers are into computers." Just people who want to seem cool, they go and they do the computer thing. But, I went, and, it was a mind-blowing event. In fact, there were several hours of like trying to draw pictures by, you know, plotting lines, and I thought, this is dumb. But, then, there was a moment at the very end where they had us write this program. How old are you? Input A. Print "In 10 years you will be"; A+10. And my mind exploded! I mean, it was, that was it, I was like this, I know exactly the future now. And I am gonna be part of it, it's all about computers. I kid you not. I started, I'd had a little nugget of life savings. It wasn't enough to buy a computer, so I started doing housework, and doing weeding, and I was doing all these chores, because I was gonna buy a computer. And, eventually, I did, I bought a TRS-80 Color Computer. Look it up, 6809 processor, decent thing. I couldn't afford an Apple at the time. But, I worked, I got jobs, did little odd jobs doing programming after I taught myself some things. Eventually, I was able to afford an Apple. And then, finally, in 1984, the Mac came out, and I was able to experience the Mac. And it was at that moment, bringing together, really, the humanities and computer science in this way that previously I couldn't fully imagine that it all really connected for me. And I decided at that time that someday I would work for Apple. I think I was in junior high at the time. After this, I went to Berkeley. So that was awesome, I brought another Mac with me. Eventually, there were more Macs. And then, in 1988, I think it was, Steve Jobs had since left Apple, and he had introduced the NeXT machine in San Francisco. And he came to Berkeley, to kind of give a reperformance of the launch of the Mac. There was no YouTube then, I wasn't gonna be able to see that launch online. But he came to the PSL, and he kind of redid the whole launch of the product, and showed off the NeXTcube. For me, this was just an absolute revelation, I thought it was just incredible. And so, I decided, no, I'm not gonna work for Apple, I'm gonna work for NeXT. So that was my future. In the meantime, coming to Berkeley, of course, I had to fit in. So I got an electric guitar, that was totally key. That's really the only explanation for this! Because, now, why? So the bandanna was actually necessary for studying, to keep my hair out of my eyes. If we pan down, you'd see, actually, the circuit board, where in CS150 we were building a digital answering machine, with all these wires connecting it, and that's what I was working on, apparently, with my sunglasses on. Totally unclear. Just for posterity, here's my senior year Berkeley dining card. So that was good stuff. I was a very, generally, a pretty shy, socially awkward person, so this whole look was pretty key, because, I could walk down the street and people would just clear to the other side. Which says something to Berkeley, right, that people were like, I don't want to be anywhere near whatever craziness is going on there. So I was at Berkeley, it was a fantastic educational experience for me. After being so into computers, and programming from really age 10 on, when I got to Berkeley, it was like, this is everything I want to know. Every class I was like, I want to learn more about that, I want to learn more about that, so incredibly exciting. And not just the computer science classes. I mean, taking philosophy classes, and political science classes, and business classes, I mean, all of this was just incredibly eye-opening for me. When I wrapped up, you know, most students their senior year were thinking, what are they gonna do with themselves? I had completely neglected to keep track of the fact that I was about to graduate and needed a job. And, fortunately, there was a company there was an incredibly aggressive recruiter. And since I'd done nothing to try to seek a job, I accepted their offer, and headed down to Oracle. But, the key for me was, throughout my late high school and college years, I thought the next thing I'm gonna do after I graduate, is a gotta spend a winter skiing. I headed out west to Colorado and spent the winter doing this kind of stuff. But, the key was, I brought my NeXT computer with me and actually worked remotely from a little cabin. It was like a little ski monk thing, you'd ski in the morning, and then come back and code in the afternoon. But, interestingly, I did some of the most, I guess, kind of inventive work at the time, in my time, in this weird, this weird environment. So sometimes inspiration comes in strange places. I headed back, and ended up coming up back to Berkeley for graduate school, in '92, to seek a Master's. I brought my NeXT computer with me. I did all my classes there, and just, through a modem uploaded all my stuff to the school systems. Grad school was great. But after that, I was actually able to fulfill my goal, and got to join NeXT. And then a strange thing happened, because, you know, I was young, I thought I'd be at Apple, but then I decided I wanted to be at NeXT. And then I show up at NeXT, and then we get acquired by Apple. Back at Apple again. But this was a fantastic period for me. There were so many different problems to work on and, you know, a lot of things I didn't anticipate working on, I got to learn about. And some of that led to something called WebObjects, it was like a, really, a declarative user interface kind of environment for building web services. I did that for awhile. But, then, the whole B2B, eCommerce, you all know about the dotcom crash. Before that happened, there was the dotcom bubble, and I got to participate in that. I worked for a company called Ariba. By then, I was a management type, I guess, or partly. Did a lot of coding, but, my job was CTO. Now, this is a good gig, if you can get it. It was... I did platform architecture, kind of UI and App design, product strategy, I was sort of the demo guy. So this, this was good times. But, most importantly, in this period of my life, I defied all expectations and met a woman. My wife! Who agreed to marry me. So this was fantastic! Strangely, after that, this thing started to happen where these kids started to show up. We never quite figured out why this was happening. But, eventually, it did stop after we made four of them, so, there's that. And it became a little bit overwhelming, and so, after having done a little bit of the CTO kind of semi-executive thing, I actually decided to take a couple years and return to being a individual contributor engineer, and did a bunch of open source stuff. If you go to AribaWeb.org, you can probably still see the website I left there over a decade ago. But that, that engineering writing code is still, you know, kind of my favorite thing to do in my spare time, and it felt great to return to doing that. But after that period, I returned to, or, yeah, finally came back to Apple. It was really kind of home for me, and, apparently, I'm gonna die there. I started with, started with MacOS, and then went on to, to do iOS, as well. And it's been an incredible opportunity and journey for me there. So what can we learn from all of this? A few possible lessons. One that's very clear is don't move! Wherever you're born, stay there and wait for the industry that you need to erupt right around you. And then just seek employment there. The second lesson, heavy metal! I mean, it's very clear that that is a key element of growth. And neglect looking for a job. If any of you were planning on looking for a job, set that aside. Ski, very important. And also, pick one haircut in the 80s and just stick with it. That was just, it was absolutely, I haven't changed my instructions to the barber ever since. So, seriously, there are a few things I'd observe. I don't know if these are important, or essential, but they are some things that I think seem to be important to me. How can I get your job? Well, in truth, the key part is, first, we'll go with seven easy steps, first step is don't want my job. I didn't want my job. You know, maybe you shouldn't either. I think the most important thing to do, is to focus on doing what you love. If you're worried about where you're going, where this all will take you, if you're too focused on the destination, I think you'll miss the journey. When you do what you love, it turns out that the things you do in your spare time, like on my time, if I have a moment on the weekend, I'm gonna be reading things about programming, I'm gonna be reading things about software, or artificial intelligence, because that's what I love! So it's like, if you do something you love, it's like cheating, because, all of your, your recreational time actually turns into time that helps you develop in your career. That part is super-important. Second, work with people whose work you admire. I think the thing about me being drawn to NeXT, was I saw this product back in '88, that I said this is, it just spoke to me, this is an incredible piece of work. I need to be, I need to see what it's like to be among the people who can do that kind of thing. And so, I just, I felt magnetically drawn to be among the people who did this kind of work that I really appreciated, and to learn from them. And that gets me to number three, which is pay attention. It's amazing, in life, one of my kids, actually, said to me the other day, they said, "You know, I figured out a secret. "Like, in class, "pay attention." I thought, wow! Because, they're like, "All the other kids "are not paying any attention. "And we have to sit there anyway. "Imagine how much you could learn, if you paid attention." During life, I mean, you are, through your working life, through your school life, you're surrounded with all of these opportunities to learn. And not just in your field, not just in the thing that you think you're studying, but all those things peripheral to the field you're studying. There's so many fascinating things to learn. And, for me, I carried around a notebook paper and a pencil, and was just taking notes all the time. People thought I was like a wandering reporter, or spy, or something, because I was just constantly jotting things down. Because there's just so many interesting things. And if you're making use of the time to suck 'em all in, if you're curious, it really helps. Number four, and this is kind of related, never stop acting like the new one on the team. When you first join a team... For those of you have done internships, you know, you get to have that moment when you first get a job, you show up and no one expects you to know anything. And so, you get to ask the stupid questions. You get to say, oh, I don't know anything about that. Can you tell me about that, why did we do that? I've never stopped being that person. That's such a valuable moment to say, it's okay if I don't know everything. I can have questions. And, if you do, it turns out, some of those questions are questions that team probably should have been asking themselves, and wasn't. And so, if you're asking, you might get some answers that everybody needs to hear. But, also, it's that permission to just be learning, and learning, and learning. Because, it's not just about being narrow and being, wanting to be secure in one little area, every adjacency is an area to explore. And the way you're gonna broaden yourself and learn, is to just feel the permission to ask the questions all along the way. Another thing is, I say it, you know, team are more important than self. When I've joined projects, I've decided that whatever the team's mission is, whatever we're trying to accomplish, I want to be part of making that happen. And I want to do everything that can be done to make that happen. If it's, we're gonna go work, you know, there's a point, I joined a team, and all, they were in a part of the release where it was all about bug fixing. All I was gonna do for year was fix bugs, so it didn't sound like the coolest thing to do. It turned out to be an incredible learning opportunity. There was a part we had to work on performance. Well, I got to learn about performance, because we had to fix the performance of the thing I was working on. If you become part of, adopt the mission of the team, adopt that project, you find that there's so many different ways you can help. And, along the way, so many different ways you can learn. Where, if you're focused more about what does this mean for me, what am I interested in, I think you miss out on all of those opportunities. And I think related to this is this notion of committing for a period of time. I guess, I always looked at my career as I'm gonna spend four or five years I'm gonna do this, I'm not gonna wake up each morning and say, am I doing the right thing? Should I take a turn here, is this my path to where I want to be? Instead, I said, this what I'm gonna do, and my focus is just immersing myself in that thing. Because, it'd be like if you got married, and every day you woke up and you said, am I married to the right person? Like that would not be a good relationship, right? To have that thought in your head the whole time, super-bad. I do not have that thought in my head. The same thing would happen at work, you see these people so worried about, angsty about am I in the right job, am I heading in the right direction? Assess the situation, make a choice, all these choices are imperfect, and then commit for awhile. Give yourself the opportunity to really experience it, and then set yourself a deadline, and say, in a year or four years from now, I'm gonna step up having, step back from having done all this, and then assess what I want to do next. That certainly has been important to me, both in my sanity, and in my ability to really commit in a way that I think allowed to me to learn, and do good work. Number seven, follow your heart. Cheezy, but, it's been super-important for me. There have been numerous, and sort of the most important decisions I've had to make, I feel like I made the decision that if you were analytical about it, if you made... I had an important decision to make, and I asked my dad, "I'm having trouble, do I take this job here, "or do I go to grad school? "Do I take this position here, or do I go over here?" When I went to NeXT, I took a big pay cut to join a failing company. It didn't seem like too smart a move. But, I felt, he said, my dad said, "Make a list. "Write down all the good and bad of this decision, "this decision, add it all up, there you go." I made the list. I, obviously, shouldn't go work for NeXT. But, when I thought of making the decision on that side of the thing, I just got a feeling in my gut, like, no, I want to be there. And it turned out there was probably something, something wise or intuitive about what was drawing me to the right decision. The ability to listen to yourself in those moments, and make those decisions, I think, over and over on the most important decisions, that's been super-important. And then when you're there, you feel good about it. And, of course, I say all of this, this is one story, one data point. I mean, let's be honest, be very, very lucky. However you figure that out, I haven't cracked the code, but it seemed to happen for me. That's a little advice. Thank you, very much, and I think we're gonna do some questions, and I'll sit down, and we'll see how it goes. (people applauding) That's good, thank you. (people applauding) All right, so I'll just start out with just a few questions, and I'll hand it over for the students soon, in a little while. All right, so that's a wonderful story. Thank you, for taking us through your whole life journey. It spanned many years and some miles. Very, very little geography. That's wonderful, but, you know, it's clearly some common themes were Apple, that's amazing, you know, starting when you were 10. And then Berkeley, right, the connection there, you know, Steve Wozniak is whom you saw, heard? Yes. And, you know, co-founder of Apple, but also, one of our alums, so it's fantastic. I thought the advice was pretty good. What did you all think? (laughs) It's not questionable. Yes. That's great. Questions. (people applauding) Yeah. (people applauding) I was just wondering, though, from your experience, what kind of, what are the important skills that you think are, you know, critical for success? First of all, let's say as an engineer? Because, our audience is primarily made of engineering students today. Yeah, sure. You know, it's an interesting blend today, because I think on the one hand you want to be deep in a domain, have real expertise, and that takes a lot of hard work solving real problems, spending the time doing that. But, I think, increasingly, and certainly in the environment where I work now, software engineering is completely a team sport. Building things at scale is about building things with lots of people. And not just other software engineers building things with designers, working with project managers, working with hardware teams, working, you know, all these other disciplines. And so, in addition to being an awesome engineer, communication is incredibly important. I mean, written communication, verbal communication. Being able to collaborate is super-important. Being able to empathize with users, if you're building product software like I do. Can you put yourself in the mindset of your customer, and think about how they're gonna see what you're doing, or what they want, what they value, and translate that? And then having the ability to, as part of collaboration, to respect all these other disciplines. I'll say, when I was an undergrad, just super-focused primarily on computer science, there can be a tendency to see the world one way, through the eyes of someone who is, you know, very analytical, and so forth, and to think that these other softer skills are, you know, not strong. In fact, what you come to appreciate, is that you have a, you have many blind spots, that that's a narrow point of view. And so, being able to respect all of these different kinds of roles and points of view, and collaborate effectively with those people, is what it takes to actually do a great product as a team, and that's so much of what it's about these days. That's my primary advice. Okay, that's fantastic, so, soft skills. Yeah. And that's something which you demonstrate very well here, I think. You're as very comfortable on the stage speaking, communicating effectively with presentations, and just, you know, extemporaneously. Were you like that when you were 10 years old? Ah, yeah. Or, even when you were a college student? I don't know, it's, so, yes-- How did you develop that skill? Certainly, it's been, this has been the strangest part of my journey, is that, if any of you had ever heard of me before now, it's probably because, you know, being on stage presenting something in front of a big room of people. You know, I grew up a very, I mean, I was like a pretty shy, socially-awkward guy. Certainly, didn't get into computer science for the fame element of, of it, it's not kinda where you think it's your path to the stage, traditionally. And so, the fact things kinda went that way was quite surprising. I did, in high school, I actually was a DJ. We had a radio station at my high school. We used to call it a radio station, we had an 8 watt, we had a 10 watt transmitter, which had an eight mile range. But, it was this opportunity for years to just talk, you know, talk on the, talk on the air. So I gotta think that actually played a role later on with being comfortable communicating with people. But that's, that's why I say those things that you do that don't seem like the central thing in your career. You know, you have your deep area of expertise, but some of these other things, they turn out to maybe play a role that you couldn't have possibly anticipated. And certainly that worked out for me. And then, I also just found that presenting, I think a lot of people get caught up in, I gotta write out a script, I gotta memorize exactly what I'm gonna say. And then, that's too hard, I could never succeed at that, my memory wouldn't allow it. So rather than do something really hard, I just figure if there's something I'm excited about, that I want to share, I just try to get up there and be myself, and tell the story. And so, if you can get to a frame of mind where you know what you want to get across, and you're willing to just put yourself out there, I think audiences appreciate people who are just willing to be their authentic selves up there. Right, authentic, right. I found it really interesting that you felt that these soft skills are really important for just an engineer, versus a leader. I think, clearly, as a manager and a executive you do need those kinds of communication skills, and empathy with, you know, your customers. It's great that you mentioned the ability to respect and see people, see different perspectives. Just, in general, I know when you and I spoke earlier this spring, we talked about efforts here at Berkeley to foster a culture of inclusion in engineering, and to just ensure that everybody has a chance to thrive here, rather than just to survive. Yeah. How do you think this diversity plays a role in tech, in the tech industry, specifically? Well, I mean, it's hugely important. And I know it's an area that, of course, when we, when we look at some statistics, it's an area where the industry could do better, where we'd like, where we'd like to do much better. That's an important problem to solve, because, when you think about building the best products, I think the best products come from, come from diverse teams, fundamentally, they come from understanding your customer. And your customer has, comes from all kinds of backgrounds, and experiences, and desires, and aptitudes. If the people in the room have a narrow perspective on what the customer wants, what the customer will understand, you're gonna build something that's very narrow. I found over and over these areas where having the right set of people in the room, it's eye-opening. You go, of course, everyone would want this. And someone says, "Actually, no." Or, "Actually, this is, I really value, value this." And you're like, "Really?" And you realize how narrow, sometimes, you can be viewing things if you just have a single viewpoint in the room. And, I mean, this has to do with both, you know, the culture, and what national customs, age, you know, what's currently fashionable or popular with different demographics. I mean, you need this diversity along every dimension, will inform you to build the right product. And it's not just understanding the customer. It's also that the diversity of domain backgrounds, of ways of looking at the problem, are where you make those leaps, you know. We can spend our time kind of optimizing in our lane. But, where the really interesting stuff happens, is when you cross the lanes. And that only happens by having this diverse set of disciplines together at the table. It's super-important, and we need to do all we can. I know Berkeley's doing so much, to try to solve this. It's super-important to doing good work. That's great to hear. So I know, it's wonderful that you shared your story about your family. And I know one of your daughters is here today. Lisa, welcome. She's a little bigger now. Yes. I'm wondering, have you found it to be helpful to your career to be a parent? Well, first of all, a husband and a parent, maybe in that order? (laughs) I guess I have to say yes. Well, certainly, I bring a certain perspective. You know, there's certain kinds of features that suddenly seem much more important to me than they would if I was a single person, when it comes to thinking about both what do kids want, what do families want. There's also a element of just the period of life, and being able to focus on work. You know, work-life balance is a challenge. Well, it's always, it's always a challenge, and it may be especially a challenge when you start taking on family. And I have no good advice to offer you on that. I don't do that very well. (person laughing) But, it's... I've certainly found that in today, often, and you know, certainly, devices we all carry in our pockets are part of this where it's easy to never be away from work. And you have to be, you have to be away from work. Not only for the sake of being with your family. But, also, that separation from that time where you can be intensely focused on that environment to that time that you let yourself be unplugged from that. And so, if there's a piece of advice I can give you is, number one, sleep, give yourself time to sleep. I know I see all these T-shirts, there's one, walking across the campus, someone had, eat, sleep, code, and then sleep was crossed out. Like, that... I just saw that like an hour ago. I'll say, I mean, it's sort of the legend here at Berkeley, I think that, you know, you can have sort of a sleep, or a social life, or grades, or something, you know, pick two, pick any two. Yes, actually, I think some EECS students, a number of years ago, determined, like, a relationship is worth like three units. Is that right? Is that what it costs? Yeah, you can either take a course for three units, or have a relationship. I was able to optimize that part away completely. But, I did, I did focus on the sleep part, and the school part. So it's a huge part of deciding, I mean, at different points in your life where are you, what are you gonna focus on, and what are you gonna give up? And it is certainly true, as you get into family, family becomes super-important. For me, work was also really important, and, you know, a lot of other things you, you focus out to a secondary place. So do you encourage, like, your team members, the people who work for you to have, to achieve some kind of work-life balance? I mean, is that? Yeah, and it's tricky, right? Because, sometimes, I might be working on a weekend, or something. And so, I uncover a question, and I'm thinking I'm gonna send an email just because it's Monday morning they can, you know, go do this. But then you say, you'd send your question, and then do they feel obliged to, oh, I just got this message, maybe I should be working right now. I could probably do better to make clear that it's really when you're at work, you're at work, and when you're not at work, you probably shouldn't be at work. That's my advice. Yes. Actually, I learned from my students that there's a feature, at least for Gmail, that you can actually defer-- Don't let any of the... Yeah, so that people don't feel like they have to respond to you like after midnight, or over the weekend. Did it seem weird that you just said that? And our students are great. And then you realize later, you didn't, can you go back in the outbox, or remove it? If you're like, no! It's too late. It doesn't make any sense. Yeah, but now you have the option to just delay the sending. Okay. This is great, so I'd like to open up the floor to questions from students. Yeah, let me just-- Preferably students. Just one thing. Anybody. Like I'm, I work, I work for Apple, but I'm here as, I'm just here as myself. I really, the questions I don't want to answer are things of the form. Sure. What's the new iPhone? iPhone 12. Yes. Or why did Apple make this decision? Or, blah-blah-blah, right? My max, my goal here, despite the live blogging that seems to happening, is to not make any news. If you have a question that seems it might make news, please, don't ask. I cannot answer it. All right. When you, we'll have a microphone. And then, please, introduce yourself, your major, your year, and your question. [Female In Audience] Hi, I'm Zoe. I'm a third-year undergraduate EEC student. I was just curious, like, if you had to go back to Berkeley and do it all again, is there anything that you would change, you know, because we're trying to figure out our lives, too, and (chuckles) would love to know what steps you felt like were like valuable, and not. Gosh, it's super, super-hard to say, because at some level, like, I appreciate the journey my life went on. And you never know if you change one variable, what would happen. No joke, I was like a, a coding monk, or something like a, I mean, I mean, the narrowness socially of my life cannot be overstated. And so, in that sense, I feel like, well, people talk about their college experience in this, this way of making many more connections on other levels. And I was, I was focused. And so, would I have been better off had I broadened that? I mean, some of that was just my personality. Probably, probably that would have been better. But, you might not have that problem that I had. But that would be, that would be something, because, I was so focused on academics, and coding, and playing guitar that that was all I had room for. And so, there are parts of the college experience, I guess I could go back and do it again, and just do the social part, and forget the academics part, and then I'd even it all out. Great, a question here? [Male in Audience] Hi, my name is Mark. I'm a fourth-year student studying Mechanical Engineering and Business. You touched on this idea of inflection points and making decisions, following your heart, things like that. Yeah. [Male in Audience] Could you give some examples of when you listened to yourself, and you're really happy that you did? Yeah, well, one, I mean, there are two of them that are, I think, stand out as a couple of the biggest inflection points. One of them was when I, I had been at Oracle, and like I say, I largely landed at Oracle because they would let me, they'd take me on when I said I'm only gonna work for you for six months, and then I'm gonna leave and ski. They met that bar. And yet, I found myself there, and because of the way things developed, there were these opportunities where, there was a time when video-on-demand started to be, and now, we all use it all the time, right, but video-on-demand started to be a big thing. And it was interesting, it was new, and I'd done a little grad work in that area, too. And there was a, an idea that I could be part of the project that was gonna be the big thing at Oracle that was taking off, it was super well funded, etc. Or I could go fulfill my dream of working for NeXT. You know, I interviewed at NeXT. They said... Oracle had been very good to me. And so, at NeXT, they said, "Well, you're really overpaid." And, I said, "Oh, that's a bummer." And so, there was this point where it's like, and NeXT was largely a failed/failing company, right? They'd gotten out of the hardware business, kinda no one was buying the software. And yet, Oracle was gonna go big in a space that seemed so promising, and emerging. And yet, having talked to the two teams, met the people, saw what they were working about. There was one that I just felt like I want to be part of that, I want to be with them. I feel like I could learn so much. And, for me, that, I mean, that's been the best, one of the best decisions, certainly, in my entire career, to be among those people. I mean, little did we realize then, that what we were creating at NeXT in this, to run in this square foot box was the foundation of what a billion people were gonna have in their pockets. But, that's where it all went. And I think, maybe there was an element of, of just what you sense about the people and the work that you can, you can't articulate it to yourself, but you can feel it, and that's part of the attraction. And that was, that was there for me. And the other one was the decision to come back to grad school. I'd had it in my mind that I wanted to do it. I'd had that I wanted to learn something more. I had been in the industry a little bit and, you know, course of saying stay, stay. You know, here's a great opportunity for you to do more here. And I said, you know, I mean, this one's horrible, by the way, they said, "What would it take for you to stay?" And I made the most outland, the thing, like you make the most outlandish set of demands, right? I won't even state them, because they're so ridiculous. I'm like, well, I could do this, and this, and give me a cut of the profits, and let me work here, and whatever. And I'm like, then we're gonna do this. And then they came back and said, "Okay." Wow! And so, (chuckles) so I said, "But, I wanted "to go to grad school." And the horrible part is, so, I said, "God, well, "okay!" So I said yes. And then Monday, school had started, grad school had started, and I didn't show up, because I had said okay to this job. I'm sitting there back in my cubical. And I'm like, I do not want to be here. I want to go to grad school. And I called up the thing, I said, "Can I still come? "I've missed a few days of classes." And they said, "Sure, come on up, just start taking "your classes again." And I went to grad school. It was just this feeling of where I wanted to be. And I think, again, I feel like it was, it was the path intellectually and that I wanted to take, and I was willing to listen to that and follow it, and, you know, no complaints. Wonderful. There, in the back. (person mumbles) [Male in Audience] Hello, my name is Tosh. I'm a third-year CS student. Hi. [Male in Audience] I just wanted to thank you, for taking your time and coming out here today. Thank you. [Male in Audience] One question, I actually have two questions. One question is, what's your favorite aspect of software engineering, you know, software engineering is comprised of multiple different like facets, like, you know, you have AI, machine learning, operating systems, compilers, like what drove you to kind of work in, at operating systems at Apple? And then, like, you know, I guess, what was your favorite? And the second question I have, is that like, how do you combat like feeling burnt out? I know you kind of mentioned that, you know, you always were really focused on like coding, and that sort of stuff. But, especially, as a student here at Berkeley, I kind of spend a lot of days just kind of working, and then, that Saturday comes and I'm just like, oh, I feel really burnt out. Uh-huh. [Male in Audience] How do you combat that, and continue to being motivated to work, and stuff? Yeah, okay, a bunch there. In terms of sort of what's my, what's my favorite thing, you know, I got started when, really, the way, well, the way we programmed, the languages, the frameworks, the sort of idioms we used have been really evolving over the years. Early on, I always felt like I love programming. And yet, I felt like so much of what we were doing when programming was so tedious, you know. I think many of us are inherently lazy people, we're always looking for how can I make this easier? And then you do way more work trying to make it easier, than if you just went and did it, right? So I've always been drawn to, to languages, frameworks, tools, things that change the way software is developed, to try to get to the root of how do I make something maximally expressive and dynamic? And so, I love doing this kind of, this kind development framework work. At the same time, I've really come to love interaction design. When you can think about how you are gonna connect a piece of work to a customer experience, I'm not a good, I'm not a good graphic designer, at all. I mean, horrendous. But I can, I enjoy working with them. And I enjoy thinking about that connection between a customer experience we want to create and what that experience can be, and then, what's the underlying architecture that could make all of that happen? There's something just fantastic about that. But, I'll say, generally, also with programming, there's something really Zen about it. I mean, you can lose yourself for hours in just thinking deeply about a problem. And then, when it all comes together, there's just this unbelievable feeling of, of I did it, it works, it just undeniably works, right? There are lots of things where you could have opinions, or write an essay, and like did you nail it? I don't know, but... But you wrote a program and it did the thing, like, there's no denying that it worked! And so, I get, I just get awesome satisfaction out of that. And I still do, and that's why I took a couple years where I wanted to return back from, from being in a little bit more nebulous world of high-level leadership, and into a role where I'm just sitting down for a day and, at the end of the day, I've solved a problem in the most concrete way possible. And I just, it felt so good. In terms of burnout, I think it helps to have a diversity of things that you're, that you're working on. If there are parts of your day where, or parts of your week where I'm gonna focus on this, and I'm gonna go deep, and sometimes there's, there's a certain activation energy to emerge, to immersing yourself sufficiently to get in that productive zone, and really crank some stuff out. And so, you gotta, you gotta be willing to go deep and spend that time. But, then, to be able to spend some time doing some other activities, it can still be related to your project, to programming, or something else in your life that exercises a different part of your brain, and provides you with different inspiration, or involves, now I'm working with people in a different way. Mixing it up is great. And I'll say, you know, for me, in my job, it's awesome, because, I love almost every element of, of computer science, of the computing in hardware, and silica, and all this. And so, getting to work at a scale where you're working with the best people in all of these disciplines, and being able to touch them all, and having that constant diversity of problems you're solving does kind of keep renewing you, you know. You're always, you're always learning something new. I think that's always been part of how I've, what's drawn me into programming, is I'd learn something. I'd think of some, how do I apply this thing I've learned? I'd come up with a project I want to build. And then, you're building the project and you realize there's something else that you need to learn to do it right. And there's nothing like having a problem to solve, and having that, seeking a solution, to then give you the hunger to learn, and the appreciation for the solution when you're doing it. And that, that cycle is just so motivating. And with computers it's so great, because, you can try that stuff out. And it's not like you're gonna build a bridge and kill people. Right, you can go experiment, and play, and yet, constantly be learning. I guess that keeps me renewed. Excellent. We have time for one more question. [Male in Audience] Hi. I'm Tamas, I'm a third-year EEC student. And I'm curious, what made you different from all the other coding monks that are still like stuck in their cubicles, you know, 40 years later? How did you get to the top of like one of the best companies? I have no idea. I mean, I... Luck. I mean, I think the, you know, the things I talked about, I guess, the way it, the way it felt to me along the way was I... (person mumbling in background) I guess I had the good fortune of being drawn to some interesting projects, some interesting parts of the industry that, maybe, at times didn't look like they were necessarily the hot thing, but they were something that turned out to be meaningful. I think I was always focused on, at any given time, trying to solve the right problem for the team. And when you're working on a project, and you're devoted to the success of the project and solving all the problems of the project, that's where people, that's like the point that they, that someone said, "Hey, you should manage this team." You know, when I was an individual contributor, and they said, "You should manage this team." I had no aspirations of management at that time. It was super-early, it seemed weird. But, it was because my focus had been not just my narrow thing, but like what can I do for the team, what are all the different problems I can solve? They said, "Oh, you should probably manage it. "You seem to have this broader concern for the project." When I was then managing my team, but I was kinda concerned about how my project fit in with other projects, and solving that broader problem, and trying to help out here and there, they said, "Oh, you should lead this collection." They kept pulling, they kept pulling me up. And at some point I'm like, what are you doing? You're making a big mistake. It is, I think, if you're not too worried about getting there, but you're just trying to do the job, at times, it turns out that people see in you, maybe, being the solution to a problem they have to solve, which is get something led. So maybe that's it, or maybe it's just, you know, being a high school radio DJ. I know, hard to say, hard to say. Wonderful, well, thank you, so much, Craig, for spending time with us, and giving us very wise advice. Yeah, my pleasure. And being exemplar of a Berkeley engineer. Oh, (chuckles) thank you, so much. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. (people applauding) We have a gift for you. A gift, oh! (people applauding) We have a gift for you, Berkeley Engineering-- Oh, awesome! Shirt. All right! Modeled by our Berkeley Engineering students. Is somebody taking a photo? Please. (people applauding) Hey, thank you. All right. Thank you, all, for coming. Go Bears! Go Bears! And we hope to see you at more events later this year. All right, bye-bye.