A letter written to Chinese students: Talk from integrity, Li Kai Fu, April 2000
On May 23 this year, Mr. Bill Gates wrote in the Wall Street Journal, supported and urged the US government to give China's permanent normal trade state treatment. In the text, he specially talked about the pleasant experience of Tsinghua University and China's student's dialogue and therefore left a deep impression.
This article makes me can't help but think that in China's two years, the biggest enjoyment in my work is also an exchange of universities in China. These access and exchanges make I have the opportunity to communicate with thousands of young students face-to-face on their concerns. Chinese students have a very deep impression on me.
In the process of communication with these youth students, I found that there are some problems that everyone is very concerned. Those students who have already obtained foreign university scholarships, mostly I hope that I will talk about how to spend my own career in the United States; those who decide to stay in China, very concerned about how to identify a correct direction, and at the fastest speed Successful in scientific research and academics; there are also students who have just stepped into university schools, I hope that I can tell some of my experience and being a person's experience. Recently, there are more students to care about the development of the network information industry, I hope to understand how the US college students are entrepreneurship and getting rich.
Seeing so many twirling knowledge, full of hope, I suddenly produced a impulse, that is, I wrote a letter to China, and some ideas I have generated in the communication process and I want to Some of the advice of Chinese students write out to help them get more perfect in the future, work or entrepreneurship, and life is more smooth, and the career is more successful.
Stick to the principle of integrity, integrity
When I worked at Apple, I had a manager who was just promoted by me. Due to the criticism of the subordinates, I was very depressed to find someone to replace him. I asked him: "Do you think your strengths?" He said, "I am confident that I am a very upright person." I told him: "I first promoted you to do managers, because you are a just selfless person. Management experience and communication skills can be learned in the future, but a ridicone heart is invalvous. "I support him to continue to do it and give him a lot of guidance and help in management and communication skills. In the end, he is not expected to be a good management. Now, he is already a proclaimed company's chief technology officer.
On the contrary, I have interviewed a job seeker. He is quite excellent in technology and management. However, in the discussion, he said that if I admit him, he can even bring one inventions when the company is working. Then he seems to be a bit improper, special as a statement: those work is done after get off work, his boss does not know. After this conversation, for me, no matter what his ability and work level, I will definitely not hire him. The reason is that he lacks the most basic criteria and the minimum professional ethics "honest" and "speaking credit". If you hire such a person, who can guarantee that he will not work here for a while, which will also become "tribute" to other companies as the so-called "amateur"? This shows that people who are imperfect in a character cannot be a truly active person.
In the United States, Chinese students' diligence and excellence are famous, once the most popular international students in all Americans. Recently, some schools and professors claim that they never want to recruit Chinese students. The reason is very simple. Some Chinese students took a doctor's scholarship to the United States, but once they found a job, they immediately applied for leaving the school and threw their own degree and research that he promised to complete. This kind of words and deeds have made a considerable part of the United States to have doubts about Chinese students' honesty. It should be pointed out that Chinese students with this behavior are a few, but this is such a "small number", which has caused great damage to the reputation of Chinese students. In addition, there are many professors in the United States ignore the recommendation of most Chinese students, because they know that these recommendations come from the students themselves, have no reference. This is also an inevitable result after honesty is damaged. I have encountered similar problems in Microsoft Research Institute. A student who came here, an unexpectedly reported a very good study result. However, the results of his research have not been repeated. Later, his boss found that this student was selected for the experimental data, leaving only the best results, and abandoned the "not very good" data. I think this student will never achieve true academic breakthroughs, and it is impossible to be a truly qualified researcher.
Finally, I want to mention some people who like to be greedy. They use the school or company phone to call private long distances and reimburse the taxi ticket. Perhaps some people think that students are focusing on grades, career, and other details are just some small things, they have done it as much as they want, and there is no big deal. However, it is the so-called "little things" around you, often becoming a key to shaping personalities and accumulating integrity. Some of the greed is cheap, and the small and smart behavior will only qualitatively be a smaller, and there is no image of the person who has no interest. For these behaviors, a word, it is "Do not evil".
Living in the group
Compared with most American students, Chinese students' ability to express their ability, communication skills, and team spirit are relatively lacking. This may be due to the cultural background and the different education system. Today, when we face a society that is going to highly globalized, living in groups, making better performance, get more and gain, is especially important.
The ability to express and communicate is very important. No matter how excellent work, you will not express it, you can't let more people understand and share, then it is almost equal to white. Therefore, in the learning stage, you can't live in a world, and you should try to learn from all walks of life and communicate, actively express your opinions and opinions on various things, and even speaking at the public gatherings. Exercise your own expression skills.
Expression ability is never just your "eloquence". Professor Harvard University has recently been very interesting experiments, and he lets two groups of students evaluate several professors' teaching quality. He took the lecture record of these professors to two seconds to give a group of students to give a set of assessment results. Then compare the results of students who have already heard of these professors for several months, the two groups of conclusions are amazing. This shows that in the process of expressing their own ideas, non-language expression and language are equally important, sometimes even more obvious. The non-language expression herein refers to people's instruments, manners, tone, tones, and emotions. Because of these aspects, people can more intuitive and more imperfect that you are people, the ability to do things, see your confidence and enthusiasm, and give a very important "first impression".
For a group, a company, or even a country, team spirit is very critical. Microsoft said in the United States with a special team. The R & D of the product of Windows 2000, Microsoft has more than 3,000 development engineers and testers, and has written 50 million lines of code. There is no highly unified team spirit, there is no tacit understanding and division of labor of all participants, which is not possible at all. Relatively speaking, I have seen such a phenomenon when I was in other companies. A project is arranged, and everyone knows that it cannot be completed, but they all don't know, do not tell the boss. Because anyway, it is not finished, everyone does not work hard, but spend more time to calculate how to blame the failure of this project to others. It is these people and such a work style to drag this company.
In order to cultivate the team spirit, I suggest that the students actively participate in the work of various social groups. In the process of working with others, sharing results, mutual help, you can experience the importance of team spirit.
In the process of learning, don't want to share good ideas, ideas, and results with others, worry that others go to your previous idea is unhealthy, and no success. There is a proverb that "the more you pay, the more you get". Imagine if your behavior makes people feel "you are mine, mine is my", when you need to help, do you think that others will help you? Conversely, if you often help others generously, will you get more people's return?
In the team, we must be brave enough to recognize the contribution of others. If you use the wisdom and results of others, you should declare. If you get the help of others, you should thank you. This is also the basics of team spirit.
A active person
Thirty-year ago, the goal of an engineer dreamed of entry into the most leading IBM of technology. At that time, IBM's definition of talents was a person with professional knowledge, buried people. Turning star shift, things have developed to today, people's views on talents have gradually changed. Now, many companies emerging are actively active, enthusiastic, flexible and confident.
As a contemporary Chinese college student, you should no longer wait for others to tell you what should do, but should take the initiative to understand what you have to do, and plan them, and go all out. Think about those people in the world today, have a few people who are only Nono, someone else? Treat your own academic and research projects, you need to make a constant effort with a mother's responsibility and love to your child. If this is the case, there is nothing to achieve.
A proactive person should also hear the criticism and opinions of others. In fact, this is also an embodiment of enterprising. You can't accept the criticism of others, and learn from it, it is impossible to have more progress. Bill Gates once said to the company all: "Customer criticism is more important than making money. From the customer's criticism, we can better learn the lessons of failure, transform it into a successful driving force."
In addition to the criticism of others, you should also work hard to find a special distinguished teacher. This hammer should be some people outside your teacher, so people will objectively give you some advice. In addition to teaching you in the knowledge, this niece can also have pointers you in other ways, including the eyes of people, see problems, and deal with emergencies. When I was responsible for a research department in Apple, I was fortunate to find such a good teacher. At that time, he was responsible for the senior vice president of Apple's global operation and production business. He gave me a lot of teachings for my career development. If there is such a person to help you, the speed you grow will be faster than others.
Most Chinese students are more accumulated, shy, and not used to doing self-propelled. However, if you want to grasp the opportunity to turn a flash, you must learn to convince others and sell yourself or your own point of view to others. Before convince others, you must first convince yourself. Your passion plus talent is often reflected in your potential, which is the chemical reaction that people often say. In general, a good self-propelrative strategy can add the development of things. For example, once I received a very special job application. Unlike most job seekers, this applicant's job-hosted information includes his self-introduction, his yearning for Microsoft Research, and why he thinks it is a suitable candidate, and there is also the paper he has published, Teacher's recommendation letter and he wants to come to Microsoft. Although he graduated from school is not the most famous school in China, his self-sales work. I saw his enthusiasm and serious from these documents. When I was interviewed, he had submitted a more fully personal information. Finally, when I asked him if there was any problem, he asked me,: "Do you have any reservations for me?" At that time, I did doubts about whether he could enter the new research field, so further Asked about some problems in this regard. He raised two very persuasive examples. Finally, we hired this candidate. He is doing very well.
Challenge yourself and develop your own potential
When I was working in Apple, one day, the boss suddenly asked me how can I take his work? I am very surprised, indicating that I lack the management experience and ability like him. But he said that these experiences can be cultivated and accumulated, and he hopes that I can do it after two years. With such a tips and encouragement, I began to consciously strengthen myself in this area. Sure enough, I really took his work in two years. I personally think: a person's leadership quality is very important for his future treatment, business or politics. At any time, in any environment, we should consciously cultivate your leadership. At the same time, I suggest you show yourself to show this ability, perhaps like me, you will be surprised that you have the potential of this aspect far exceeds the imagination.
It is a very important thing to set the goal for yourself. Target settings are unrealistic, but the goals must not be fixed too low. In the twenty-first century, competition has no boundaries, you should let go of thinking, stand in a higher starting point, set a more challenging standard to yourself, will have accurate efforts and broad prospects, cut Do not do "frog in the bottom". In addition, only in a school has achieved good results, the famous family thinks that he has become famous, it is ridiculous, you must know, there are mountains outside the mountains, someone in people, and the metrics of different places are different. Therefore, in order to set up the goals, don't have the idea of "Ning as the head of the chicken, not the cattle".
A first-class person is like a general personality in general issues, but the performance on first-class issues will have a heaters. William Falkner, a famous American writer, said: "Don't do our best to compete with your colleagues. You should care about you more than you now." You should always set up some challenging But not unreachable targets.
When establishing the goal of future careers, don't forget to ask yourself: "Is this the most popular professional? Are I willing to put it full?" I hope that you can be full of passion and imagination for your work, on the way Various difficult dangers that may have fearless. Talking about the love of work, I know a Microsoft researcher once made me feel deeply. He often drives the door to see "girlfriend", later, once an accidental chance saw him in the office, asked him "Where is the girlfriend?" He pointed at the computer and said: "It is her." The love, Bill Gates has also had a very exciting elaboration, he said: "Wake up every morning, I think that the work engaged in the work and the technique developed will give huge impacts and changes in human life, I It will be very excited and excited. "Before a few months, there was a great discussion of Bill Gates and Paul Kodajin in" Beijing Youth Daily ". Since I grew up from small in the United States, I don't know the deeds of Wah and his deeds. However, I agree with the paragraph: "The most precious thing is life, life belongs to us, only once. People's life should spend this way, when he looks back, there is no remorse because of vain years, also Not as shameful ... "So, choose a career you really love, constantly challenge yourself, improve yourself, let your life have a wonderful and fulfilling.
Objective, directly
Once, a Chinese university professor found me, I hope I will help him find a foreign expert in his organization's conference, and the last is also deliberately added, it is best to be a foreigner. I am very uncomfortable to say to him: "The most authoritative people in this field are a Chinese in Beijing. Why do you have to find a foreigner?" He agreed with my saying, but he still invited a US People come to this speech, and the results are very poor. So, we should not fall into the blinddo. We should use objective vision to determine things instead of deciding on his skin tone or his place of residence.
One sentence says that "Truth is always in a few people." We understand the meaning of this sentence, there should be your own vision, have an independent thinking, not necessarily recognized by most people, or a certain authority, it is right. Whether it is learning, engage in research or business, we can't blindly, think more about why.
With an objective opinion, you should express it directly. If you do anything, it is like "playing Tai Chi", it will make people understand that the cloud will cause a lot of misunderstandings. Once, a researcher working in Microsoft Institute went for my opinion on his own research direction, I made a analysis, thinking that there are many problems in this direction, I personally think that the contribution to the academic Big, but if he persists, I am willing to support him trying to do it. As a result, he thinks that I don't allow him to do this. So he chose other directions. Later, when he had to travel, the person responsible for administrative affairs told him that you can choose to take the train or fly. He believes that the executive actually implies him to take the train because it is too expensive to fly. In fact, his guess is wrong. Because our communication is straightforward, he is "playing Tai Chi". After that, we pass a series of corporate cultural lectures, let the employees know: what to say, do not complicate simple questions. Now, this type of mistake will be much less.
The corners of the turn, the words are unusual, and the result is wasting everyone's valuable time. After looking forward to, I am afraid to say something wrong. As a result, it becomes a bad coward. Worse, there are still some people, don't say that there is a chaotic saying that this is no benefit to others, and finally it can only destroy the collective unity. Such a person and the style cannot face the society, and it is impossible to get out of the new road in scientific research, and it is more impossible to stand out in the fierce business war. I hope that the students will be able to open up and welcome, dare to say "no", this is the performance of respecting their own ideas. Of course, when expressing your opinion, no matter the opposition and criticism, it should be constructive, high sincerity, rather than criticizing criticism, and criticized for the debate. The way I agree is to provide constructive positive comments. When you start discussing the problem, no one should refuse to reject a thousand miles, everyone puts the ideas on the desktop, fully reflecting the personal point of view, so there will be a conclusion that accommodates most people. Of course, you should also learn your opinions with your proper methods and tones, such as don't make others embarrassed in front of many people. This way, your criticism will work.
Cherish the campus to learn life
A few days ago, I went up a news on the newspaper, saying that there were middle school students drop out of school. I think this is not worth promoting. For most students, living in school is a good opportunity to learn basic theory knowledge, learning thinking and solving problems. These knowledge will be the most basic knowledge and skills you need in your future development process. Just like building a tall building, if it is not good, it does not work.
In a global scale, the US research level is undoubtedly world-class. In addition to the United States, you will find that the British research level is also quite prominent. The reason is, actually the language problem. The British can read the latest English research reports and materials in the United States and even the world without obstruction. This has great help to grasp the research direction, track the latest progress, and publish research results. Therefore, English learning is also quite important for people who study our research. Only in the cultivation of quality in this area can be adapted to future development. I suggest: learn English first, learn to read and write, and be sure to completely solve English learning problems in the university stage. When you have a big age, you will be much more much compared to the cost of pay.
In addition to English, mathematics, statistically conducting scientific students are also very important, and it is not ignored. Mathematics is a thousand years of wisdom, you must learn it well, can't perfine things. I regret it today, I haven't spent more kung fu. I have learned more mathematics. In addition, computer applications, algorithms and programming are also every engineering student should be familiar with, and they are tools that everyone must use in the future.
The development of technology can be described as a new month. The purpose of studying in school is actually to master the most basic learning tools and methods. Use these tools and methods in the future, learn new things. For example, if you learn C , can you learn JAVA? Class to learn HTML, can you learn XML? It is better to learn a professional, it is better to learn how to learn, let yourself " through".
In the first two years after graduation, the students gathered together, and they found that the changes were not big. After five years, I gathered together and changed much. Some people are out of date, because they no longer learn, no longer master new things, naturally fall behind the social development. If we want to be in this competitive society, we have to learn forever.
My boss - Dr. Rick Rashid is currently a senior vice president of the competent study of Microsoft. He has been famous, but it has always maintained a heart of learning and enterprising. Now, he still writes approximately 50,000 lines per year. He believes that using the latest technical programming allows him to maintain the sensitivity of the most advanced technology of your computer, so that you can continue to improve. Today, some doctoral students have a subgrade undergraduate and master student, and they think that they have no need to program again. In fact, this practice is very unwise. Every time I go to Tsinghua and other schools, I have asked the most is the problem of students working. I think that working is a good thing to broaden the vision from overall. For example, in research institutions, you can learn the latest technology; working in the product sector, you can learn technology and skills; work in the market sector, you can understand the business operations. I think every student should have experience in working, but don't play some "useless work." First of all, we must understand that working is only a supplement in the life of students, and learning is the most important. The purpose of working is to broaden your eyes, not to work in advance. If you put the translation book, you can put your database in the time of the time to enter the database, and you can make more money in the future. Those money will far beyond the income of the current work.
In addition, some students are encouraged by the current depth entrepreneurship, and drop out of school in the middle of Bill Gates and Michael Dell. In my opinion, in addition to very special situations, I don't recommend going to school to venture at school. The success of those who have seen the dental entrepreneurship actually rarely. At present, most students have the idea of entrepreneurship, but lack of entrepreneurship experience, so the possibility of failure is very large. If you want to succeed, I suggest you read the book first. If you want to learn from business, you can use the holiday time to go to a company. Bill Gates also said, "If you are considering your own new company, you should first clearly know that the establishment of the company needs huge energy to invest, and you must take a huge risk. I don't want to be like me. Just create a company. You should consider joining other companies and learn their work in this company, entrepreneurship. "
What kind of docto hat do you want to wear?
When I entered the University of Carnegie Menlong, the department of the department said to me. When you got your Ph.D., you should be the world's first expert in the research field you are engaged in. This sentence is highly unable to climb, but also let me know. In this way, after five years of cold windows, the night he expected, the results he expected, then appeared naturally. A person who intends to pursue a doctorate, you should set a high goal to yourself. If there is no ambition, don't be self-deceived, may have a greater grade, may have a big job or work in other work.
After the goal is established, I suggest you design a three-year study and research plan for yourself. First, you need to thoroughly understand the work and achievements of others in the relevant field. Then put forward your own ideas and insights, do your foot-on-earth work. In addition, it is necessary to continuously track the latest research progress in this area. Only in this way can you grasp the direction, avoid repeatability, focus on the most valuable research direction.
In the academic circles, people generally think "famous teachers". It can be seen how big is the role in your growth path. So, you should take the initiative to find the best teachers in the fields you have studied. In addition to your teacher, you should also ask for advice on all experts. Don't forget to come to seek "the most enlightenment teacher" - Internet! Now, almost all papers, research results, advanced ideas can be found online. I also encourage you to send an email to ask some world-recognized experts and professors. With my experience, most of them will reply to you very quickly for such emails.
When I first studied a doctorate, I was working for seven days a week, and I worked for 16 hours a day, a lot of statistical results and analysis reports almost made me crash. At that time, other researchers used in the same field were the traditional ways of different from me. Although my teacher supports me, I don't recognize my research direction. I have also doubted whether my own is really successful. But one day, a result made in the middle of the night, made me feel the taste of success. Later, research has a progressive progress, and the tutor has also begun to adopt my research method. My doctoral thesis makes my research have become one of the most influential work in natural language research. Dr. Read is not a relaxed thing, avoid impetuous emotions, and work in a footprint, work hard. It is also not subject to some temptation of fame and fortune, and 200% investment. Maybe you will tired, will regret, will lose the direction, but to remember that the success and breakthrough you expect are also pregnant. Everything is very smooth, no one can get the work and results, I believe that the research value is not high. In a certain sense, if a person is going to engage in research work in a lifetime, then from his habits, research methods, and thinking methods formed during his doctoral degree, you can basically judge the contour of his future work. So, you must be a "people", make full use of school time, and make the foundation for your future.
Some of the above views is some of my feelings in the process of interaction with the students. I hope that these suggestions and ideas can be inspired by you on the future of the future, can help your current learning. Perhaps because of the difference in view, people have a message, perhaps because of the loyalty, this letter may not be accepted by each class. But as long as one hundred students who read this letter, this letter is more valuable than any studies I have. I sincerely hope that in the new century, Chinese students are more mature whether they are in the country, or abroad; whether they are studying, or business, they are more mature.
