Be Open! Be Impatient! Be Hopeful! | Sundar Pichai's Most Inspiring Speech | Simplilearn

Let me tell you a little bit about my personal journey to Silicon Valley from India, 22 years ago. Growing up in India, like many of you, I got my first telephone when I was 12. In my case, it turned out to be a rotary phone, so it wasn't that great for selfies, but I still loved to call my friends, play with it, and sometimes take it apart. That telephone cemented my fascination with technology. I remember, in my parents' house in Chennai, reading about the invention of the transistor at Bell Labs. Of course, that initial invention helped found what became known as Silicon Valley, and out of that came companies like Fagile Semiconductor and Intel, and all the computers and software that we all use today. You can draw a direct line from that invention to the technology that powers your Twitter feed or your WeChat messages today. I remember reading about that and thinking, it's the idea that matters. It didn't matter where you come from or what your background is. One revolutionary idea, one brilliant invention, can unleash other entrepreneurs to revolutionize industries in ways you could never predict. I think it's important to remember, you know, getting into an elite institution doesn't guarantee success. It matters a lot, but it doesn't guarantee success. And, you know, I think it's important to keep that perspective in life. And, you know, life's a long road, and, you know, so you want to take it at the right pace and enjoy what you're doing. It's important to remember there are many, many different ways you can approach things, and what matters most is, you know, loving what you're doing and trying to do well at it. A lot of times when I was younger, you know, people would say, you know, this person didn't get into this college or something, and that's the end of the road. And life is so different from that. And so I think it's important to, you know, keep your hopes, keep your dreams, and try to follow them. And, you know, I think most of how life plays out is up to you, not up to what happens outside of you. And I think it's important to keep that in mind and take the long-term view. You know, when you're trying to run something at the scale of Google, you know, we have now over 60,000 people. And, you know, you rely on other strong leaders. I think, you know, a lot of what I do is, you know, I have an outstanding leadership team. It's learning to let go and really empowering people, you know, at all levels of the organization, and, you know, trusting them to doing the right thing. And as a leader, a lot of your job is to make those people successful. It's less about trying to be successful and more about making sure you have good people and your work is to remove barriers, remove roadblocks for them so that they can be successful in what they do. And so that's how I've always thought about it. And I've also valued, you know, teamwork quite a bit. And, you know, I think it's really important to build organizations where people actually want to work together. You know, everything comes out of that. So setting up collaborative cultures is another big thing I try to focus on. The long arc of history tells us we have every reason to be hopeful. So be hopeful. There are probably things about technology that frustrate you and make you impatient. Don't lose that impatience. It'll create the next technology revolution and enable you to build things my generation could never dream of. You may be just as frustrated by my generation's approach to climate change or education. Be impatient. It'll create the progress the world needs. You will make the world better in your own way, even if you don't know exactly how. The important thing is to be open minded so that you can find what you love. So take the time to find the thing that excites you more than anything else in the world. Not the thing your parents want you to do or the thing that all your friends are doing or that society expects of you. I know you're getting a lot of advice today, so let me leave you with mine. Be open, be impatient, be hopeful. If you can do that, history will remember the class of 2020, not for what you lost, but for what you changed. You have a chance to change everything. I'm optimistic you will. Thank you.