Jen-Hsun Huang's Advice for Students (Extended) (1080p_30fps_H264-128kbit_AAC)

Hello, I'm Elijah Rogers and I'm in eighth grade at the Dallas International School. Today I get the great honor of interviewing one of the heroes of Silicon Valley, Jensen Huang, president, founder, and CEO of NVIDIA. I'm going to interview him about his choice to become an engineer in the semiconductor industry and why this is a great profession for kids my age to consider. I'm also going to be asking him about what opportunities will be available in the future for kids my age. So Jensen, thank you very much for agreeing to do this interview with me today. You're welcome. It's a great pleasure. It's an honor. I've read a lot about you and watched a lot of YouTube videos. You're really famous in your industry and I just think it's amazing what you do. Thank you. So the goal of our discussion today is to show kids my age what you would do if you're an engineer and to kind of persuade them to look at engineering as a possible career. Okay, all right. What would you like to know? So when you were my age, which is 14, did you know that you wanted to be an engineer? Well, first of all, I think that if I were your mom, I wouldn't want me to tell you what I was doing when I was your age. I wasn't a particularly good kid. I just turned out good. You know, I was always rambunctious. I was always setting stuff on fire and gluing stuff together and blowing things up and, you know, digging holes in this and building that and whatnot. So I was a rambunctious kid, but I always cared deeply about grades and I always knew that I wanted to do something in mathematics. That was probably my favorite topic. And ultimately, I chose engineering because engineering has a lot of math. And for somebody who has an analytical mind, who likes to build things, who likes to make things the world's never seen, being an engineer is the perfect career. And so I don't know when I really decided I wanted to be an engineer, but I knew that I wanted to be in the analytical fields and in math and science ever since I was quite young. Okay. Wow. So you're the CEO of a company, but you're also an engineer. Do you think it's interesting or fun to be an engineer if you aren't also the CEO of a company? Well, it turns out I never really thought that I would be a CEO. I always thought that I would be an engineer. And I would say that the funnest part of my work is when I'm doing engineering. You know, what engineering really is, is understanding problems, having tools that helps you analyze problems and break the problems down into smaller pieces so that you can find sound, mathematically sound or scientifically sound solutions for those problems. And if you were clever, you would also be able to find solutions that were innovative in some way, that the world has never thought of in some way, that's particularly simple, elegant, cost-effective, you know, something that's special. And so being an engineer is really about problem solving. It turns out that being a marketing person, being a marketeer is a problem solving. Being a CEO is problem solving. Being a salesperson is problem solving. Being an investor is problem solving. Most of life is really about smart problem solving. And I found that my engineering skills and problem solving and my education and first principle knowledge has really helped in almost everything that I do, including being a CEO. And if you think about what a CEO does, in the final analysis, you're trying to lead a company, a group of people in an endeavor that is meaningful to make a contribution to society in a way that other companies have not. And at its core, it's a problem solving exercise. And so I think being an engineer is a great training for any CEO. And as it turns out, I learned recently, Professor Plummer was, I was with him yesterday, and he said he's the Dean of Engineering, and he showed some statistics that, and I think I've seen these statistics before, that CEOs of many of the world's top 500 companies have engineering backgrounds. And so I think it stands to reason that having first principled skills in analyzing problems and coming up with clever solutions is helpful to all aspects of people's careers and life. And so a video I watched said that you were really shy when you were young. Do you think, and now I see you talk all the time in public, do you think that you have to overcome being shy to be good at engineering? I'm still shy. I still don't seek out public speaking opportunities. Ask your mom. I try to resist almost all invitations. And so I'm basically still shy. When you communicate though, when you're speaking, when you and I are speaking right now, and when I'm speaking to people I care about, or talking on a particular matter that's important to me, there are several things that I've learned that's really about, at the core, important to communications, which is number one, know your subject matter. Don't talk about things you don't know and talk about things you do know, but know them. Know the things that you know. And then secondarily, or even more important than that, be thoughtful of the audience you're talking to and be empathetic to what's important to them, and try to make the time that they've spent listening to you worthwhile. And so, you know, if you care about the audience and you're empathetic to them, and you know your subject matter, and you try to keep whatever it is you're trying to say as simple and straightforward and as clear speaking as possible, I found that to be wonderful communication skills. I like it when people talk to me that way, and keeping it simple, and so I try to keep it simple as well. So what's it like to be an engineer at NVIDIA? What projects do you work on? What do you do every day? Well, you know, if you look at NVIDIA, we are the world leader in visual computing. If you can imagine this, whatever it is that that you love or do, we are the world's best at what we do. We have no, we have lots of competition, but we have no peers. We are absolutely the best at what we do. Well, people who are best at visual computing or computer graphics come to work at NVIDIA, and so one of the things that's really cool about our company is that you're surrounded with people who are genuinely passionate about doing the same thing that you're trying to do in the same field, and they're the world's best at what they do. You know, if you could imagine, whether it's an Italian restaurant or a race car company or airplane company or whatever it is, this particular company is the world's best, unambiguously the world's best at what they do. Well, that's us, and so we try to find projects in our company that are meaningful to do. The world's never done it before, that if we succeeded, we could make a real contribution to society, and that utilizes our skills in a very specific way, meaning that it makes sense that NVIDIA engineers did the work, and that if we did it, it would bring us joy. And so, if you just simply summarized what I said, let's do something that matters, something that we're good at, and something that brings us joy. And so, what I've just described is really the first principles of strategic thinking, and it's how we decide what to work on, and of course, if it followed and satisfied the rules that I just provided, it must be pretty cool, must be pretty cool stuff. Now, of course, we're in the computer graphics business, and so, you know, video games and amazing, beautiful graphics are made possible by the work that we do, and so you could imagine how wonderful it is and how much joy that it brings to be able to create these amazing imagery that comes out of the computer. And so, the work that we do is inherently fun, and we're doing it with the best people in the world, and we do things that the world's never seen before, so, you know, what could be more fun than that? So, kids my age can think that engineers are geeks. Do you think that you're a geek, or that anyone that works for you is a geek? No, I'm a pretty well-adjusted person. I'm just kidding. I mean, geeks are well-adjusted people. You know, I think there was a time where when I was growing up, you know, I'm not a football player, and I wasn't a basketball player, and I wasn't an athlete, and most people who enjoy computers or who likes math and science are holed up in, you know, computer clubs after school, and so we're not out and about very often, and so the people we hang out, you know, all of us that hang out together, you know, we don't dress that well. We don't look that cool. You know, you're just, you're just, you love math. You know, what can you do? Now, it turns out that most of my friends that loved computers and loved math and loved science, they turned out to have been pretty cool guys, you know, and I married a really cool engineer. My wife is an engineer, and she turned out really cool, and so it's not so bad being a geek these days. It's more cool than it used to be. I heard from someone that there was never a problem you couldn't fix. Do you think that's true, or was there a problem that you couldn't fix? There's some problems you can fix. I don't recall one, and the reason for that is because because either you find a solution for it, or you change the problem so that you can find a solution for it, and I think in a lot of ways, some people call that thinking out of the box. If you can't solve something, you know, either sometimes it's not meant to be solved or you can change the problem, you know, in a way that that is solvable. Now, there are some problems that if you try to solve it in the most literal sense, it would take a long time to solve. It might take a lot of money to solve. It might take an enormous amount of cost, you know, in time or resource or whatever it is or materials, but if you change the problem, and you truly understand what is it, what is the person really trying to ask, you know, what is at the core of that problem? Maybe you can express that problem in a slightly different way, and as a result, it becomes solvable, and a solution can be found. Maybe you can simplify the problem. Maybe you can break the problem down into 10 pieces, and that you would solve it over time, and there's a lot of different ways to look at the problem, and smart thinking about a problem is really at the beginning of engineering. It's asking, asking the question, what is this problem really about? You know, what is this problem really about? And oftentimes, by asking that question, what is this problem really about? You know, what is, what are they really asking? What are we really looking for? How can I express this problem in different ways? You know, when you think about it that way, all of a sudden, the number of solutions really, really expand. Once people get their engineering degree, there are very many opportunities. Do you think that's going to change in the future? There are always opportunities for people who are empathetic to the challenges that are out there, and can adapt themselves to find a solution for those challenges. And if you're trained as an engineer, but you turned out to be a lawyer, you trained as an engineer, you turned out to be a marketing person, you trained as an engineer, you turned out to be a CEO, you trained as an engineer, you turned out to be an artist. You know, I think that it almost doesn't matter what the end profession is. I think the most important thing about engineering is that you're learning life skills about asking the right questions, and breaking down problems, and finding solutions to it that are elegant and optimal, and have the life skills to continuously improve. And, you know, all of those skills are really all that engineering teaches us, along with, of course, a lot of first principle knowledge that is, you know, that is when applied, helps us find more elegant solutions. And so that's really all engineering is about. And if you're open minded about what passion you will have, and what interests will draw you in, you don't have to just be a computer engineer, you don't have to be a chip design engineer, or a software engineer, or, you know, a search engine engineer, or whatever it is, you don't let anybody pigeonhole you. And you decide, you know, what work brings you the most joy. But the engineering foundation teaches you how to be a better problem solver for whatever that career happens to be. And so problem solving is life, you know, problem solving is life. And what could be better preparation for life than to have the world's best skills for problem solving? And so that's the way to think about engineering. And, and I think that, that the career opportunities for young engineers is, is growing, if anything, you know, and, and we now, we now know that, that being trained as an engineer doesn't mean you necessarily have to be an electrical engineer. You know, you could be all kinds of things. Just the engineering training is invaluable either way. Do you, there's, what's the hardest part of being an engineer, the hard classes or the competition for college spots and jobs once you're done? There's, first of all, there's always a college. And so winning should not be winning a spot, earning a spot, succeeding. Those are, those shouldn't be expectations that you have of yourself, frankly. You know, I'm a big believer that doing your best is more important than winning. And the reason for that isn't, isn't that winning doesn't matter. Getting into Stanford was important to me. And coming to school here was important to me. Getting the best grades was important to me. And doing well in school was important to me. Doing well at work is important to me. Winning at work is important to me. I want our company to do well. I want us to be the best. That's important to me. However, setting the expectation that you will be the best, that you are going to be number one, that, that, that you have to go to this particular college or whatever it is, might set such a high expectation. It prevents people from even starting. There are only so many people who are going to win the US Open. There are only so many people who are going to be world champions. It shouldn't be the expectation to go down the journey. And, and, and I genuinely believe that the journey is, is ultimately the best part. You know, I'm not trying to reach anywhere. I'm not trying to get anywhere. I'm just trying to have fun as I go. And if that's the philosophy, then I would, I would say that all, all kids ought to go to school and they ought to go to college. They ought to endeavor whatever field that they want to endeavor, whether it's quantum physics or biomedicine or robotics or, you know, whatever, and whatever field. And just, just enjoy it. Just enjoy it. Just go do it. Just enjoy it. And there will be a school, there will be a job. And with that belief, you can start, you can start the journey. You know, if you set too high expectations from the get-go, it might, might be so high an expectation that most people then, then run away from even trying. And so I think, I think trying as, you know, it was a Benjamin Franklin that said, that said, waking up is, is a half the battle. I think it is true. Just getting to work is half the battle. And getting to school is half the battle. And the rest of it is just enjoy your way there and do your absolute best and try to, try to live life with no regrets. And, and if you did your best, what's there to regret? Yeah. Right. Thank you so much for doing this interview with me today. I found the answers to the questions. They were really, really interesting answers. I learned a lot. I appreciate it too. I enjoyed talking to you. If every eighth, eighth grader was as smart as you, we'd be in good shape. All right. Thank you.