计算机科学家吴军在约翰·霍普金斯大学毕业致辞：我的三堂人生课

作者：  来源：美国华裔教授专家网

甘治教务长，施莱辛格院长，教授们，客人们以及毕业生们：

我非常荣幸能够回到约翰·霍普金斯大学怀廷工学院。首先，恭喜所有在今晚收到了你们这一生最高学位，明天将开始人生新征程的博士毕业生们。我知道你们对未来一定倍感兴奋，就如同20年前我在这里收到我的博士学位时一样。

今天，我想和你们分享让我受益终身的三堂人生课。

-01-

第一堂课是我们的老校长比尔·布莱迪在我的硕士毕业典礼上分享的。他和我们分享了哈里·杜鲁门总统的故事，尤其强调了运气对成功的重要性。布莱迪校长讲，每个人都会经历好运气和坏运气，没有例外。然而，好运气有时会导致相反的结果，反过来也是一样。因此，一定要小心，并且要做好准备。这些话后来就在我身上应验了。

1999年，当我开始收尾我的博士研究工作时，我连续发表了多篇论文，其中的一篇还获得了欧洲语音大会(Eurospeech)的最佳论文奖。很走运，对吧?此后，很多大公司的研究院请我去做报告，包括贝尔实验室、IBM研究所、SRI国际研究所等等。好运气好像一直都在。再加上2000年的就业市场非常好，我实验室的师兄师姐们都从大公司拿到了聘书，我确信我也能找到一份好工作。不幸的是，由于我太过自信，没有认真准备毕业委员会的口试(GBO)，我没有通过。从此，好运好像就离开我了。

首先，我不得不再多做一年的研究，然后各种坏运气接踵而至——先是互联网泡沫破碎，然后发生了9·11恐怖袭击，很多大公司冻结了招聘，并且开始裁撤现有的员工。我除了等这些公司重新开放招聘，别无他法。感谢我的导师库旦普教授，他允许我在学校多待一年，这样我可以维持我的学生签证。当我在等待AT&T和IBM等公司的机会时，我没有什么事情可做，于是到网上去碰碰运气，看看在裁员风暴中是否还有公司在招人。我发现有一家叫做Google的小公司居然还在招人，而且我的经验符合他们的要求。于是我联系Google的人，递交了我的简历。很幸运的是，他们回复了我并且很快安排了面试。这一次，我认真做了准备，所有的面试环节都很顺利。面试结束的三天后，我拿到了Google的聘书。有意思的是，随后几家大公司也开始向我抛来橄榄枝。可以想见，如果它们的聘书早来几周，我肯定会接受其中的一家。但是这一次，我决定在Google上赌一下我的运气。结果我赌赢了。

回过头来看，如果我当初运气特别好，赶在2000年毕业，我一定会拿到一些大公司的offer，并且在其中一家安顿下来。这样我也就失去了一辈子一次的Google机会。事实上，那些大公司里不少面试我的科学家，很快也都加入了Google。很多人都在想，今年的就业市场非常不好。大公司都在裁员，这对毕业生来讲是一个噩耗。

但是请记住，我们不会总是遇到坏运气，好运气可能来得比我们想得要快。我们唯一能做的事情就是，准备好。将来，我们一定会取得一些成功，有些人可能会觉得那是自己的能力和努力所致，但要防止成为狂妄自大的牺牲品，因为坏运气可能正在暗处等待着。在一生中，我们一定会不止一次地遇到挫折，但即使身处逆境，也不要绝望，因为好运气也会等着我们。我问过十多名生意做到数十亿美元的公司创始人，他们成功的原因是什么。他们一致地认为，自己只不过是运气好而已。我也问过上百名失败的创业者，他们学到的教训是什么。几乎没有人意识到自己的问题，他们都抱怨自己只是运气不好。但运气，从来只会垂青那些谦卑而敬畏命运的人。

-02-

第二堂课来自于我在Google的上级们，包括阿米特·辛格、阿兰·尤斯塔斯和埃里克·施密特。他们鼓励我发挥想象力，关注那些能够给全世界大多数人带来福祉的项目。当我在Google站稳脚，有了点成就后，一天，阿米特来找我，希望我开发亚洲语言的搜索算法，包括针对中文、日文和韩文的算法。当时我对此并不感兴趣，我更想回去做自然语言处理的研究。这个领域从我当研究生时就一直很吸引我。但阿米特说服了我。他说，亚洲有40亿人，但是我们却无法为他们提供和英语同样好的服务。你想，如果有10%，也就是4亿人能从你的算法中受益，这比发表那些论文的意义大千万倍。事实证明，他是对的，到今天依然有超过十亿人受益于我的算法。后来施密特知道了这件事，他非常兴奋，给了我不受限制的招聘名额，让我们打造一个针对亚洲市场的产品团队。当我们决定做一件事的时候，我们通常会考虑自己想做什么或者自己擅长做什么，但更重要的是，我们需要考虑世界需要我们做什么。换句话说，我们要考虑如何让这个世界变得更好。我们的成就，取决于世界上有多少人受益于我们的工作。

各位作为未来工业界的领袖，你们要敢于往大了想，往广了想，不要因为不愿意离开舒适区而限制了自己的潜力。

-03-

我学到的第三堂课是回馈社会。1996年，当我来到霍普金斯时，我提着两个行李箱，兜里装了几百美元，这是我全部的家当。当时，是约翰·霍普金斯大学给了我全额的奖学金，才让我能够负担教育和生活的费用。霍普金斯不仅给了我最好的教育，而且让我有无数的机会，接触到这个领域中大量的顶级研究人员。没有在霍普金斯求学的经历，就没有我后来的成功。因此，我一直感激学校，并且尽我所能支持学校。我在读书时，受益于校友们对学校的捐助，因此我希望未来的年轻人能够同样受益于我们的努力。

我知道你们将来都会在职业上极为成功，因此我希望你们也能以你们的方式回馈学校。因为给予总是一件让人无比快乐的事情。

今天的世界远不完美，我们要面对战争、疾病、歧视以及气候变化等等问题。我不知道是不是因为我们运气太坏生在了这样一个时代。但我知道，抱怨于事无补，而行动却可以。因此，霍普金斯的毕业生们，这是你们的责任和荣幸，应用你们在学校所学的知识和能力，去解决世界的问题，让这个世界变得更好。我相信，你们必定能做到，你们必将做到!

谢谢大家!

【附本次演讲英文】

Provost Gange，Dean Schlesinger, faculties, distinguished guests, and my fellow graduates.

It’s my great honor to be back here at WSE. I’m here to congratulate all of you, who will receive the highest degree of your life tonight and start a new journey tomorrow. I’m sure you must be very excited about your wonderful life ahead. I felt the same way when I received my Ph.D. degree here twenty years ago. Today I would like to share with you three lessons I learned along the way that benefitted me in my life and career.

*

The first lesson was delivered by our ex-president Bill Brody at my master’s degree commencement in 1998. He shared the story of Harry Truman, highlighting the significance of luck in success. President Brody said that everybody will experience good luck and bad luck without exception. However, good luck can often result in adverse outcomes, and vice versa. So it is best to be careful and to be prepared. These words came true for me.

When I was wrapping up my Ph.D. research in 1999, I published several papers, one of which received the Best Paper Award from Eurospeech. Good luck, right? I was invited to give talks at many big research Labs, including Bell Labs, IBM Research, and SRI International. More good luck. The job market was so strong in 2000, and all my group mates received multiple offers from big companies. I felt sure I would be blessed in my own job search.

Unfortunately, I was overconfident. I did not prepare adequately for my GBO, so I failed it. Bad luck reared its head. As a result, I had to remain a student for one more year. After that, more bad luck ensued. The Internet bubble burst and 911 transpired. Most companies froze their hiring and laid off existing employees. I could do nothing but wait for the big companies to resume hiring. Thanks to my advisor Sanjeev Khudanpur, I was allowed to stay at school for one more year so I could keep my F1 visa.

While waiting for offers from AT&T and IBM, I searched on the web to see if there were any companies still hiring in the midst of layoffs. I found an opening at a small company called Google, and my experience fit their requirements. I contacted them and submitted my resume.

Fortunately, they replied to me and scheduled interviews. This time around, I was very well prepared, so all interviews went extremely smoothly. I received an offer 3 days later. Out of 1500 resumes, I was now the lucky one. Funnily enough, those big research labs then reopened and told me they would send me offers now. If their offers had come a couple of weeks earlier, I would not have hesitated to accept one of them.

However, this time I bet my fortune on Google, and I won. In retrospect, if I had been fortunate to graduate on time in 2000, and I would have settled down at a big lab, I would have lost my once-in-a-lifetime chance to join Google when it was still very small. In fact, many scientists who interviewed me at those larger companies joined Google later.

Many people thought the job market was bad this year, as many big companies were laying off people. It meant bad luck for graduates. But just remember, you won’t be unlucky forever and good luck may come sooner than you expect. So the only thing you can do is to be ready! In the future, you will succeed many times. You may attribute everything to your talent and hard work, but you must not fall prey to hubris – for bad luck may be just around the corner. You will also endure hard times throughout your life, but even in the face of adversity, never despair – because good luck is waiting for you. I asked tens of entrepreneurs who had successfully founded billion-dollar companies what was the number one reason for their success. They unanimously agreed that they just got lucky. I also asked hundreds of founders who lost their businesses, what lessons they learned.

Few reflected upon their own problems, and nearly everybody replied they were just unlucky. Fortune favors humble people who are in awe of fate.

*

The second lesson comes from my higher-ups at Google, including Amit Singhal, Alan Eustace, and Eric Schmidt. They encouraged me to think big and to focus only on projects that could benefit a vast majority of people in the world.

One day, after I had built up my reputation at Google, Amit approached me to ask if I could write search algorithms for Asian languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc. I was not interested in that idea. I wanted to return to natural language processing research, which I had been interested in since I was a graduate student. When Amit tried to convince me, he told me this：“There are 4 billion people in Asia but we cannot provide services equivalent to those in English. Just imagine, if 10%, 400 million people benefit from your algorithms, that achievement is a thousand times greater than that of publishing papers.”I thought he was right and I wrote the algorithms, which were still used by billions of people today. When Eric Schmidt heard about this, he was so excited that he gave me an unlimited head count to found an Engineering team to build products for the Asian market.

When we decide what to do, most of us focus on what we like to do or what we are good at. But more importantly, we need to think about what the world needs us to do. In other words, how can we make the world better through our efforts? Our achievement depends on how many people in the world can benefit from our work. As future industry leaders, you should think big, and think broadly. Don’t limit your potential to your own comfort zone.

*

The third lesson I learned was to give back to society. When I arrived at Hopkins in 1996, I carried only two suitcases in my hands and several hundred dollars in my pocket. It was Johns Hopkins that granted me a scholarship so that I could afford my education and living expenses.

Hopkins also gave me the best education and countless opportunities to meet people in my research area. I couldn’t have succeeded without my experiences at Hopkins. So I’m always grateful to the school and I try to do my best to support school. When I was a student, I benefited from the contributions of alumni, so I hope young people can benefit from our efforts too. I’m sure all of you will be very successful in your careers in the future, so I hope all of you can give back to the school in your own way. Giving will make you happier!

Today, the world is far from perfect —— there are wars, diseases, discrimination, climate challenges, and so forth. Are we unlucky to be born in an era with so many problems? I don’t know. But I know complaining won’t help; Actions will. So, Hopkins graduates, it’s your responsibility and privilege to use the knowledge and ability you obtained at school to solve world problems and make the world better. I believe you can, and you will do it!

Thank you.

Jun Wu

来源时间：2023/6/4   发布时间：2023/6/1

旧文章ID：29901