Here is an excerpt from an article contributed to Forbes by Kashmir Hill. To read the complete article, check out others, and obtain subscription information, please click here.
* * *
Harvard Business School grad and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg imparted words of wisdom to her alma mater’s graduating class. She didn’t say much about her company’s rocky week on the stock market, beyond kiddingly telling the newly-minted MBAs that “keep[ing] in touch via Facebook [is] critical to your future success,” adding, “And since we’re public now, could you click on an ad or two?”
Poets&Quantshas her speech in full. Sandberg, who graduated in ’95, recounted advice she had gotten from then-CEO of Google Eric Schmidt when she was job hunting: “Get on a rocket ship.”
After awhile I had a few offers and I had to make a decision, so what did I do? I am MBA trained, so I made a spreadsheet. I listed my jobs in the columns and my criteria in the rows, and compared the companies and the missions and the roles. One of the jobs on that sheet was to become Google’s first business unit general manager, which sounds good now, but at the time no one thought consumer internet companies could ever make money. I was not sure there was actually a job there at all. Google had no business units, so what was there to generally manage? And the job was several levels lower than jobs I was being offered at other companies.
So I sat down with Eric Schmidt, who had just become the CEO, and I showed him the spreadsheet and I said, this job meets none of my criteria. He put his hand on my spreadsheet and he looked at me and said, “Don’t be an idiot.” Excellent career advice. And then he said, “Get on a rocket ship.” When companies are growing quickly and they are having a lot of impact, careers take care of themselves. And when companies aren’t growing quickly or their missions don’t matter as much, that’s when stagnation and politics come in. If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat. Just get on.
Sandberg’s track record indicates that she’s a good judge of rocket ships. Google and Facebook are still blasting away. Google, with its roll-out of driverless cars and augmented reality glasses, seems especially excited about “going where no man (or public company) has gone before.” Which other companies are current rocket ships?
* * *
To check out Sandberg’s book, Lean In, please click here.
According to Kashmir, “I’m a privacy pragmatist, writing about the intersection of law, technology, social media and our personal information. If you have story ideas or tips, e-mail me at khill@forbes.com. These days, I’m a senior online editor at Forbes. I was previously an editor at Above the Law, a legal blog, relying on the legal knowledge gained from two years working for corporate law firm Covington & Burling — a Cliff’s Notes version of law school. In the past, I’ve been found slaving away as an intern in midtown Manhattan at The Week Magazine, in Hong Kong at the International Herald Tribune, and in D.C. at the Washington Examiner. I also spent a few years traveling the world managing educational programs for international journalists for the National Press Foundation. I have few illusions about privacy — feel free to follow me on Twitter: kashhill, subscribe to me on Facebook, Circle me on Google+, or use Google Maps to figure out where the Forbes San Francisco bureau is, and come a-knockin’.”