谷歌女高管步步領先的秘訣
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盡量選擇與最聰明的人共事 ????梅耶爾1999年畢業于斯坦福大學（Stanford），此時正值第一次互聯網泡沫破滅的高峰期，當時的她面臨著一個問題：在14個工作邀請中做出選擇。 ????她說，她試著在曾經做出的所有最好的決定中總結出相同的思路。這些決定包括：就讀斯坦福大學，把專業從兒科神經學改為象征系統學，花一個夏天在人工智能領域工作，另一個夏天在蘇黎世銀行業工作。 ????她說：“我總是盡量選擇與最聰明的人共事。”她補充道，她最終選擇了谷歌公司。當然，這個初創公司取得的成功，她選擇加盟這家公司的主要因為還在于，她知道這個團隊可以使自己的編程能力得到大幅提升。 不要等到完全準備好了才行動 ????她從威斯康星州遷往加利福尼亞州就讀大學，把專業改為象征系統學。“我自己都無法描述這個專業，更不用說向我父母說清楚了。”梅耶爾用實踐證明告訴自己，她可以在沒有準備好的情況下取得成功。她說，她經歷的最大考驗發生在她就讀斯坦福大學期間在瑞士度過的那個夏假。 ????那天她去購買食品，突然之間就茅塞頓開。“第一天，我去商店購物就遇到了麻煩，因為在歐洲購買農產品[與在美國購買農產品]完全不同。”梅耶爾想買葡萄（她在兒時就非常喜歡葡萄，以至于她的父母給她起了綽號“瘋狂的葡萄”），但是她不知道如何稱重和打印價格標簽。 ????梅耶爾回憶說：“（商店里的）那個女人開始用德語對我大喊大叫。”這或許只是小事一樁，但是“我記得回到公寓時，我問自己，‘想什么呢？我不會說德語，我在這里甚至連買東西都不會。’” ????“不等完全做好準備就開始行動，這正是鞭策自己、讓自己成長的好時機，”她說她現在意識到了這一點。“身處困境、感到不自在的時候，別忘了問自己，‘來吧，看看這一次我又能學到什么東西？’” ????《財富》雜志的帕特里夏?塞勒斯在結束對梅耶爾的采訪時，提醒讀者關注IBM新任CEO吉尼?羅曼提10月份在出席最具影響力商界女性峰會時說過的話：“成長與舒適無法共存。”梅耶爾對此一定深以為然。 ????譯者：喬樹靜/汪皓 |
Surround yourself with the smartest people possible. ????Mayer graduated from Stanford in 1999, amidst the height of the first tech bubble, when she had a good problem on her hands: 14 job offers. What to do? ????She says she looked for the common thread of all the best decisions she had made: going to Stanford, changing her major from pediatric neuroscience to symbolic systems, spending a summer working in artificial intelligence and another in banking in Zurich. ????"I always surrounded myself with the smartest people I could find," she say. She settled on Google, she adds, because she knew the team there would help her coding skills grow a lot, regardless of the startup's success. Do something you're a little unready to do. ????Moving from Wisconsin to California for college and then changing her focus to symbolic systems --"a major I couldn't really describe myself, let alone to my father"--Mayer proved to herself that she could do things before she felt ready. Her biggest test, she says, came during her summer in Switzerland while she was a student at Stanford. ????And her A-ha moment came while shopping for food, of all things. "The first day, I went to the grocery store and got in trouble because, it turns out, you buy produce in Europe completely differently [than in America]." Mayer simply wanted to buy grapes (a fruit she so loved as a kid that her family nicknamed her "The Grape Ape"), but she couldn't master the process of weighing the fruit and printing the price sticker. ????"This woman just started yelling at me in German," Mayer recalls. The moment may seem trivial, but "I remember going back to my apartment and just being like, 'What was I thinking? I don't speak the language, I can't even buy produce here." ????"When you do something you're not ready to do, that's when you push yourself and you grow," she says she now realizes. "It's when you sort of move through that moment of discomfort of, 'Wow, what have I gotten myself into this time?'" ????Fortune's Pattie Sellers closed the interview with Mayer by reminding the audience of wisdom that Ginni Rometty, IBM's (IBM) new CEO, shared at the Most Powerful Women Summit in October: "Growth and comfort do not co-exist." Mayer would surely agree. |
