stories I was hanging out in Seattle
with a friend of mine and he showed me
this picture of in-and-out burger which
is a fast food chain mainly on the west
coast and it was it looked so good I
mean really good guys I’m talking about
a double-double with animal fries and a
shake now being forward-thinking
seventeen-year-olds we took a little
money out of the spontaneous activity
funds that we saved up and we flew to LA
just to get this $3 burger not only and
this is not a plug for in-and-out
but not only was one of the best burgers
that I’ve had to date but this was
actually one of the most pivotal moments
in my life on the flight back to Seattle
I was sitting next to this guy in a suit
and we were in a brand-new aircraft
ready to take off he turns around to me
and he goes you know these newer
aircraft aren’t as tried-and-true as
their older ones and then he kept on
going he said also you should drink a
lot of water on this flight the
pressurization makes you lose a lot of
body fluid now this is really bizarre
small talk to make on an airplane with a
stranger but we ended up talking the
entire two-hour flight mark the guy that
I was talking to said that he does
consulting and how it’s so much better
than your standard nine-to-five desk job
I told him that I also work remotely and
a little bit about how I was taking
classes at University of Washington but
when I was applying for internships I
wasn’t really getting any calls back
after talking with him a little more
mark was interested in my story and he
ended up helping me start my career the
next day mark gave me an opportunity to
prove myself a web development project
that his current guy just couldn’t
really complete and 15 minutes after he
sent me everything he needed to get
completed I fixed everything i over
delivered and he hired me on the spot
mark continued to help me start my
career he told me at the age of 17 that
I should start my own consulting company
that it would be a great way to get in
to get experience in lots of different
industry
quickly and that I’d be able to charge a
little more money for my work it also
helped me overcome the instant
disqualification issue where it was
really difficult to convince businesses
to hire someone under 18 Marc helped me
set up a slide deck and I began getting
clients I was working with a company out
in Colorado Marc’s food tour company in
Seattle and a wine tour company out of
Oregon
I was working non-stop 8:00 a.m. to
midnight every single day Criss crossing
the country sleeping on floors and
getting the job done and a little bit of
free do I was working with opportunities
that I wouldn’t have had the opportunity
to tackle otherwise I was meeting people
that I never thought I’d be exposed to
in places that I never thought I’d ever
go I was loving it so what happened
perfect storm of luck confidence and
execution now I realize that saying the
start a career young you have to be
lucky is awful useless advice so bear
with me here you have to create your own
luck you have to put yourself in
positions where people will meet you and
be captivated by your story and want to
help you I create my own luck by just
traveling places being super
irresponsible and eventually I end up
meeting let have a need that I can
fulfill obviously some people are
luckier than others and you know what I
used to really think that I was trapped
in high school I was growing up in
northeastern Pennsylvania where there
isn’t really a tech scene and I just I
felt so angry that I had all this
passion but I didn’t have any
opportunities to really explore it and
branch off when I was 15 I realized
there’s really no sense in being angry
right it wasn’t my fault
didn’t have any tech opportunities near
me but it was my responsibility to
change that and to be quite honest at
this point even if I wasn’t a tech
environment I don’t think anyone would
have given me a shot because at this
point I look like that poster child of a
computer geek right I mean I was you
don’t see in this picture but I was
wearing skin high socks clothes that
don’t suit me or fit
wait I waited like 2 months in between
haircuts you know what I’m talking about
I like to think that I look a little
better now so like I said I took
responsibility and I made the change at
the age of 16 I decided to spend my
entire summer living on my own in
Seattle Washington where I took computer
science classes at at University of
Washington now this was the first time
that I ever lived on my own
and I was 16 like I said I remember
before I left my mom she didn’t just
give me a hug and a kiss she yell at me
in perfect New York City Spanglish if
you come back with a tooth or piercings
I swear to God I won’t help you with
your tuition and actually after I when I
came back home after that trip I were
fake earrings off the plane and that was
her reaction ha ha I love your mama okay
so like I said I was taking computer
science classes at University of
Washington and they were taught by a
grad student
Zhora Fong now this was a lecture of 300
students and I remember the second
lecture of the course mentioned and if
you want to learn about file compression
swing by office hours in ten minutes
ten of us showed up and she started
explaining this this concept I noticed
that as she continued her explanation
she got excited right she was smiling
about it
laughing prodding us to think of
choosing her logic so we could learn
more
Zarah loved computer science and had no
problem communicating her passion for it
and it was infectious
that’s Sora she made me take a step back
and realize wait a minute it’s cool to
care and to be able to express it I
ended up going to office hours nearly
every week where she take me one-on-one
where she teach me something new and out
of scope of the class and ultimately it
allowed me to eliminate the fear that I
had of expressing my own passion for
computer science and to communicate
enthusiastically after that quarter I
felt empowered
for the first time in my life I felt
intelligent I valued precision passion
and tact
I felt motivated and I finally had the
confidence to do something with it okay
so let’s go back to that perfect storm
luck confidence and execution I was
lucky enough to sit next to mark who at
the time had a need that I could fulfill
I learned how to be confident and how to
communicate enthusiastically from Zora
now even if I had those two pieces to
that puzzle if I didn’t know how to
execute right or over-deliver then I
would have failed Mark’s test and I
wouldn’t be talking to all of you today
I think that there’s a very important
distinguishment to make here between
capability and ability any computer
science major is capable of explaining
anything you want to know about computer
science and given a project they’ll
probably be able to get you 95% of the
way there but the only people who can
say that they’re able those are the
people with intense passion for what
they do those are the people who embody
their skill and live life every single
day bringing that skill into their lives
those are the people who can say that
they’re able now obviously the other
part of that the people who are able to
have experience but that doesn’t
necessarily only come from having jobs
or internships you know these people who
are super passionate about what they do
they’ll look for any unconventional way
to get time to work on projects with
friends or to solve a problem that
they’re having or that they recognize
that someone else is having or research
at the University there is an unlimited
amount of opportunities to truly reach
out and get those experiences there’s
this amazing monologue by Alec Baldwin
about this idea of always be closing the
notion that there are two types of
people in the world
the closers are the people who start
something put in all their effort into
it and see it out to completion even if
they fail they’ll learn from their
mistakes and apply that knowledge to
other endeavors people who don’t do that
there are losers I believe in this so
strongly that I got it tattooed on my
arm and believe me I’m about to get a
very angry call for my mother because
she just found out I got a tattoo but
it’s true always be closing put in all
your effort learn from your mistakes and
you’ll see results in some form now okay
I realize that the tech industry is a
lot different from other industries but
I’ve found that all these little
anecdotes they apply to really anything
when I was working with boot makers in
Colorado I expected these guys to show
up in the morning do their line work and
go home right like any other job but
what I found was an intense amount of
passion they show up at 8:00 a.m. they
cut so shape and last leather into these
gorgeous leather boots and in the
meantime they be laughing with each
other they’d be dancing in music inside
jokes they’d be you know they’d grill at
lunchtime together they’d hang out on
the weekends and after work you’re not
looking at a company here you’re looking
at a group of people that loved each
other and look now these people didn’t
make a great amount of money and most of
them never finished college they didn’t
finish college not because they weren’t
smart enough to but rather they define
success for themselves in two parts I
will wake up happy every single day and
I will love what I’m doing every single
day and by that definition of success
they are some most successful people I
know they didn’t follow a path that
someone else told them to go down now if
I didn’t venture out in high school I
would have heard what every other high
school kid in America hears go be a stem
major in college it pays the most which
is great right the u.s. is behind in
engineering studies that being said a
very significant portion of our freshman
engineering students eventually run out
or change their majors by telling what
we’re asking our high school students to
compare the income of what they want to
do what they love and care about doing
just against what the highest paying
jobs are
think about that for a second isn’t it
obvious what the problem is with that
we’re teaching our students at the age
of sixteen to put a price tag on their
happiness we’re teaching them that
success equals money now most of us wind
up spending eight hours a day 40 hours a
week 2,000 hours a year doing our jobs
why are we funneling all these pit
halfed a nearly certain lifelong
dissatisfaction why isn’t happiness
factored into their advice and you know
what I’m guilty of following that path –
I went to college right after high
school just because that was the next
step right my entire life I was told you
need to get a degree to be successful
but halfway through my first semester of
college I flew back out to Seattle where
I met up with all my old roommates and
we competed in this hackathon which is
just a 24 hour long competition where
you use programming skills to create
something and solve a problem there I
was with some of my favorite people on
the planet in a room locked together 24
hours we’d sleep on chairs and solve a
problem that we cared about which at the
time was making stock trading
information more accessible to the
general public we ended up winning a
prize for our work and we ended up
having a small impact on the world I
remember though when I got back to
Syracuse Airport after that trip I just
felt sad I pumped the brakes and I
thought about what I was doing I was
paying thirty eight thousand dollars a
year for four years to get a piece of
paper that says to the world okay now
he’s ready to create stuff I had this
realization where I’d be spending the
rest of the semester without the
resources or the time to have an impact
on the world and create stuff I forgot
about what makes me happy
a week later I got a call back from
aerospace defense company where they
said that hey you got an internship for
the spring semester which was awesome
because I’m a student pilot and my dad
was a private
pilot and my grandfather worked on the
lunar excursion module so this goes
really deep it was so exciting and then
a week after that I got a call back from
a massive infrastructure and support in
software company and it was for a final
interview they asked me okay so
university of washington and then you
went to clarkson what why did you go
between the two I don’t think I ever
answer that question I am my memory it
goes oh man have you ever heard of
in-and-out burger that burger story was
one of the final factors in to be
landing a full-time software engineering
job with tuition assistance at 18 years
old so here’s what you should take away
from my talk there’s three important
facets not just to starting a career
young but for anything create your own
luck exude confidence and be an
enthusiastic communicator and execute
consistently over deliver once you get
your platform to prove yourself slam the
gas pedal to the metal regardless if
it’s a significant opportunity or an
insignificant opportunity if you pull it
off
it will change your life forever right
keeping an idea inside of you makes that
idea of powerless just like how wanting
to have that cushy positive experience
that wanting is a negative experience
you need to take action Casey nice that
said that if anyone stands in your way
the haters the doubters the people that
tell you you shouldn’t sure they may be
sitting at the top deck of the Titanic
drinking champagne but you you are the
iceberg for the past five years of my
life I felt like I’m racing up a rock
climbing wall blindly thrusting myself
upwards until somehow I find that next
peg I’ve never known where that next peg
is I’ve never have and you probably
won’t either sometimes define that next
peg you have to rust yourself higher but
the only way to find that next peg is to
surround yourself with people who are
extremely passionate about what you care
about but are smarter than you chances
are they are not on one of those fabled
pathways
success either and their love for their
trade will seep into your bones with all
that said I want to leave you with one
final thought oh I believe in ghosts no
not the ghost of Elvis or Christmas past
I believe in the ghosts of ideas I
believe in the lasting impact a person
can have on our society through the way
that we think or act we leave goes
behind everywhere we go and in this room
right now we’re sharing our idea ghosts
with each other and we will not walk out
those doors the same as we walked in
think back who are your mentors who
haunts you take a second some of mine
are Ivan Marc Zora my parents mark all
these all these different people in my
life they haunt me they’ve molded me
into the person that I am today I hope
that I haunt you too because I want my
ghost to live on in the future I’ll
continue living on earth as long as
people use the knowledge that I created
and shared to become better people even
long after I have passed away from our
own physical plane every memory we have
was impacted by a ghost and as long as
you my audience and anyone you talk to
you about this presentation lives I will
as well my name is Dustin Anton I’m 19
and I’m a software engineer thank
[Applause] you