Among more than 100 esteemed technology leaders and web3 pioneers who spoke at SmartCon 2022 was former Google CEO and strategic advisor to Chainlink Labs, Eric Schmidt, who took the stage with Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov to discuss how Schmidt applies his experience scaling Google to growing web3 from the ground up.
In addition to explaining why he thinks Chainlink’s secure and reliable trust-minimized compute services will become “a key component” of the web3 infrastructure stack, Schmidt shared his advice to developers thinking about building a career in the rapidly cycling web3 industry.
Schmidt, who has “historically ignored, as a matter of business, what was going on in the public markets,” said that standout technology is always worth pursuing because it will ultimately succeed in any market.
“I think we make our own weather in our industry. We make our own economics, and the way you win is you build a product that solves a real problem, and you do it now, and it takes off.”
He shared a pivotal moment from his collegiate years to illustrate this point.
“When I was in college, there was an article that said, ‘We have too many engineers in our country and we won’t ever need any more.’ And I, of course, was majoring in electrical engineering, because computer science didn’t exist. And I remember thinking, ‘Well that’s a bummer,’ but I didn’t change what I was doing.”
Schmidt reflected on why he’s glad he stayed the course with his career goals – not just because the article’s prediction ultimately proved incorrect, but because he believes that allowing anything other than one’s own passionate aptitude to steer their life is a poor strategy.
“As a matter of your life’s choice, because life is short and it’s over fairly quickly, figure out what you really want to work on and do something which is exceptional. If you’re doing something which is exceptional with a team that you love, what are you complaining about? That’s the best of life.”
Watch Eric Schmidt and Sergey Nazarov’s fireside chat at SmartCon 2022.