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If I could give each of you a graduation present, it would be a copy of The Better Angels of Our Nature, by Steven Pinker. Like our good friend Warren Buffett, I measure my happiness by whether people close to me are happy and love me, and by the difference I make in other people’s lives. Melinda does that for me, and I am a better person for it. Meanwhile, I encourage you to surround yourself with people who challenge you, teach you, and push you to be your best self. You can start fighting inequity sooner, whether it is in your own community or in a country halfway around the world. Technology lets you see problems in ways my friends and I never could, and it empowers you to help in ways we never could. You know much more than I did when I was your age. We realized we couldn’t wait to get involved-we had to start giving back right away. It blew our minds that millions of children there were dying from diseases that no one in rich countries even worried about. We thought it was the most unjust thing in the world.

When we came back, we began learning more. I did not see it up close until my late 30s, when Melinda and I took our first trip to Africa. The sooner you can do this, if you don’t already, the richer your life will be.Īnother thing I wish I had understood much earlier is what true inequity looks like. I had to learn to recognize and appreciate people’s different talents. In the early days of Microsoft, I believed that if you could write great code, you could also manage people well or run a marketing team or take on any other task. For one thing, intelligence is not quite as important as I thought it was, and it takes many different forms. I wish I had understood these things better when I left school. The third is the biosciences, which are ripe with opportunities to help people live longer, healthier lives.īut some things in life are true no matter what career you choose. The second is energy, because making it clean, affordable, and reliable will be essential for fighting poverty and climate change. We have only begun to tap into all the ways it will make people’s lives more productive and creative. (Which explains my lack of a college degree-I left school because we were afraid the revolution would happen without us.) If I were starting out today and looking for the same kind of opportunity to make a big impact in the world, I would consider three fields. I was lucky to be in my early 20s when the digital revolution was just getting under way, and Paul Allen and I had the chance to help shape it. New college graduates often ask me for career advice.

At the risk of piling on, I thought I would share a few thoughts. Congratulations! You’ve just accomplished something I never managed to do-earn a college degree.īetween your commencement speaker and every aunt and uncle at your graduation party, I am sure you are getting a lot of advice.