毕业致辞｜吴军：我的三堂人生课

当地时间5月22日，硅谷投资人、约翰·霍普金斯大学工学院董事吴军博士在美国约翰·霍普金斯大学工学院博士生毕业典礼上发表演讲。

当地时间5月22日，硅谷投资人吴军博士在美国约翰·霍普金斯大学工学院博士生毕业典礼上发表演讲。

吴军说，“20年前，在我毕业时，就曾想过有朝一日可以站在讲台上，作为嘉宾跟新一代毕业生们分享我的故事。20年后，我也算是得偿所愿了。”

现为约翰·霍普金斯大学工学院董事的吴军，毕业于清华大学和约翰·霍普金斯大学，计算机科学博士，人工智能、自然语言处理和网络搜索专家，曾先后供职谷歌、腾讯。2014年，他作为创始合伙人创立丰元投资。

以下为演讲全文：

甘奇（Gange）教务长，施莱辛格（Schlesinger）院长，教授们，嘉宾们，还有我的毕业生朋友们：

我非常荣幸能够回到约翰·霍普金斯大学怀廷工学院（Whiting School of Engineering）。我在这里向你们所有人表示祝贺，你们今晚将获得人生中的最高学位，明天也将开始新的征程。我相信你们一定对未来的精彩人生感到非常兴奋。20年前我在这里获得博士学位时，也有同样的感觉。今天，我想与你们分享我一路走来学到的三堂人生课，它们使我的生活和事业受益匪浅。

第一堂课是我们的老校长比尔·布罗迪（Bill Brody）在1998年我的硕士毕业典礼上讲的。他分享了哈里·杜鲁门（Harry Truman，美国前总统）的故事，强调了运气对成功的意义。布罗迪校长说，每个人都会经历好运和厄运，没有例外。然而，好运往往会导致不利的结果，反之亦然。因此，最好小心谨慎，做好准备。这些话在我身上应验了。

当我在1999年开始收尾博士研究工作时，我连续发表了多篇论文，其中一篇获得了Eurospeech（一个专注于语音技术研究领域的国际学术会议）的最佳论文奖。运气不错，对吧？我被邀请到许多大的研究实验室做讲座，包括贝尔实验室、IBM研究院和斯坦福国际研究所。还有更多好运气。2000年的就业市场非常强劲，我的组员们都收到了大公司的多个offer（录用通知）。我觉得自己在找工作时肯定会有好运。

不幸的是，我过于自信了。我没有为毕业委员会的口试（GBO）做充分的准备，所以没有通过。坏运气出现了。结果，我不得不再当一年学生。此后，更多厄运接踵而至——先是互联网泡沫破灭，然后是发生“9.11”事件。大多数公司冻结了招聘并裁员。我除了等待大公司恢复招聘外，什么也做不了。多亏了我的导师桑吉夫·库坦普（Sanjeev Khudanpur），我被允许在学校多待一年，这样就可以保留我的F1签证。

在等待AT&T和IBM的录用通知时，我在网上搜索，看看是否有公司在裁员潮中仍然会招聘。我发现一家名为Google（谷歌）的小公司有一个空缺，而我的经验符合他们的要求。我联系他们并提交了简历。幸运的是，他们回复我并安排了面试。这一次，我准备得非常充分，所以所有面试都非常顺利。3天后，我收到了offer。在1500份简历中，我是那个幸运儿。有意思的是，那些大型研究实验室随后重新开放招聘，并告诉我他们会给我发offer。如果他们的offer早几周到来，我就会毫不犹豫地接受其中一个。然而，这一次我把命运押在了谷歌身上，而我赢了。现在回想起来，如果我有幸在2000年按时毕业，并在一个大型实验室安顿下来，我就会失去在谷歌萌芽时期加入它的千载难逢的机会。事实上，许多在那些大公司面试过我的科学家后来都加入了谷歌。

许多人认为今年的就业市场不好，因为许多大公司都在裁员。这意味着毕业生的运气不好。但记住，你不会永远不走运，好运可能比你预期的更早到来。因此，你唯一能做的就是做好准备！未来，你会成功很多次。你可能会把一切都归功于天赋和努力工作，但你一定不要陷于自负——因为厄运可能就在眼前。一生中，你也会遭遇艰难岁月，但即使面对逆境，也永远不要绝望——因为好运在等着你。我问过几十位成功创立价值十亿美元公司的企业家，他们成功的首要原因是什么。他们一致认为，只是运气好。我还问了数百名生意失败的创始人，他们学到了什么教训。很少有人反思自己的问题，几乎所有人都回答只是运气不好。但运气，从来只会垂青那些谦卑且敬畏命运的人。

第二堂课来自于我在谷歌的上级们，包括阿米特·辛格尔（Amit Singhal）、艾伦·尤斯塔斯（Alan Eustace）和埃里克·施密特（Eric Schmidt）。他们鼓励我从大处着眼，只关注那些能使世界上绝大多数人受益的项目。

有一天，当我在谷歌站稳脚跟有了一点成就之后，阿米特找到我，问我是否可以为亚洲语言编写搜索算法，包括中文、日文、韩文等。当时，我对这个想法不感兴趣。我想回到自然语言处理的研究中去，我从研究生时代起就对这个感兴趣。当阿米特试图说服我时，他这样告诉我：“亚洲有40亿人口，但我们无法提供与英语相当的服务。试想一下，如果其中10%，也就是4亿人从你的算法中受益，其成就就要比发表论文大一千倍。”我认为他是对的，我写了这些算法，这些算法至今仍被数十亿人使用。当埃里克·施密特听到这件事时，他非常兴奋，给了我没有上限的名额，让我成立一个工程团队，为亚洲市场打造产品。

当我们决定做什么时，大多数人都关注自己喜欢做的事情或擅长的事情。但更重要的是，我们需要考虑世界需要我们做什么。换句话说，我们如何能通过自己的努力使世界变得更好？我们的成就取决于世界上有多少人可以从我们的工作中受益。作为未来的行业领袖，你们应该胸怀大志，思维开阔。不要把你们的潜力限制在自己的舒适区。

我学到的第三堂课是要回馈社会。

1996年，当我来到约翰·霍普金斯大学时，我手中只有两个手提箱，口袋里装着几百美元。当时，是约翰·霍普金斯大学给了我全额奖学金，才让我能够负担得起教育和生活的费用。霍普金斯给了我最好的教育，以及认识相关领域研究者的无数机会。如果没有在约翰·霍普金斯大学的经历，我是不可能成功的。所以我一直对学校心存感激，并努力尽我所能支持学校。当我还是学生的时候，我受益于校友们的贡献，所以我希望年轻人也能从我们的努力中受益。我相信你们所有人将来在事业上都会非常成功，所以我希望你们所有人都能以自己的方式回馈学校。奉献会让你更快乐！

今天的世界远不完美，我们要面对战争、疾病、歧视以及气候变化等等问题。我不知道是不是因为我们运气太坏生在了这样一个时代。但我知道，抱怨于事无补，而行动却可以。因此，霍普金斯的毕业生们，这是你们的责任和荣幸，应用你们在学校所学的知识和能力，去解决世界的问题，让这个世界变得更好。我相信，你们必定能做到，你们必将做到！

谢谢你们。

吴军

【附英文原文】

Provost Gange, Dean Schlesinger, faculties, distinguished guests, and my fellow graduates.

It's my great honor to be back here at WSE. I'm here to congratulate all of you, who will receive the highest degree of your life tonight and start a new journey tomorrow. I'm sure you must be very excited about your wonderful life ahead. I felt the same way when I received my Ph.D. degree here twenty years ago. Today I would like to share with you three lessons I learned along the way that benefitted me in my life and career.

                                                                      *

The first lesson was delivered by our ex-president Bill Brody at my master's degree commencement in 1998. He shared the story of Harry Truman, highlighting the significance of luck in success. President Brody said that everybody will experience good luck and bad luck without exception. However, good luck can often result in adverse outcomes, and vice versa. So it is best to be careful and to be prepared. These words came true for me.

When I was wrapping up my Ph.D. research in 1999, I published several papers, one of which received the Best Paper Award from Eurospeech. Good luck, right? I was invited to give talks at many big research Labs, including Bell Labs, IBM Research, and SRI International. More good luck. The job market was so strong in 2000, and all my group mates received multiple offers from big companies. I felt sure I would be blessed in my own job search.

Unfortunately, I was overconfident. I did not prepare adequately for my GBO, so I failed it. Bad luck reared its head. As a result, I had to remain a student for one more year. After that, more bad luck ensued. The Internet bubble burst and 911 transpired. Most companies froze their hiring and laid off existing employees. I could do nothing but wait for the big companies to resume hiring. Thanks to my advisor Sanjeev Khudanpur, I was allowed to stay at school for one more year so I could keep my F1 visa.

While waiting for offers from AT&T and IBM, I searched on the web to see if there were any companies still hiring in the midst of layoffs. I found an opening at a small company called Google, and my experience fit their requirements. I contacted them and submitted my resume. Fortunately, they replied to me and scheduled interviews. This time around, I was very well prepared, so all interviews went extremely smoothly. I received an offer 3 days later. Out of 1500 resumes, I was now the lucky one. Funnily enough, those big research labs then reopened and told me they would send me offers now. If their offers had come a couple of weeks earlier, I would not have hesitated to accept one of them. However, this time I bet my fortune on Google, and I won. In retrospect, if I had been fortunate to graduate on time in 2000, and I would have settled down at a big lab, I would have lost my once-in-a-lifetime chance to join Google when it was still very small. In fact, many scientists who interviewed me at those larger companies joined Google later.

Many people thought the job market was bad this year, as many big companies were laying off people. It meant bad luck for graduates. But just remember, you won't be unlucky forever and good luck may come sooner than you expect. So the only thing you can do is to be ready! In the future, you will succeed many times. You may attribute everything to your talent and hard work, but you must not fall prey to hubris--for bad luck may be just around the corner. You will also endure hard times throughout your life, but even in the face of adversity, never despair--because good luck is waiting for you. I asked tens of entrepreneurs who had successfully founded billion-dollar companies what was the number one reason for their success. They unanimously agreed that they just got lucky. I also asked hundreds of founders who lost their businesses, what lessons they learned. Few reflected upon their own problems, and nearly everybody replied they were just unlucky. Fortune favors humble people who are in awe of fate.

                                                                       *

The second lesson comes from my higher-ups at Google, including Amit Singhal, Alan Eustace, and Eric Schmidt. They encouraged me to think big and to focus only on projects that could benefit a vast majority of people in the world.

One day, after I had built up my reputation at Google, Amit approached me to ask if I could write search algorithms for Asian languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc. I was not interested in that idea. I wanted to return to natural language processing research, which I had been interested in since I was a graduate student. When Amit tried to convince me, he told me this: "There are 4 billion people in Asia but we cannot provide services equivalent to those in English. Just imagine, if 10%, 400 million people benefit from your algorithms, that achievement is a thousand times greater than that of publishing papers." I thought he was right and I wrote the algorithms, which were still used by billions of people today. When Eric Schmidt heard about this, he was so excited that he gave me an unlimited head count to found an Engineering team to build products for the Asian market.

When we decide what to do, most of us focus on what we like to do or what we are good at. But more importantly, we need to think about what the world needs us to do. In other words, how can we make the world better through our efforts? Our achievement depends on how many people in the world can benefit from our work. As future industry leaders, you should think big, and think broadly. Don't limit your potential to your own comfort zone.

                                                                        *

The third lesson I learned was to give back to society. When I arrived at Hopkins in 1996, I carried only two suitcases in my hands and several hundred dollars in my pocket. It was Johns Hopkins that granted me a scholarship so that I could afford my education and living expenses. Hopkins also gave me the best education and countless opportunities to meet people in my research area. I couldn't have succeeded without my experiences at Hopkins. So I'm always grateful to the school and I try to do my best to support school. When I was a student, I benefited from the contributions of alumni, so I hope young people can benefit from our efforts too. I'm sure all of you will be very successful in your careers in the future, so I hope all of you can give back to the school in your own way. Giving will make you happier!

Today, the world is far from perfect--there are wars, diseases, discrimination, climate challenges, and so forth. Are we unlucky to be born in an era with so many problems? I don't know. But I know complaining won't help; Actions will. So, Hopkins graduates, it's your responsibility and privilege to use the knowledge and ability you obtained at school to solve world problems and make the world better. I believe you can, and you will do it!

Thank you.

Jun Wu

（本文为2023年5月22日吴军博士在约翰·霍普金斯大学工学院博士生毕业典礼上的致辞，经作者授权，澎湃科技编译刊发。中文由澎湃新闻记者方晓翻译。）