Arnold's 6 Rules for Success
Arnold Schwarzenegger gave this commencement speech at the University of Southern California, and the six rules he lays out have stuck with me. They’re simple, but they apply just as much to a career in engineering as to anything else.
Watch Arnold’s full USC commencement speech on YouTube →
His six rules:
- Trust yourself. Work out who you really are and what you want, rather than what others expect of you.
- Break the rules. Not the laws - the conventions. You rarely do anything remarkable by following the well-worn path.
- Don’t be afraid to fail. You can’t win without being willing to lose. Failure is the cost of trying anything worthwhile.
- Don’t listen to the naysayers. “It can’t be done” usually means “I couldn’t do it.”
- Work your butt off. There is no substitute for the hours. Talent without effort gets overtaken.
- Give back. Reaching the top means nothing if you don’t reach back and help others up.
What I take from it for our work: most of the interesting problems in cloud and reliability engineering come from being willing to question how things are “normally” done, putting in the unglamorous hours to get the details right, and then sharing what you learn. That’s a big part of why this blog exists.