Eric Schmidt Quote

Sheryl Sandberg: It is the ultimate luxury to combine passion and contribution. It’s also a very clear path to happiness.115 She couldn’t be more right. You will not be as successful as you could be if you only like what you do and don’t love it. Trite, perhaps, but true. Sheryl is also right in saying that combining passion and contribution is a luxury: not that it’s expensive, but just rare. It’s something that many people either can’t figure out (how many people truly know their passion at the outset of their careers?) or can’t afford (you may love whittling garden gnomes, but the world loves engineers and your spouse and children love a regular paycheck).

Eric Schmidt

Sheryl Sandberg: It is the ultimate luxury to combine passion and contribution. It’s also a very clear path to happiness.115 She couldn’t be more right. You will not be as successful as you could be if you only like what you do and don’t love it. Trite, perhaps, but true. Sheryl is also right in saying that combining passion and contribution is a luxury: not that it’s expensive, but just rare. It’s something that many people either can’t figure out (how many people truly know their passion at the outset of their careers?) or can’t afford (you may love whittling garden gnomes, but the world loves engineers and your spouse and children love a regular paycheck).

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About Eric Schmidt

Eric Emerson Schmidt (born April 27, 1955) is an American businessman and former software engineer who served as the CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011 and the company's executive chairman from 2011 to 2015. He also served as the executive chairman of parent company Alphabet Inc. from 2015 to 2017, and Technical Advisor at Alphabet from 2017 to 2020. In April 2022, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimated his net worth to be US$25.1 billion.
As an intern at Bell Labs, Schmidt in 1975 was co-author of Lex, a software program to generate lexical analysers for the Unix computer operating system. From 1997 to 2001, he was chief executive officer (CEO) of Novell. Schmidt has served on various other boards in academia and industry, including the boards of trustees for Carnegie Mellon University, Apple, Princeton University, and the Mayo Clinic. He also owns a minority stake in the Washington Commanders of the National Football League (NFL).
In 2008, during his tenure as Google's chairman, Schmidt campaigned for Barack Obama, and subsequently became a member of Obama's President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, with Eric Lander. Lander later became Joe Biden's science advisor. In the meantime, Schmidt had left Google, and founded philanthropic venture Schmidt Futures, in 2017. Under Schmidt's tenure, Schmidt Futures provided the compensation for two science-office employees in the Office of Science and Technology Policy. In October 2021, Schmidt founded the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP) and has since served as its chairman.