Carol Eidt describes her career journey and seven lessons learned.

2. A Brief Personal History
 Graduated from UC Davis in 1977 with a BS in Physics
 Sang lead & played keyboards with a “cover” band 1977
to 1981
 Returned to school in 1981 – MS in EECS from Berkeley in
1983
 Worked at HP for 22 years doing Instruction Set
Architecture and Compilers
 Became HP’s first female Fellow
 Took early retirement from HP in 2005 and joined
Microsoft

3. My Original Plan

4. My Journey

5. My Journey
Nutrition
Science
isn’t for me

6. My Journey
Maybe
Bio-Chem?

7. My Journey
Physics is
really
fascinating!
… and Physics
majors have a
high acceptance
rate to Med
School!

8. My Journey
… hmm …
maybe
Medicine Isn’t
right for me
Yay!
Done with O-Chem
I hate memorization

9. Lesson #1
You’re more likely to succeed at what you enjoy
 Memorization was really not my forte!
 While I could manage an A in Organic Chemistry, the idea of
many more years of memorization was quite depressing
 Having good recall for details is actually an important skill for a
doctor in practice – and I didn’t have it
 Physics was appealing because it is so grounded in concepts
 I really enjoy
 Understanding the “big picture”
 Solving problems
 It turns out that computer science has some similarities
 Concepts, logical thinking
 BUT … it took me awhile to figure all of this out

10. My Journey
BS in
Physics:
What Next?

11. Lesson #2:
Experience isn’t always the best teacher
 A Tale of Two Summer Jobs at HP: 1975 and 1976
 1975: Thin Film group (printers for calculators)
 Hired to run test equipment, but it didn’t arrive in time
 Spent the summer programming and absolutely loved it
 The work day flew by – I’d never experienced that!
 1976: Optoelectronics Division (LEDs)
 Rigorous, exhausting technical interview
 No definite assignments or responsibilities
 Did a little programming (calibration, simulation)
 Finished the summer feeling like a failure
 But they told me I’d done a great job
 What I thought I learned: optoelectronics, and therefore applied physics in
general, was not the path for me
 In retrospect – maybe it wasn’t, but the real problem was the lack of
guidance on the job

12. My Journey
BS in
Physics:
What Next?
Music!

13. Lesson #3:
Sometimes a detour is a good thing
 3½ years in a band taught me
 How to pretend that you’re confident even when you’re not
 And that it’s really OK to pretend
 How to walk up to total strangers and strike up a
conversation
 Some measure of poise and presence in front of an
audience
 These are all extremely valuable skills in both work and
personal life!

14. My Journey
Time for a
change:
CS at UCB

15. My Journey
HP:
A New
Architecture!

16. Lesson #4:
Luck helps
 My father worked for HP, which helped me get a job there
 Getting hired into HP Labs to work on the design of a new
computer was a real stroke of luck & timing
 I left HP briefly in 1992 and came back just in time to
work on the next new architecture
 Having left & returned I had no obligations to keep me from
diving right in

17. Lesson #5:
Shape your own destiny, even on the job
 Many employers will hire you without precise
deliverables & expectations
 Ask for clarity
 Always look for new ways to contribute
 If you want a different job, start doing it
 Find a way to do a little bit of the work you really want to
be doing, while still fulfilling your current responsibilities
 At HP Labs, I was hired into the architecture team, but
really wanted to do compilers
 I offered to do some of the “grunt work” in the compiler,
and eventually moved to that team

18. Lesson #6:
Identify solutions not problems
 Learned from one of my early managers at HP
 “If you don’t have a solution, don’t complain about the
problem”
 Start on a positive note
 If you start with what’s wrong, people will tune you out
 “Wouldn’t it be great if we … and that would take care of
this problem …”
 If you don’t have a solution, at least offer to help find one
 Ask for suggestions

19. My Journey
HP Fellow,
Early
Retirement

20. Lesson #7:
You can live a balanced life and be successful
 When my first child was born, I resolved to work a 40
hour week
 I was certain that this would mean reduced career potential
 Instead, that’s about the time my career took off
 When you have a time limit, you work more productively
 I became more organized
 I prioritized & didn’t waste time on things that weren’t
important
 Of course, you have to work for a company that values
work-life balance

21. My Journey
Microsoft

22. My Journey
Who Knows
What’s Next!

23. Lessons I Learned
1. You’re more likely to succeed at what you enjoy
2. Experience isn’t always the best teacher
3. Sometimes a detour is a good thing
4. Luck helps
5. Shape your own destiny, even on the job
6. Identify solutions not problems
7. You can live a balanced life and be successful

24. What I Would Change
 Not much!
 Get a PhD
 Worry less, focus more on doing the things I really enjoy

25. Microsoft & Physicists
 Microsoft is a software company at heart
 But, it invests in numerous research and product
development projects that go beyond software
 New technologies for interacting with computers and each
other
 Kinect
 Surface
 …
 Novel processor architectures
 Physics makes a great foundation, but for many jobs in
industry, you’ll need complementary education as well

26. Advice in Closing
 Follow your passion
 What energizes you? What “sucks you in”?
 If you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, you’re not likely to be
truly successful