FEMALE SPEAKER: Hell, everyone.
It's my pleasure to introduce Pat Gelsinger, our speaker
today.
Pat started his career at Intel.
He was recruited to be a technician in the beginning.
And then as he was working full time,
he got his bachelor's degree in double E at Santa Clara.
And then he went on to get his master's degree
in double E and computer science at Stanford.
At age 31 he was the youngest vice president at Intel,
and then he became the first CTO at Intel.
In 2010 he was recruited by EMC in Boston to be the COO.
And then in 2012 he was the CEO of VMware in the Bay Area.
Pat and his wife Linda have four children.
And today, he is going to speak about his book,
"The Juggling Act, Bringing Balance
to Your Faith, Family, and Work."
Please welcome Pat Gelsinger.
[APPLAUSE]
PAT GELSINGER: Thank you, Petula.
Great to be here with you today.
I'll cover a little bit about my story.
As we go along, we'll dig into this subject
of juggling a little bit.
I didn't try to embarrass myself with the juggling balls,
but maybe afterward I will.
We'll see.
And then a little bit about being a Christian
both in the workplace and in the Bay Area.
And then we'll open up for Q&A and talk about whatever
else you feel like as well.
So be informal and interactive.
So a little bit about my story.
I was born and raised in Pennsylvania.
And if you've ever been to the Amish Country
in Pennsylvania, the ultra, ultra conservatives,
the Amish-- they haven't accepted any new technology
since 1869.
And then there's the Mennonites who
are, like, really conservative, but less so than the Amish.
And then there's the Pennsylvania Dutch.
And that's what I was growing up.
So compared to the Amish we were really liberal.
But by all means very, very conservative farm community.
My dad was eighth of nine children.
So son number one had a farm, son number two,
daughter number one-- it got down to at number eight,
and my grandfather said, we have enough farms in the family.
Just work with your brothers.
Otherwise I'd be a farm boy in Pennsylvania today.
And when I came out to Intel I knew a lot more
about cow chips than computer chips at the time.
At six days old I was baptized with full knowledge of what
I was doing in our church, and became
president of the youth group at 12 years old,
and those types of things.
And I thought I was a Christian just because I was born
and raised in that environment.
There was one good reason to go to church.
That was to meet girls or impress their mothers
or grandmothers.
And other than that, I was just rotten the other 6 and 1/2
days of the week.
I ended up skipping my last year of high school.
I accidentally took a scholarship exam
to get a tech degree.
So I ended up skipping my last year of high school,
getting my associate's degree.
So literally, I graduated from high school with my tech degree
in the summer of a '79 at 18 years old.
And Intel came recruiting.
So there was sort of an industry-wide shortage
of technicians.
So Intel came from the West Coast
to recruit and invite me on a trip to come to California.
And the guy who was interviewing,
Ron Smith was his name, he interviewed 12 people that day.
And any of you who've done a lot of interviewing,
you know at about number six, you sort of lose
track of John versus Joe.
And about number nine, you lose track of Jane versus John.
And I was number 12 on his interview list.
And this is what he wrote about me after the interview.
He said, smart, aggressive, arrogant.
He'll fit right in.
So I got invited to come to interview with Intel.
18 years old and I had never been on an airplane.
At 18 years old, you're getting invited for free trip
to California.
And they even through in I could stay for the weekend.
So how long you think it took me to decide to take the trip?
About a nanosecond.
Yeah, sure.
I'm taking a free trip to California.
First time an airplane.
But I promised my mom before I left,
no way am I moving to California.
I mean, they're crazy out there.
Earthquakes and cults and stuff.
I'm a farm boy in Pennsylvania.
No problem.
I'm staying here.
But after I came and interviewed with Intel,
they made me a job offer.
And the thing that convinced me to go to Intel more
than anything else as a technician,
I wanted to be the engineer on the other side of the table
telling the tech what to do.
That was my whole career ambition
summed up the one thing.
| want to sit on that side of the table.
And they had a tuition reimbursement program.
So as long as I was working 30 hours a week or more
and getting passing grades, they would pay for all my school.
So I got my bachelor's at Santa Clara,
did my master's at Stanford, was working on my Ph.D.
At Stanford-- all of that paid for by Intel.
And I was a poor farm boy, so this is pretty good.
So I took the job with Intel, moved out
here at the ripe old age of 18, and then
started working full time and going to school full time.
And light-weight programs like Santa Clara, no problem.
Graduate programs like Stanford while you're
working full time, no problem.
Ph.D.-- so this is pretty intense.
Working full time, going to school full time,
but I loved it.
The first time I ever had a computer architecture class,
it was like, that's what I want to do for the rest of my life.
I was one of those kids you didn't want
to be in the class with me.
I had my first computer architecture class.
I found out what the textbook was.
Over the summer, I read the entire textbook,
finished every problem in the textbook,
and showed up on the first day of class
having done the entire syllabus for computer architecture.
Yeah.
The professor-- it was a new textbook
on computer architecture, Tenenbaum's computer textbook
at the time-- he, the professor hadn't
done past the second chapter yet in the class.
So my notes became the notes for the class.
But I was sort of manic about it in that way.
I also-- when I came to California
I thought I was a Christian.
And I showed up, went to church on Sunday for what purpose?
Meet girls and impress their mothers and grandmothers.
It's that simple.
So what did I do when I got to California?
Went to church to meet girls and impress their mother
and grandmothers.
So walked down the street to Santa Clara Christian Church,
and sure enough that first Sunday met
Linda, who you'll meet in a little bit.
I'll show a picture of her in a second.
And she asked me early in our relationship
if I was a Christian.
And my answer was yes.
I was baptized when I was six days old,
president of the youth group, went to church every Sunday
to meet girls.
Of course I'm a Christian.
And as we got to know each other,
the church adopted me and it quickly became apparent
that I was, at best case, a Sunday Christian,
and a lot worse than that most other days of the week.
And the sermon topic in February of 1980 was based on Revelation
3:15-16. .
"I know your deeds, that you are neither hot nor cold.
I wish you were one of the other.
But since you're neither cold or hot but lukewarm,
I'm about to spit you out of my mouth."
And that verse cut me to the heart
because there I was, I like to feign Christianity on the one
side, looking good.
And on the other side was living my own life.
And I came to that moment of crisis of my personal faith
and said, I have to make a decision.
And I was really challenged in that.
And in February of 1980 made the decision to be hot for God,
and made the decision to be a full-time Christian.
And absolutely at that point made
this fundamental, life changing decision.
I'm going to be hot for God and live
my life as a Christian in the workplace and what I do.
So that's February of 1980.
Just a couple of months later-- so I'm
a baby Christian at this point, sort
of figuring out what it really means to read the word,
be in fellowship, all the other things associated with that--
and God puts on my heart in a deep and profound way,
become a minister.
And I'm like, I don't want to be a minister.
I'm loving this tech stuff, computer architecture,
knocking it out of the park at my job.
That's the last thing I want to do.
And I just wrestled with God for months about the idea
of becoming a minister.
It's like I don't want to be like-- just nothing
about it attracted me.
So I just wrestled with God, argued with him about it
as I was praying.
And after doing that for a couple of months,
just couldn't let up in my heart and in the soul about it,
and finally said, OK, God, I give up.
If this happens, and I laid a-- you know, in the Bible
they had a story where Gideon lays the fleece before God.
The ground is dry, the fleece is wet.
The next day the fleece is wet, the ground is dry.
And I laid a fleece before God and said, if this happens,
I will go into full-time ministry.
And it was just finally giving up before God.
And after laying that fleece before him,
as soon as I did it, he came back and said,
the workplace is your ministry.
And then since that point in time,
and my life verse at that point became Colossians 3:23-24.
"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart,
as working for the Lord, not for human masters,
since you know that you will receive an inheritance
from the Lord as a reward.
It is the Lord Christ you are serving."
And that's become my life view.
I'm in the workplace.
And whether I'm a low-level technician,
a medium-level engineer, now CEO of a great software company,
I'm working for the Lord Jesus Christ as my full-time CEO.
It's great that I get us a paycheck from VMware.
And You go online, you can check out-- I
make too much money as a CEO.
That's really cool.
And I have a board of directors as well.
You can check out all them online as well.
But my full-time CEO is the Lord Jesus Christ.
And my job, the platform, everything I'm given,
is to be a workplace minister.
And there's a few who are called to vocational ministry.
But all of us who claim the name of Jesus Christ
are called to be full-time ministers.
In the workplace, in the home place, in the marketplace,
in the school place, or wherever we are as Christians,
we are called to be full-time ministers.
It is the Lord Christ you are serving.
Now, also I do want to just emphasize a little bit that
being a Christian and an engineer
is often seen as contradictory.
I believe in the scientific method.
I have now four degrees, and absolutely committed
to deep technical pursuit, data-driven capabilities.
And I am a full-time believer in the word of God
and in the Christian truths that come with it.
I do not believe those are in disharmony whatsoever.
Areas of good debate, areas of good discussion inside of that.
But the Bible is not meant as a scientific textbook.
It's meant as a love story that demands faith for people
to come to know him.
And if it was an unequivocal, immutable truth that
was there that could not be denied by any scientific method
it wouldn't require faith.
But God says, you will take a step of faith
to come into a relationship with me.
I believe I have a very credible, reasonable faith
with good scientific data that supports it.
But the last step is always a step of faith.
And you cannot come all the way to God just based on scientific
method.
Cannot be done.
And he wouldn't allow that to be the case.
He demands that you make a step of faith.
But I am absolutely confident, and I'll
debate any miracle the Bible that's talked about,
any other factual science.
We'll have fun debate about that.
But at the end of it, I cannot prove it.
I give you good scientific method behind it,
but it requires a step the faith to fully accept
and belief and live for him.
So continuing into the juggling discussion.
As I mentioned this young lady, Linda-- so I started at Intel,
was working for 30, 40, 70 hours a week
depending on school workloads and so on,
the project I was on.
I'm sure all of you work a nice 30 or 40
hours a week here at Google.
Just crazy work schedule sometimes.
So working full time, going to school full time,
light weight-program, Santa Clara, Stanford, et cetera.
And then I met this young lady named Linda.
And Linda and I-- she invited me over-- so this
is Christmas of 1979.
So she invites me to have Christmas dinner with her mom
and grandmother.
Remember this meeting mothers and grandmothers?
The formula's working great.
So Linda with two generations-- mom and grandma are there.
They invite me over for Christmas dinner.
Now, I'm a poor orphan on the West Coast.
I had neither money nor vacation to go back East for Christmas.
So I had dinner with Linda and her mom and grandmother.
And at the end of the evening, we just
had a great evening together.
In particular grandma and I hit it off great.
You know, play this card, and so on.
Grandma closes the door at the end of the night
and turns to Linda on the first time she ever met me, never met
me before, she turns to Linda and says, he's the one.
And then Linda starts to describe
all of my failings, which are numerous.
All these kind of things.
We weren't dating yet or anything.
It was just a friendship at that point.
Two months later, Linda's mom says to her, he's the one.
We still hadn't even gone on a date.
I got both generations in my favor.
This is cool.
And then we started dating a couple of months after that.
But I was on the slow boat to matrimony.
I was going to finish my bachelor's, finish my masters,
do Ph.D. And probably post-doc work
before thinking about getting married.
So I had sort of a 10-year plan until matrimony.
And God had a very different plan.
And Linda, after a dating for about a year and a half,
she was diagnosed with endometriosis, a disorder
of the reproductive system.
Had surgery-- one ovary removed, part of the second one removed.
And the doctor said to her, kids now or never.
Remember, we're just dating.
I told her.
She knew my plan.
I was on the 10-year plan to matrimony.
And she comes to me-- one of our date nights,
she comes to me with an armful of medical books.
And if a woman ever approaches you
with an armful of medical books, you're in trouble.
And she explains to me what's going on
and what's going to happen, and the doctor says, now or never.
Wrestle over that for a while and we decide to get married.
So we got married the following summer.
And again, the doctor said, kids maybe never.
You got one ovary removed, part of the second one removed.
And we began our family.
And that part of one ovary did OK.
So this is our oldest, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth is named after the mother of John the Baptist.
She's our older.
She's 31 years old now.
Here's our son Josiah, is number two.
And he works at Seagate.
He's in the M&A department at Seagate now.
And his wife Carly, and our first granddaughter.
Grandbabies are wonderful.
Skip kids.
Go straight to grandkids, just for advice.
It's much better that way.
You enjoy them twice-- once when they show up,
once when they leave.
It's really good.
And then our third is Nathan-- he lives in Oregon--
and his wife Rachel, and our second granddaughter, Alice.
And he's a youth minister at a church up there.
And our son Micah is the last of our tribe here.
And if we have time I'll tell you a story about Micah
or so as we go.
But now I'm working full time, I'm going to school full time,
and having a family full time.
And this is what I call the juggling years.
How do you make it all fit?
How do you possibly deal with all the challenges
that you have?
All of the issues that are pounding upon you?
And if you think about this period of your life, with it--
the normal priorities that we want to work for-- I mean,
you're here developing your career.
How successful do you want to be in your job?
Very.
And if you're good and capable, how much of the job
do they want of you?
As much as you give it.
Your ego and your job are in perfect harmony.
All of you.
Work more, harder-- you want to be successful,
you want to be promoted, you want to make more money.
And all of those are in perfect harmony with each other.
So you know what happens at that phase is your priorities ending
up being work, family, God.
And work just wants to consume it all.
And you want to be successful, reinforced.
What are the God given priorities?
God, family, work.
So we live our lives almost exactly
inverted to the priorities that God has set.
So how do you make things fit?
How do you live in this period of life
when you're just being pressed on all sides-- family
responsibilities, school responsibilities,
other personal objectives that you have?
And in this period of time-- and this
is sort of the topic of the book,
and most of the learnings out of that sort of
came from this 15-year period where
it's full-time work, a full-time job, full-time school,
full time family, and how to make it fit.
So just a couple of things.
And you can read more about in the book and Q&A session.
But the first is a mission statement.
I had gotten to be 31 years old.
At that point, I had a couple of chips that I had finished.
I had gotten my first patent from Intel.
I'm an inventor.
I mean, that was cool.
You get your second patent.
I'm still inventor.
You get your third one.
Well OK, I'm still an inventor-- but written my first book.
How many of you read my first book?
You did?
So anyway, it's a thriller.
"Programming the 80386."
You get to last chapter and you turn paging on.
Yeah.
This is exciting stuff.
Yeah, to a Google audience, you guys would get that.
I mean, this is when segmentation and small address
spaces were a problem, and the first fully flat 32-bit.
I mean, this was cool stuff, man.
So I'd written my first book, my first patent.
I became the youngest vice president at Intel
at 31 years old.
All this is cool and great.
But all of a sudden it's like, what
do I want to do with the rest of my life?
What are my priorities?
What are my objectives?
And out of that came writing a mission statement.
And in this period of life I said, just being very, very
thoughtful about what you want to do
with the rest of your life because you're
being faced with too many things are demanding your time.
How do you decide what you want to do?
And out of that, being very clear about what
your goals are.
And I developed mine.
You can look at it in the book, you
can look at it on my website as well.
Let's just say the three elements of my mission
statement, my personal mission, first is my mission.
I will be a Christian husband, family man, and businessman.
I will use every resource God has
given me to carry out his work on earth as set forth below.
So that's what I want my epitaph to read on my tombstone.
That's what I want it to be.
And then are my values.
And things like work hard in all I do,
be open to the direction of the Holy Spirit,
enthusiastically approach-- those are the values.
And when you say, what's Pat like?
That's what I want you to say-- you know, personality.
And then finally, specific goals.
And some of my goals-- make my marriage an example of that
laid out in scriptures, encourage all four
of our children into Christ, become for the CEO of Intel
Corporation, visitor 50 country-- I wrote that
about being the CEO of Intel when I was 31 years old.
What a precocious little brat I was when I first wrote that.
But audacious with some of the goals.
Some can be long, some come short.
Talk about physical exercise, about how
we're going to use our finances and wealth,
and supporting charities and so on.
But my specific goals-- every year I grade our goals.
I do it tax time.
I'm already depressed, so it's a great time
to come back to the goals and do it.
But grading myself, and how am I doing against the things I say?
It also allows you, as things come up in your life,
to say no, not in my goals.
No, I don't want to spend time on that.
That's not consistent with who I am and what I want to be.
So it helps you say no.
It also helps you say yes and develop the areas
that you want to be.
So developing a personal mission statement or maybe
a family mission statement to help
guide you to set the direction that you want to go
and invest in and pursue those directions.
So first the juggling act rules is a mission statement.
Second, priorities.
And we talked about this God, family, work versus work,
family, God.
And how do you live every day-- because it's
easy to sit some weekend and write your priorities,
and then life hits Monday morning.
And how do you keep them firmly in place?
And just a few things from how I've learned
to manage those over time.
And trust me, a CEO job doesn't make it any easier.
As you get higher in the ranks it gets worse as you go along.
One of those is beginning the day in scripture,
in the word every day.
And I set as my priority that I started reading the "Wall
Street Journal" very early.
Like, 21 years old, I read the "Wall Street Journal"
every day.
But I don't read the business bible
before I read God's Bible.
It's just one of those things.
And maybe before your first cup of coffee, just
finding ways to put God on the throne every day
and starting with him as a priority.
Making sure you're in regular fellowship in church,
and making those clear priority decisions in your life.
So putting God on that throne every day.
And that's one of my priorities.
And I have to live that way to keep myself balanced.
He is my CEO.
He is the person that I want to be accountable to
at the end of my life.
And the second priority is family.
Now, how many of you find it easy to be home every night
in time for your family?
Nobody, huh?
OK.
Oh, you're lying.
OK.
Now, imagine the conversations that Linda and I would have.
Remember, my work objectives are exactly
aligned with my ego objectives.
I want to be successful at work-- you
remember how that spiral goes.
So I'd have a conversation with Linda.
So imagine, she would approach me and she'd say,
you haven't been home much lately.
And my response would be, no that's not really true.
I've been home more the last couple of weeks
than before that.
No you haven't.
Yes, you have.
No, you haven't.
So you're just in the middle of an argument.
So we started keeping score.
So we set up at home chart.
And on the at home chart, if I was home by 6:15,
that was one point.
If I was home by 5 o'clock, that was two points.
After 6:15 was zero.
Weekend days were negative points if I was gone.
That's the numerator and the denominator
was the number of workdays.
We set a goal on the at home chart of having 70%.
And my secretary produced a spreadsheet
that she sent to my wife and I every month.
We have almost 30 years of the mean, the median,
the 12-month running average, the skew, the kurtosis.
Now we sit down, now we have the data.
Now we have the discussion on my time.
And you say, you haven't been home much lately.
But look at the graph, and it was like, oh, you're right.
I haven't been home much lately.
Or no, I have been home more.
I haven't felt like you've been home more.
That's totally different.
But keeping score, setting goals.
And most of us in positions in the tech industry
and at Google, I mean, we're goal-oriented.
We want to be successful.
Some days I'll be at the end of our driveway,
sitting on the cellphone at 6:12.
6:13-- sorry, got to go.
I'm getting a point tonight.
Done.
In the garage on time.
I'm not gonna lose a point over a minute
or two of a stupid meeting.
So keeping score and keeping things in balance that way.
And also things like dating our kids.
One of the things I started early,
every week I took one of them out for breakfast.
Four kids, once a month, dating my kids.
Dating Linda-- twice a month, we go on dates together.
Twice a year, we take long weekends or trips, just
the two of us.
Finding ways to live that priority
that family is more important.
I was given the opportunity to become Andy Gross'
technical assistant.
Now, at Intel this was the marquee--
this was like becoming Larry and Sergey's
personal second-in-command at Intel.
So it was the marquee development position
in the company.
Two of the last three CEOs had that role at Intel.
So I was offered that job.
I turned it down.
Everybody in the company was like, what an idiot you
are for turning down that job.
But I knew I couldn't do that job
and keep my priorities of God, family, work at the time.
Sometimes those decisions are hard.
But being clear about what your goals are, your priorities are,
and then living according to them.
Third tool for your journey as a juggler, mentors.
Now, I was in charge-- this about, I'm 23 years old,
something like that-- and I was in charge
of taping out the 80386.
How many of you remember the 80386?
Just humor me.
A few of you, right?
But it was a big, big deal.
It was probably the most important chip going
on in the industry at the time.
And I was in charge of assembling
the database of the chip to prepare
it to send off to go to fab.
That was my job.
And I was working 20 hours a day getting the chip done.
And we had a design review with executive staff of Intel.
So Andy Grove is in the audience-- founder,
"Time Magazine" Man of the Year, one of the most powerful people
in Silicon Valley the time.
Next to him was Robert Noyce, the Nobel Prize winning
inventor of the integrated circuit.
Next to him was Gordon Moore-- Moore's law.
I mean, I got the gods of the industry here,
and I'm giving an update on taping out the 386.
And basically, I chewed them out.
The computers weren't stable.
They were crashing.
And I'm not going to get my chip done
if you don't fix these-- I mean, what a precocious brat I was.
23-year-old, the guy-- so on.
But just really, really aggressive in their face
about this.
A couple of days later, I'm sitting
in my office working like crazy on the chip
and assembly, and design rule checks and that other kind
of stuff.
The phone rings.
Who is it?
I didn't want to be interrupted.
It's when phones really rang.
They weren't in your pocket.
And the voice comes back, Andy-- Andy who?
And I respond, and the voice comes back, Andy Grove.
I'm dweeb, and he-- way up here, president,
founder of the company.
And I'm just so beside myself, out of my stupor.
And he starts shelling me with questions.
What are you reading?
What are you studying?
What are your career objectives?
What are your development plan-- so just and I'm like, uh!
After a few minutes of that, I'm just, uh!
And he says, those are lousy answers.
Yeah, they were.
I could barely talk.
He says, be in my office in a week with better ones.
Wow, the president and COO says to be in his office in a week,
you got two choices-- leave the country or show up.
It's pretty simple.
So I showed up, and that began a mentoring relationship
with Andy Grove that literally lasted til just a couple
of years ago.
And the only reason I'm in a position like I'm in today
is because I've had people like Andy Grove making me better.
Now, mentoring with Andy Grove, it's like going to the dentist
without Novocaine.
He's not a nice guy.
If you're mostly right and a little bit wrong, your wrong.
One time I came into his office--
just to let you know how blunt this guy was--
I came into his office and I had grown a beard
since the last time he had seen me.
He looks at me.
I can tell he's sort of checking this out.
He says, that's ugly.
Shave it off.
But that was Andy.
Just blunt, direct, and making you better.
And I just say, for everybody in this phase of life,
both keeping you accountable, helping you along the way,
do you have people like an Andy Grove in your life?
People who are just making you better?
Who are challenging you?
And in scriptural terms I've called it--
it's three strands, a Paul, a Barnabas, a Timothy.
Somebody who's breathing into your life,
somebody who's a partner on the way, a buddy on the journey,
and then somebody whose life you're breathing into as well.
And to be able to have those kind of mentoring relationships
to help you as you're developing, and in your career,
and learning or along this journey,
and how to keep balance in all the things
that you're off to do that you've
said in the Mission statement.
Keeping you accountable against that.
So three-- there's a number of others in the book,
but maybe some ideas.
And in the Q&A time we can talk about that a bit more.
But some thoughts on how to manage through the juggling
act.
Now, when I was asked to come back
to be the CEO of VMware-- I mean, that's a pretty good job,
don't you think?
Yeah, a lot worse jobs than being CEO of VMware.
We're a $6 billion software company.
I know that's small by Google terms.
But in software terms, that makes us
the number five software company in the world today.
So hey, we're not bad at that level.
We crossed 6 billion.
I got 19,000 employees now working for me-- Bay Area.
I mean, this is OK.
But when we left the Bay Area-- Linda I were here 10 years,
then we moved to Oregon, then I became president and CEO
at Intel in Boston, and then coming back to the Bay Area.
And when we left the Bay Area 25 years ago,
Linda said, we're never coming back.
We wanted to raise our kids in a different area,
different lifestyle, et cetera.
The busyness, the craziness of the Bay Area-- we're never
coming back was what she said.
And just never say never to God.
He has different plans.
And so we're invited back to come to the Bay Area,
she really struggled.
Again, I was all in.
We've made our home.
We still have a home in Oregon for 25 years.
That's what we really consider home.
So the idea of coming back to the Bay Area
was, OK, God, what are you up to?
What do you want to do here?
And this big platform called being CEO.
And with thatt-- a few things about the Bay Area.
It's a very geographically diverse area, very ethnically
diverse area, highly affluent.
You now live in the richest area on earth.
Highest per capita income-- Bay Area.
We've crossed all the others on the earth.
Innovative and influential-- Googles,
Amazons, Microsofts, VMware, Facebooks, et cetera--
we changed the world from the Bay Area.
Highly innovative and influential.
But one of the lowest areas of philanthropy in the nation.
Can you believe that?
Some of the highest income and lowest philanthropy.
If you go to the census data that show philanthropy rates,
there are poor counties in Arkansas
that have higher per capita giving rates than the Bay Area.
It's like we're like 310 out of 348 different census zones
that they have.
Pitiful.
And some of the lowest church areas in the nation as well.
So as I view it, my mission field now, my area of ministry
is to rich, influential, miserly,
pagans in the Bay Area.
Yeah, that's my neighbors.
That's your neighbors as well.
And out of that, I've helped to start
an organization called TBC, called Transforming
the Bay with Christ.
And we said, there's three things that we want to do.
One is unify the Christian leadership
across the Bay-- pastors, parachurch leaders, et cetera,
to bring them into relationship with each other.
Nationally known leaders in the Bay Area-- Chip Ingrams,
Francis Chans, John Ortbergs and others don't know each other.
Just bring them together and say,
let's get to know each other and work together.
Second is amplify.
Amplify what God is doing through works of service.
And the church has become known for what we're against,
not what we do.
And Matthew in 5:16, it's listed here.
"In the same way let your light shine before others
that they might see your good deeds
and glorify your Father in Heaven."
It's not by our superior intellectual position,
buy our superior political position,
it's by our good deeds that we should glorify.
And we've gotten so confused as a church to lose focus
on love and good deeds for it.
So it's to really amplify works of service throughout the Bay.
And the church largely seen today as one of two things,
and particularly so in the Bay Area.
It's either any evolutionary leftover
that I as an intelligent being have no purpose for,
or it's a tool of the political right.
And either one of those is not interesting to me as well
95% of the Bay Area population.
So how can we make the church appealing again?
And then finally bringing about multiplication,
expanding churches throughout the day to grow,
expand, to become that social influence for the long term
in the Bay Area.
So we've launched the TBC.
You can go look at it, TBC.city, and potentially participate,
or with your church join in working
with us to help influence the Bay for Christ
for the long term.
So with that, I'll pause and we'll take questions
on any subject all.
AUDIENCE: My question is about, I guess, the role
as a Christian in technology and just-- not just
in the workplace, but just in the work that I actually do.
Sometimes I feel like the work that I
do and the work that people work on
is so-- we focus so much on the how
and the what that we forget the who and the why.
And it gets kind of depressing sometimes
to not see the connection between the thing
that I'm actually building and how God can use that.
So I was wondering if you have any advice for that?
PAT GELSINGER: Yeah, and I say, let me tell you-- here.
Good job, thank you.
I sort of set this as sort of my personal, professional
objective many, many, many years ago.
I said, I want to work on a piece of technology that
touches every human on the planet
in every modality of life-- work, home, and play.
And that's my objective in my career
so that I might both improve their lives and quality of life
as well as hasten the day of Christ coming.
So that's my-- what I'm trying to do professionally.
And if any of you have used the personal computer-- any of you
use that?
Any of you use a Mac or anything like that?
OK, you've worked on a piece of my technology.
Have any of you used USB?
OK, I did that.
Did you use Wi-Fi?
OK, I worked on that.
I mean, and now with cloud, I'd say with Google-- I mean, think
about the bigger objective of the work that you're in today
and always keep that in mind.
Because you do, you just get down here way
in the minutia of the stuff.
So there is just a bigger purpose
that we're out to change lives, improve the world, et cetera.
Also, in the workplace it is so easy
to get so consumed by what you're doing,
you lose track of the bigger picture.
The most important thing to me is-- we'll get back here
to this picture.
I started my leadership event this year
and I showed off pictures of my two-year-old grandchildren
and told stories about them.
Because hey, all the stuff, the projects and so on,
the lives that we touch-- I spent the first 20
years of my career and I talked about this, relationships
are more important than results.
And it wasn't that I didn't care about other people.
But you were sort of generally a distraction.
If you weren't helping me get my project done,
you were generally a distraction.
So get out of my road.
Either help or get out of my-- kind of thing.
And over the last 10 years of my career,
I start every meeting, how are you?
Today I had one of the guys in my office who just got back
from a trip through Europe.
How was the trip?
How's your family doing, and so on.
And to really shift the focus.
Not to ever lose sight of the-- I
mean you have a fiduciary responsibility
to be a great employee.
Not a good one, not a mediocre one, a great one.
If we're Christians, we should absolutely
be the best employees because we're working
for a much higher calling.
But in that, find ways to be able to build relationships,
focus on the higher purpose and calling that we have.
And find ways to be able to be salt and light as it says
in scripture in the every day.
How can I pray for you?
What things are going on your life
that I can really be uniquely connecting with you
and supporting?
And even-- I've asked that question
to thousands of people-- the most
atheist, agnostic, other people, nobody
has ever denied me praying for their sick relatives.
Never once.
Can you believe that?
Hey, you're an atheist.
You don't even believe there is a God.
Why will you let me pray for-- so never once.
It just changes the relationship that you have
and the potential role that you have
with your peers and colleagues in the workplace.
AUDIENCE: Hi, just to follow up.
Can you elaborate on what you mean by to be a great employee,
or to be, say, the best that you can be?
Especially in light of a lot of your discussion
seems to be about how to juggle by, say, making time for family
or by considering relationships to be important.
PAT GELSINGER: Yup, yup.
So a couple thoughts on that.
One is, sometimes-- and I want this to be very-- every once
in a while, you just gotta walk home, tell your spouse, hey,
for the next 30 days, I'm gone.
The project demands it, and so on.
You are just going to do what it takes to get the job done.
But then the next 30 days after that, you better say,
oh, this is how I'm going to keep balance as well.
And if you can't keep some reasonable balance while you're
being a great employee, getting the job done,
doing the projects and so on, then find a different job.
Because you have to be able to live by your priorities
and live for the long term as well.
But you know hey when I'm taping out
a chip when I was at Intel, now when
I'm getting ready for earnings calls no,
or other big-- we have VMworld coming up, 25,000 people.
I can promise you I will not be home
for dinner for a number of nights the week beforehand.
But then also balance it by, OK, here's
when I'm taking vacation.
The first 10 years at Intel, I took no vacation.
Can you believe-- why I take vacation?
I love what I'm doing.
Why stop?
It was just great.
And then Linda came to me one day and she says,
you might not need vacation, but your family
needs you on vacation.
Oh.
Changed my perspective entirely.
It sounds so stupid when I say it now.
But that's-- and since then I take every day vacation
I'm entitled to at that point, and really making it a good.
You can be on vacation and not on vacation.
But really finding ways.
And hey, as a CEO it's really hard to do this now.
But honey, just giving me an hour or two in the morning,
and then I can feel good the rest of the day.
OK, so I get up early, clean out the inbox,
handle the crisis, and so on.
OK, now we can have a great day and we can go
bike riding and all the stuff.
We just had a long a 4th of July.
So part of it is doing the job.
Also, when you're doing the job one
of the things as a Christian that you get to do
is you realize there's a much higher purpose in mind.
It changes your attitude and perspective on everything.
And there's-- does Google have any interwork politics?
Any large organization does.
But as a Christian, you can look past that so
much more easily as well.
And just say, I didn't get the promotion.
God be praised.
I wasn't ready for it for whatever reason
may be the case.
I got the promotion.
God be praised for it as well.
And you can improve your work attitude,
your team attitude so much if you
take on that higher perspective of what you're off to do,
the lives you're off to change and so on.
I remember at one will point in my career at Intel,
I was so furious.
I was a vice president.
There was another vice president, Mike.
He got promoted to a senior vice president before me.
I mean, he was nowhere near producing what I was.
I was so torqued.
What a criminal injustice of the universe
that he was promoted before me.
And in retrospect, hey, my career's done just fine.
But being able to keep that balance to realize that,
hey, I am going to be the best employee even
if a fundamental injustice of the universe
just occurred with that promotion.
I'm just going to continue to be doing my job,
to never get caught up in politics,
to absolutely be doing the right thing for the company,
for the customer with the highest integrity, et cetera.
And of course, sometimes you just
got to do what it takes to get the project done as well.
And that's what I mean by being a great employee.
And if you're great employee, I call it
like this invisible bank account that you're
making deposits into.
Because someday stuff happens, bad stuff happens.
But they sort of come and look and say, oh, no, she's great.
She's been such a team player.
She's got so many good things.
You survive some of those bad situations
because they will inevitably arise at different times.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, so Karen is asking,
do you have any specific advice for women who are balancing
work, family, and faith?
PAT GELSINGER: Yeah, unfortunately women
in technology-- it's a terrible situation.
And it begins with a lousy raw material in the sense
that old 18% of incoming technical STEM are females.
I mean, that number's got to get fixed.
Because there's just such-- it's all male dominated,
and then technology is so much more so that way.
So to me, the most important things-- and we're
hosting a Girls Who Code at our campus in a couple of weeks,
and those kind of things.
We really just got to get those numbers just way up.
It should be 50-50, right?
And we're nowhere near that at that level.
And then what happens is females generally--
because there aren't good role models,
there aren't good systems to support them,
micro-inequities inside of the environment.
They generally get promoted less, they get lower raises,
they don't have a good role model-- statistically,
it's the way it is.
So we have to fight those things very aggressively just
like any other situation.
We're doing things at VMware.
I'm sure Google is doing those things as well.
But it's one of those hard things
that's just going to take a long time to really turn around.
And we are starting to see the STEM rates into STEM
fields starting to rise now.
So it's an encouraging environment that we're in.
And obviously companies-- we have policies,
and again, I'm sure that Google does as well-- with regard
to, often women fallout of the technical fields in the child
bearing years.
They drop out, they don't come back.
How can we make that more effective for them
to come back and return and participate-- job sharing,
other things like that to make that
more effective in that environment-- strong mentoring
programs and so on.
So there's a lot of things that we
need to do to make it better.
And obviously, for women proper, being
able to be successful in a male-dominated environment
is hard.
And finding good mentors, people who
are your champions along the way are
some of the most valuable things that
can be done in that respect.
But we have a long, long way to go unfortunately.
I remember I was the champion of the senior technical females
at Intel.
After five years, we made no statistical progress.
None.
After five years, we started to move the needle on the program.
And to me it was so frustrating.
I don't take on projects to not succeed after five years.
I mean, I was embarrassed for it.
It's just slow, hard, and deeply ingrained,
and takes a while to move the needle.
AUDIENCE: My question goes to in regard
to you're mission statement.
So at some point, I guess you just
decided that you were taking on too many things
and so you decided to be build up a mission statement that
would affect your whole life?
So I guess, where do you get the insight to build such a mission
statement?
PAT GELSINGER: Yeah, for me, I got
to this period of sort of aimlessness
in life which sort of drove me to it.
I wasn't sure what I wanted to do next.
I wanted to be a VP.
I wanted to write a book.
I did that.
I got patent.
It was sort of like, OK, now that I've
sort of done the things that I had in mind I
wanted to get done, it was like this period of aimlessness.
So it's really sort of a year of sojourn
and wandering until I really read
a few books and other things to get to that point.
The way to write, to me-- writing a mission statement,
you can look at mine online or in the book.
You could look at others.
There's a few books that talk about that subject
as well that might give you other models for it.
Talk with your mentors about it, significant others, spouses,
et cetera, are very helpful to help you shape the thinking.
And writing a mission statement, generally write down the things
that you have in mind, revise it a few times,
and then stick it in the drawer for a couple of months.
And then take it out, and look at it again.
Is that really who you want to be 10, 20, 30 years from now?
Tear it up, do it again.
And then put it in the drawer again.
And then finally about the third major revision,
it's probably getting to be pretty close.
And then take it to mentors and another significant influences
your life and say, is what you think Pat should be?
Does this resonate with you and who you see me
being, as well as what you think I should aspire to be as well?
And it's a hard process.
It took me about a year to write the first, what I considered,
finished version of my mission statement.
Now I think I'm on version 6Ba, I think is what I'm on
or something like that.
But it hasn't changed a whole lot
since that first version at 31.
But I've revised it sort of for the major epics of life.
When we were in the major child rearing years,
sort of one epic of life.
I did a major revision after we empty nested because that's
a very different phase of life and the role
that you're in there.
And I think sort of as you go into sort
of the twilight years of your career
may be the next epic as well.
But as you write it, it should be good
for, like, the next 10 or 20 years of your life,
and as the things you want to get done.
And maybe some short-term agendas.
I want to exercise this many days a week,
or stuff like that.
But some also sort of saying, hey, in 10 years,
where do you want your career to be?
What do you want to be?
And then what are you doing today to help you get there?
What are you doing right now to help
you prepare for those next major jobs
that you would want in your career in the future?
And if you're not doing those things,
then that's really not what you want to do.
You're kidding yourself if you can start pointing it back
to things you're really underway today with.
AUDIENCE: So you mentioned several times
about work and ego being very aligned.
And I was wondering if you have any thoughts on, rather than
individual responsibility for that decision,
if you have any thoughts on kind of pushing
from the top of the company in changing
the culture around work?
PAT GELSINGER: Well, a handful of thoughts there.
Because clearly, if I look at my job as CEO now,
how successful do I want VMware to be?
Very successful.
But we've also been very thoughtful.
And let me just-- I think I have them here.
These are the VMware values.
And also saying, these are the values--
it's not just about projects that
were getting done-- but we say, execution, passion, integrity,
customer, and community.
And we talk a lot about that.
And then the community It's not just the social community we're
in, but also the community of our people, the employees,
and the families as well.
So we clearly emphasize that as part
of the values of our company as well.
And yeah, we got projects to get done,
we have schedules to keep and so on.
But we do a lot.
And my role-- I mean, we help to do this.
We're an epic company, with epic values, with epic customers,
with epic products.
CRM The whole thing works pretty nicely that way.
But clearly, I mean like we have-- on our campus
we hold a Halloween celebration.
This last year we had Ariana Grande as our singer
for-- we had, I think, 6,000 people
on campus for our Halloween celebration.
4,000 of them, or 5,000 kids-- can you
imagine 5,000 sugar infested, crazy
dressed kids running around?
I mean, it was chaos.
But again, it's reinforcing the family, the balance.
And again, I know Google does those kind of things as well.
But clearly, I got to reinforce it from the top,
otherwise we turn into a sweatshop as well.
And we're here for the long term to build families, communities,
relationships for the long term.
And a lot I do, as I reinforce these values, it's
critical to reinforce that from the top
even as bottoms-up decisions are made.
And every once in a while, yep, I'm going to come to you
and say, sorry, I need to work this weekend.
But then I have to be able to also say,
and maybe at the end of the month,
you need to take a few extra days off, and balance as well.
And creating a culture that allows that to occur.
I just had dinner last night with one of our guys,
and we gave him what we call a take three.
We give people the opportunity after so many years
of service to take three months to go do something else.
And that could be nothing.
And in his case, he's been bike riding.
He says he does a three-hour bike ride every day.
He's lost 20 pounds.
And he just had done a big vSphere release for us.
And he says, I just needed a break.
And he was so grateful just to give him that chance
to reset everything.
And we're talking about what project
he's going to do as he re-enters the company and so on.
So it really is that mix of things
of working hard, being proud of what you do,
passionate for the projects.
But also saying, yeah, we have to keep things in balance
because my grandkids are way more important
than the next earnings call for a VMware.
AUDIENCE: I was wondering if you to go
into more detail in that period of your life
where you're trying to grow as a Christian?
Because you said you were, like a baby Christian,
and then you were working long hours, building a family,
going to school.
PAT GELSINGER: Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, and it was, at that point in my life,
it was just this frenetic period.
And I'm growing as a Christian, and trying to figure out
what that was like.
At the various-- soon after I became a Christian-- just
tell you a little story.
I walking down the halls of Intel.
This was like a week after I became a Christian.
And this guy comes up to me, and you could tell
he was sort of checking me out.
And I couldn't quite-- didn't know him at all.
And he comes up, and he says, hi, I'm Bob.
Are you Pat?
And I said, yeah.
Again, this is sort of weird.
And he says, God told me I should be your roommate.
God's talking to you about me?
I mean, we became roommates for the couple of years until Linda
and I got married.
And I'll just tell you, he was just
this perfect, mature Christian that
sort of helped lead me through some of those early phases.
He was like the first spiritual mentor
I had in my life-- people helping you in those.
After Linda and I got married, we've
had Bible studies in our home now
for probably 25 of the last 30 years
that I've been leading us well.
The best way you want to mature as a Christian
is to teach other people.
And that's one for me, I find that to be very
challenging in that respect.
And that journey as you're going through it,
good church, good leaders, good teaching, spending
time in the Bible and prayer yourself-- all those things--
just the good diet of a young Christian experience.
But my case, Bob was extremely critical and influential
in those early Christian years.
And I think everybody in that phase of life
need that kind of influence for it as well.
So hey, I am so grateful to be able to spend time with you.
I'll be hanging around a little bit afterward.
And I'd love to chat some more.
Thank you very much.
God bless. [APPLAUSE]