Tech titan Chet Kapoor, a native of Kolkata who worked as an intern for former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, offers some thought-provoking guidance to recent graduates. The CEO of DataStax, a company that uses generative AI, Mr. Kapoor, advises recent graduates to get an internship with the right people, even if it means paying $50,000 (roughly ₹ 40 lakh). Mr. Kapoor urged that there will be additional returns on this initial investment.
“Here’s what I tell everybody that’s coming out of college, and wants to look for a gig,” he told CNBC Make It. “Find a set of people that you think you can learn from. Don’t worry about the titles. Don’t worry about what company they work for. Convince them that they need you and then pay them $50,000 a year so that you can work for them. It will be the best $50,000 you’ve ever spent. Certainly better than the college education you just funded.”
Mr Kapoor explained that the first few years of a career dictate the future. “People get stuck on the brand you worked for. ‘Oh I worked at Google’ or ‘I worked at AWS.’ The point is: who did you work with and what did you learn from them? Because that will actually set you on the right course,” he said.
Earlier, Mr Kapoor also shared his experience of interning with Steve Jobs. “Steve was this iconic individual and I didn’t know him … I was the guy that got coffee for the guy that made coffee,” Mr Kapoor told the outlet. “I was one step below the person that opened doors but that didn’t matter because I worked 20 yards away from him [Jobs] every day,” he added.
Mr. Kapoor stated that he owes a great deal of his accomplishments to his time spent as Mr. Jobs’ intern. He clarified that he would pay close attention to the questions posed by the tech mogul during all-hand meetings since they provided a window into his mental processes. “That exposure was absolutely phenomenal,” he said. He continued, “I can attribute a large portion of my success to my first two or three years at NeXT.”
Notably, Mr. Kapoor established himself in Silicon Valley as the CEO of Apigee, a cloud software company that Google purchased in 2016. Additionally, he has occupied executive roles at companies like Google and IBM.
