Kolkata-born tech leader Chet Kapoor who once interned with former Apple CEO Steve Jobs has some interesting advice for young graduates. Mr Kapoor, the CEO of generative AI company DataStax, says that college graduates should bag an internship with the right people even if they have to pay $50,000 (about Rs 40 lakh). Mr Kapoor insisted that this early investment will pay off further.
"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.
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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 said he credits a lot of his success to his experience working as Mr Jobs' intern. He explained that he would focus on the questions that the tech mogul would ask in all-hand meetings more than anything else because it gave an insight into his thought process. "That exposure was absolutely phenomenal," he said, adding, "I can attribute a large portion of my success to my first two or three years at NeXT."
Notably, Mr Kapoor made his mark in Silicon Valley as CEO of cloud software company Apigee, which was acquired by Google in 2016. He has also held leadership positions at firms including Google and IBM.
