Hampton Creek, Facebook and asking the right questions

Global perspective

After taking a brief tour around the facility, I followed many of my Maymester peers into a conference room at the Hampton Creek headquarters.  Anxiousness isn’t the exact word to describe the feeling I had before hearing CEO Josh Tetrick speak.  Instead, it was more of an anticipation of figuring out the structure behind these company visits and learning more about the company.  Hampton Creek was the first company visit we attended and the experience there would help pave the way for the future company visits to come. 

Josh did a great job explaining the company’s mission of providing people an option to eat better with plant-based food for relatively the same cost as competitors in order to try to fix a food system.  While his slide deck was interesting, his last few minutes speaking resonated with me the most.  His final words included a warning to stay away from “soul-sucking” careers that may come easy, accessible, and mirror what many others alongside us will do.  However, he said that instead of giving in and using our talents for these jobs that it would be more beneficial to strive to be part of a company that works to make the world a better place.  He said that through striving to do so, we would not only be happier but that the money will follow us making choices that work towards global improvement. 

I found this piece of advice to be incredibly important because as students at USC, we are being taught an incredible skill set that will be applicable to numerous job positions around the world.  However, how we choose to use these skills is entirely up to us.  There are numerous problems happening in the world that all of us in the room have the ability to influence.  It is most important to remember along down the road that we do not have to isolate and choose between the success of our own careers and the awareness and the improving the well-being of others.  That in fact, those ideas do not have to be chosen between, but exist as one in the same.  Hampton Creek showed us that was entirely possible.

As experienced professionals take the time to lend their advice, it leaves me with the energized feeling of excitement that one day everyone on this program will be on a panel answering questions to those about to enter the work force and being able to lend knowledge to those just starting out. 

Preparation

“Do any of you have any questions?” At least five hands shoot up from students hoping to be called on.  During every company visit, there is time set aside for a quick Q&A to ask any remaining questions we may have.  Usually, the questions start around the topic of job history and how the current employees arrived to where they are now.  Then the questions branch off into many different topics including asking about the company culture, the disruption of tech in their day-to-day jobs, and other pressing questions. 

The 17 Maymester students that fill the room naturally all have one large question at the back of their mind: what skills am I lacking and what advice can I learn from before leaving the role of a student and transitioning into the workforce?  We all want to know that we are doing everything we can while we are a student at USC to be as prepared as possible at the beginning of our career path.  When asking for advice, there were common trends in the responses given.  Coming from USC, it is already known that we have been extremely lucky to have such an amazing education through Annenberg.  With that being said, our time at USC is limited and we should constantly take advantage of the school resources in preparation for getting a job after graduation.  However, even though we all eventually graduate, we should never lose the idea of being a student and pushing ourselves to learn new things every day.

Several people from various company visits stressed the importance of being curious.  They said that by being passionately interested in topics and asking questions allowed them to have a better understanding of how they could better excel at their job and it also opens opportunities for them in the future.  I realized just how important it is to ask questions and to be in an environment where your curiosity is encouraged.  I was also incredibly lucky to be in a group that asked so many intelligent and thought-provoking questions as I learned so much from them challenging information and connecting it in ways I never thought of before.  One of the main takeaways from the Q&As is to never stop learning no matter what path life takes you and constantly ask questions because it will feed your curiosity in ways that will always been fulfilling. 

Building 8

Every job in the world requires communication skills.  No matter what someone studies during college or how intelligent their ideas may be, if they cannot communicate those concepts to someone else they will not be successful in the long run.  Some people may wonder what kind of job does a communication major go after.  The answer is nearly all of them. 

Being able to effectively communicate and using storytelling to convey meaning are two incredible skills to have.  Before going on the Maymester journey in San Francisco, I had the idea that communication majors, like many other majors, had limitations in which industries there were available jobs.  However, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that communication majors are needed in every industry and that it is actually a great time to study communication.

One of our company visits included stopping by Facebook’s Building 8.  Building 8 is known for some of Facebook’s newest and most ambitious projects, specifically focusing on hardware and researching future ways of connecting with the world.  Looking from the outside, I would have never known that the building was full of some of the most innovative thinkers working on products that really push tech possibilities to the edge.  After listening to their presentation, we learned about a full dimension 360˚ camera that shoots all angles and has a myriad of outputs including being able to move around the image and in relationship to objects seen in the image with VR goggles.  We also learned about future products allowing us to communicate with messages through our minds in a telepathic-like manner.

Facebook’s Building 8 is proving that technology will always continue to be a part of communication and the more technology evolves the more communication will change based on the medium.  When e-mail first started being incorporated into everyday lifestyles it was a brand new way to communicate.  Then texting came along and altered communication to shorter abbreviations and faster back-and-forth pace.  Then we were introduced to Facetime and social media platforms that continue to shape the idea of what it means to communicate with one another. These changes will only keep happening with tech innovation and with that, we will always be redefining what communicating looks like and understanding what that means in terms of connecting with one another in society.  At the end of the Maymester program, I am completely inspired and confident in my ability to take what I have learned through USC Annenberg and apply it to any future job I may have.