Former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt says the surest career move for people in their early 30s is to "keep betting on yourself" and grab every chance that comes along -- even if it means rolling the dice on a cross-country flight or an unfamiliar job away from family.
What Happened: In an interview on The Diary of a CEO podcast back in November, Schmidt told host Steven Bartlett that life "can be understood as a series of opportunities that are time-limited" and too often missed because "you were in a bad mood, or didn't know who to call."​
Schmidt, 69, recalled his own leap in 2001, when he said "yes" after Larry Page and Sergey Brin asked him to run a then-little-known search engine called Google. "Changed my life," he said, crediting that single word for turning him into a multi-billionaire and later the co-founder of philanthropic venture Schmidt Sciences. The ex-CEO urged listeners not to let fear or logistics block similar jumps: "Get on the airplane and get it done."
Schmidt, son of an international economics professor, studied electrical engineering at Princeton and earned his master's and Ph.D. from UC Berkeley.
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His advice lands as Gen Z workers weigh an uncertain job market and an AI boom that is reshaping career ladders almost as quickly as Google once rewrote the internet. Schmidt argued the only constant is personal initiative: "Your philosophy in life should be to say yes to that opportunity… yes it's painful, yes it's difficult, but you do it." For the man who helped scale Google from a start-up to a $2 trillion titan, the biggest risk is saying no.
Why It Matters: Schmidt’s advice is simple but echoes Canadian ice hockey legend Wayne Gretzky’s famous words: You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. On the topic of simple life advice, Jeff Bezos urges people to turn their passions into careers, telling a Bush Center leadership forum once that true success comes from pursuing a "calling" rather than settling for a job or even a career. He explains that hitting this "jackpot" requires deliberate action, persistent effort, and resilience.
Bezos rejects any notion of passively waiting for purpose to appear, stressing that individuals must actively cultivate and commit to their interests. His stance echoes Warren Buffett's view that the most successful businesspeople "do what they love," reinforcing the idea that passion-driven work yields the greatest rewards.
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