Supported, in part, by a Liveris Academy Travel Grant, Joshua Ryu reflects on his time in San Francisco.
Joshua Ryu
Liveris Academy Undergraduate Scholar
Bachelor of Science / Doctor of Medicine (Provisional Entry)
Through the UQ Startup AdVentures Program, I was fortunate enough to be able to explore the facilities of leading tech companies in the Bay Area, including NVIDIA, Adobe, Meta, Tesla and Salesforce. There were some great learnings, and being there in person, it was hard to comprehend the amount of impact these companies have on the world. I have summarised my interactions with company staff, alongside some personal reflections on the company tours below.
NVIDIA:
Elad Wind explained that, although NVIDIA’s early focus for GPUs (Graphics Processing Unit) was on gaming, they soon realised the potential for parallel processing and its vast applications in contexts outside of game graphics. AI, deep learning and scientific computing are some important applications of GPUs according to Jack Dahlgren, who we had the pleasure of talking to. Of the 30,000 employees worldwide, the three to one ratio of software to hardware workers reflect the idea that CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) toolkit downlo
ads may be a better way of quantifying the success of the company, rather than by their chip sales. Why? Because the CUDA ecosystem is what locks developers into using the company’s hardware, and if more developers are using CUDA, they are more likely to purchase and optimise for the company’s chips anyway. It’s about creating long-term demand and reinforcing ecosystem stickiness.
Adobe:
Adobe had a much larger focus on educating the next generation than I thought, with over one hundred
university partnerships—hopefully, UQ could be the next one! Their headquarters in San Jose had a gym and basketball court on campus, along with various other opportunities for employees to find support outside of their work, which was great to see. In reflection, Adobe’s strategic shift from a one-time purchase model to a service-based subscription model has created an arguably stronger ecosystem, higher user retention and a recurring revenue stream, while continuing to empower individuals and businesses to succeed through their array of applications in the Adobe Creative Cloud. It was great to visit the pioneer of digital creativity in California, and many thanks to Linda Garcia-McNair and Eddie for the tour!
Meta:
We took an entire day off our internships to tour around and learn about Meta, with Ahmad Byagowi, Justin Akers, Aaron Coox, Michael and other awesome people as our hosts and presenters! I could tell that there was an exciting atmosphere at Meta, which is something I rarely find in a lot of corporate or professional settings. In hindsight, Meta is unimaginably large as a tech giant, and it was eye-opening to hear talks from employees in different edge-cutting divisions. I was especially interested to hear about Meta’s bet on AR and VR being a huge opportunity in the market and what they are doing to stay ahead of their competitors. Meta isn’t solely focused on the social media space these days; they’re investing heavily in hardware and quickly iterating like startups!
Tesla:
Visiting the Fremont factory with Charles Henden (UQ alum) and some other guides was an amazing experience. Not only did we get to see the full manufacturing process of their Model S, X, 3 and Y cars, but also the cutting-edge robots that work alongside people to maximise the efficiency of their 1.8 square kilometre gigafactory. I could instantly tell that the layout of the entire facility was intentionally planned to maximise production without compromising safety, and they had mini train-like vehicles to take people around, like in theme parks! It was interesting to hear about the company's history, specific things Elon Musk wanted in the facility's design, and how Tesla reached a strategic deal to purchase most of the site for only $42 million.
Salesforce:
Besides the beautiful panorama of the Bay Area from its peak, visiting Salesforce Tower was a great opportunity to talk to Dave Harrington (UQ alumnus), who is the Director of Software Engineering, Developer Experience at Slack (acquired by Salesforce in
2021). It was great to hear about his journey into Silicon Valley, and his personal experiences working in startups post-graduation. I think it can often be easiest to settle for a job that your degree prepares you for (at least by title or certification), but this meetup was a good reminder to think bigger than what I know and to actively seek opportunities that lead to growth and increase my ability to give meaningful value back to society.
On a side note, I made time to visit some of most prestigious universities in the area, including the likes of Stanford University, University of San Francisco, and University of California, Berkeley. Stanford University seemed to have a very close-knit community, with a big focus on networking and gaining work experience through internships. On the other hand, University of California, Berkeley seemed to focus more on academia, with an impressive 59 Nobel laureates and a special carpark for those accomplished
individuals when they visit! Through a UQ connection, we sat in on a class at University of San Francisco, which offered a valuable opportunity to network with students in the business school. Though I wasn't at each campus for long, I hope to use my learnings from these universities to improve The University of Queensland through my role as an Academic Board Undergraduate Representative this year.
In hindsight, I never realised there were so many UQ alumni working at so many cool places around the world, and if this inspires another student to think beyond the teachings of their degree, it would mean a lot!
Once again, many thanks to UQ Ventures for the coordination of this trip, and the Liveris Academy, for their financial support via the Liveris Academy Travel Grant. And of course, to the many individuals who helped to make this experience possible, thank you.
*This has been adapted from my LinkedIn posts about the trip to San Francisco. Although I wish I could offer more personal reflections on the entire trip, I’ve only included my insights from the company tours, for the sake of brevity. I’m always happy to chat and feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn via https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuasryu/.
